Feb 14 - at the computer

I spent the entire day at the computer yesterday, or at least it seems that way. I didn't go anywhere, didn't do anything else significant ... oh, I was out front for about 1/2 hour picking up sticks and trash in the yard ... until the Fedex man came that is.

Sandy took Abby to the beach and then she got hosed down. At the end of it I was not sure who got the hosing though -- Abby got Sandy soaked as she tried to dry her off with a towel.

We had golden tilefish for dinner and it was wonderful. With rice and broccoli, it was another great meal. I made bread, which doesn't take a lot of effort on my part but does take some fore-thought. Fore-thought is required because I want bread for my sandwich today so I have to make it the day before. I suppose that I could make it the morning of, as long as I started early -- like by 6am.

So ... what did I do at the computer all day ? I messed around with www.bikeroutetoaster.com. This is a website that allows you to setup up bike routes -- or whatever routes -- save them -- and create XML files in whatever format is compatible with your GPS device. It supports a few Garmin-specific formats, such as TCX and GPX and I found another free tool to convert those to other formats if you have a tom-tom or some other GPS (which I don't have).

The final Route -- or more properly -- the Course, for the 300km ride in Gainesville was emailed to the riders -- looks like there will be around 10 of us -- on Friday. The difference between a Route and a Course, in Garmin-terms, is that a Route has a few track points and the GPS finds a way between the track points while a Course has all the turn-by-turn directions.

First off, I had a heck-of-a-time plotting the course. The directions are mostly in terms of County Roads, while Google Maps has mostly street names. I found Mapquest better for County Road numbers. Bikeroutetoaster relies on Google Maps so I needed a few windows open to find the turns and click on the course points. I input the route -- three pages of turns -- 3-4 times, not counting the few test runs. I made mistakes and couldn't fix them -- need practice using the tool obviously -- the tool has bugs -- it doesn't prompt before close and I lost my input at least once ... grrr ... I'd get up, walk around the place ... go back and try again.

All this was to prepare for actually having the Garmin 705 delivered and being able to upload the course. That's what the Fedex man brought. So then I had to do ancillary things like mount it on the bike, mount the wireless cadence/speed sensor on the bike etc. I expect to ride with it today, but it doesn't have other than the base maps at this point. I ordered the city maps separately and hopefully they'll be here shortly. I also have to pick up a microsd card at kmart or walmart today because when I downloaded the final course it said that I was out of memory. I expected that ... of course it might also be due to the fact that none of the turns are on streets that are in the map right now and it's trying to route me back and forth to the Interstates.

I also had difficulty figuring out which tool to use. IE8 was doing all sorts of strange things with bikeroutetoaster. I ended up using Firefox on Linux. That worked out all right because getting the files onto the 705 was simply a matter of connecting it via USB and copying the GPX file to the USB disk.

It's quite the toy. It's backlit, so I'll be able to ride at night and be able to see where I am. Will I need glasses to read it -- don't know -- not for the speed / distance stuff because those are big numbers. I don't know about the maps. I may end up needing bifocal riding glasses. I knew that it would come to that at some point. I carry some drugstore glasses in my seat-pack in case I have to do any work on my bike other than fix a tube.

I'll likely do some more playing around with the device today, and not just on the ride that I intend to take. It has an amazing number of features. Will I use the heart-rate monitor ? Perhaps I'll try that at some point. I could also get a power-tap wheel to measure my wattage output -- interesting, but probably not. Mostly I'll be using it to plan and execute rides, and as my primary speed/distance cycle computer. At this point I still have my little cateye computer as backup ... but I'll probably take that off at some point or at least switch to a smaller one that doesn't have the extra wires running down for cadence and speed to the back wheel. It's getting crowded !

So ... in a few minutes ... off to Mass, then over to Kmart, then later in the morning I'll go out for a usual ride. The weather prediction for today is scattered thunderstorms for late afternoon so it might be cut short. I'll have to get going early.

Later ...