It was a work trip. An IT Summit — the first one after the acquisition, when the UK teams came to Maxon HQ in Sachseln to meet the Swiss colleagues properly and figure out what we all were to each other now. I met Thomas there. And Patrick. And others who are still, and will remain, friends regardless of what happens next in my working life.
I also, almost entirely by accident, did a four-hour DJ set bent over a laptop at a small table.
JAM-S didn’t have a name yet. But he was there.
The path alongside the railway line. 6am. Maxon lit up behind the low cloud.
Before anyone else was awake
The run started at 5:59am. I know this because Strava said so, and also because it was still dark, and the streets were empty, and the lake was invisible except for the lights of villages reflected in it from the far shore. I ran out of Sachseln along roads that had no other runners, no cyclists, nothing — just the occasional car passing on its way somewhere early, and the sound of water somewhere to my left.
Sachseln at night. Nobody else up.
The road along the lake’s eastern shore. Village lights across the water.
Endlosenstrasse
Somewhere in the dark, on the far side of the lake, I passed a road sign that I stopped to photograph. Endlosenstrasse — Endless Street — pointing one way toward Sarnen, another toward Giswil, lit from above by a single lamp that turned the fog green. It is the best road name I have ever encountered on a run. At 6am in the dark, running alone around a Swiss lake, it felt appropriate.
Endlosenstrasse. Endless Street. Pointed toward Sarnen in the fog.
The lake comes up
By the time I reached the northern end of the Sarnersee and turned back south on the western shore, the light was beginning to change. Not sunrise — the cloud was too thick for that — but a shift from dark to grey, the mountains revealing themselves in silhouette, the lake surface becoming visible. The boats in the marina were wrapped in blue tarpaulins and sat very still.
Sachseln marina. End of season. Everything wrapped up and waiting.
Lake Sarnen, western shore. The mountains coming back out of the dark.
The rock
The western shore path runs through forest in places — gravel track, tree roots, low light even when the sky has started to brighten. Somewhere in there, with about three miles still to go, I hit an exposed rock with my toe at a pace that registered immediately as significant. The kind of impact where you know before you’ve even hopped to a stop that something is wrong.
I kept going. Three more miles on what I was fairly certain was a broken toe, through the forest and back along the lake. The toe was a spectacular brown the next morning. Later that evening, at some point between the IT Summit winding down and the night getting away from itself, the American colleagues produced expensive whisky. I can confirm it helped.
The river mouth at the southern end of the lake. The forest path that did the damage is somewhere back there.
The set
I don’t know exactly how the DJ set happened. There was an evening, there was a gathering, there was someone who knew I used to DJ and a laptop with Virtual DJ already installed and a table that was too small and no proper setup and no preparation. I played for four hours. People stayed.
Two more sets followed on subsequent visits. The night was too good not to repeat.
JAM-S was always there, it turned out. Just waiting for the right table to bend over.
Maxon HQ. Where it started — the job, the friendships, the DJ sets. All of it.
Coming back into Sachseln. The cloud turning from black to purple.
I got back before breakfast. The IT Summit continued. Thomas and I talked about a lot of things that week that had nothing to do with IT.
Those conversations are still going.
Sachseln, Switzerland – 10.84 miles – 1:39:02 – 408ft – 9:08/mi