For me cycling is a pleasure, I am not into the racing side of things, possibly because I am not as fit as I would like to be. Generally physical activities are better done than watched tends to be the way I see things. I cycle because I enjoy it and as a result also use cycling as a way of getting to work (commuting), viewing the countryside, getting exercise, getting out of my comfort zone, going on holiday and so on. The important thing is I enjoy cycling. Mind you there are times when after cycling into the wind and the freezing rain and you get your umpteenth puncture and the patches won’t stick you can get a little despondent. However I just remind myself that I like cycling.
I probably also ought to mention that I do find myself trying to catch up the cyclist in front – well it would be rude not to. I also have to admit I did find myself inspired by the Cottenham Cyclist’s post on his First Thetford Race. The race is from 8pm to 8am around Thetford – it sounds wonderful.
The Bike Shown on Resonance FM is broadcasting a talk by Patrick Field earlier this week. There were some wonderful sound bites (and I don’t mean that in a negative way). Several stuck in my mind, but the whole talk is worth listening to. I have paraphrased because I can’t actually remember them exactly.
“If you buy a second bike, your first bike won’t mind”
"Your bike won’t mind being dirty when you ride it”
“Don’t love your bike, save your love for something that can love you back”
The weather is certainly very changeable as we transition from Summer (such as it was) to Autumn and then to Winter. As i was eating my breakfast the other morning it was still and the skies were blue and there was a Virgin Hot Air Balloon in the sky – not bad for October.
I have been having one or two minor issues with my Garmin Edge GPS what I use to log most of my cycling. They are pretty much my fault, one problem is that in the dark I don’t always notice whether I have “started” the unit tracking. So there are a couple of recent journeys that I have used Bike Route Toaster to fill in the distance details for. To think it is not that long ago when you would have used a map wheel – now there is a thing of the past.
I have also been having problems turning the GPS on in the morning, the problem is again me. It takes quite a while to go from pressing the on button to bleeping to let me know it is starting. So sometimes I press the power button again and then it turns off and I start getting annoyed. Whilst I accept my flaws this is also an example of less than perfect user interface. It should beep sooner in the cycle to let me know it is turning on.
The last problem is that the summary data for one ride group has been corrupted and if I try to “look” at the summary it crashes the program (Garmin training center (sic)). Although they indicate that they use an open database standard I couldn’t readily find an editor for it – so my attempts to fix the database came to nought. Oh well it is not the end of the world.
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