Feb 15 - weather delays

Rain threatened all day yesterday, not hitting until late in the day. I decided to ride today instead, there being no point in getting soaked unnecessarily. I did go for a short ride to the park and back, simply to test out the 705 mount location etc. Yes, I must play with the new toy. At this point, without the detailed maps loaded, it's just an expensive, large, cyclecomputer. It is a computer with a difference though. If I walk down the street, it shows the speed -- reading from the GPS satellites. On the bike, it also shows speed -- getting its information from the wheel magnet. It would be interesting to take the magnet off and compare the speed that it reads from the satellites to the speed showing on the cateye cyclecomputer. I suppose that if the magnet bounced out of position I would not even know it, there likely being a seamless switchover.

I did some other playing, updating the firmware on the device, there being many sets of updates between its manufacture and my usage. For that I had to boot my computer into Windows -- something that I don't do very often. In Linux I can copy GPX rides onto the 705, since it simply sees it as a USB hard drive. That's the way that the little MP3 player works as well. Any updates to indexes take place once the unit is powered back on. The same seems to hold true with the 705 -- the actual software update took place when I powered it back on. It was "updating software" for a few minutes.

Sandy prepared a dip from a recipe from Kristin Laws that she's made before. We'll have it tonight. I made some more tapenade -- again with feta cheese -- but not as good as the last stuff that I made. For this one fully 1/2 of the content is a tapenade that came from Costco and dilutes the sharp flavor that I achieved using just the olives from the bar at Publix. Oh well, I'll eat it anyway. It's not that it tastes bad, just that it isn't as interesting.

Sandy picked up Red Snapper at the fish store but we are saving that for tonight. We went to our sushi restaurant for dinner, yesterday being the Daytona 500 how could we not ? Traditionally (well, two years in a row makes that a tradition) we have gone out for sushi after getting back from the race. Yesterday we didn't go to the race -- which was good since it was halted 50-something laps short -- and therefore didn't get rained upon. When the rain started coming down, it poured. It would have been quite a mess getting back out to the parking lots.

Otherwise, not much happened. Sandy went for her usual 4 mile walk with Abby while I went for my abbreviated bike ride. After getting back I decided to swap out the old rear dérailleur for a new one that I've had in my parts bin since September. I had replaced the pulleys in the old one last summer and the shifts were not as crisp afterwards. They were a different brand of pulleys. Lately it's had difficult getting to the smallest cog on the cassette. That's not really a problem riding on the flat but would have been annoying going down hills where I would have wanted the extra gear. So now my 20-speed bike is back to 20-speed from 18. I think that the culprit was a gradual weakening of the spring that would pull it back down to that cog. Whatever, it's working fine now -- might need some more adjusting while I'm riding today -- but that's easy.

Today ... a bike ride. It's clear and sunny at this point. Of course I'm getting mentally ready for the 300km ride next Saturday and watching the weather closely. At first the high was supposed to be 63. It then changed to 60. Last night it was saying mid 50's. Of greater concern is the overnight temperature which is now supposed to be 33. Isn't this Florida ? Well, I guess that I'd rather have it start out cold and then warm up rather than what happened the last ride where it started out cool, got cold, then got warm. This time I'll put my shoe covers on ! I sure hope that it doesn't get any worse. I hate riding in the cold. Even worse of course is the cold and wet ... so far it's supposed to be dry.

Onward ...