Feb 17/18 - playing with the new toy

Yes, still playing with the 705 -- the bike GPS. The detailed maps came in the mail and I got them loaded up. Now the two courses that I had setup actually load properly. I'll setup and ride one of my typical day rides tomorrow (today by the time I post this).

I have not played with the heart rate monitor yet other than wear it briefly at my desk. I'm not sure that it would be all that comfortable .. but it's worth a try on one of those days when I do a brief ride. I'm sure that my heart rate will be more than 54 bpm when I'm riding ...

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Well, it's two days later. I didn't get a chance to blog yesterday before I went biking.

I didn't do anything noteworthy on the 17 (translation: I already forget where the day went). I went over to Ace Hardware to pickup a small piece of window trim that I have to replace and some finishing nails. I probably spent 1/2 hour browsing in the nuts and bolts section. They have a huge selection of stuff all in bins and priced individually. If you want quantity, Home Depot is often cheaper, but more often (as George Cederholm mentioned) you need two of something. This avoids having all those "extra" things lying around and the frustration of seeing all those little plastic packs where people have stolen one item out of them. Ace Hardware is quite close to us but I often don't think of going there. Judging by the level of activity in the store, they, like most retailers, are probably in trouble.

I moved the 705 onto the handlebars from the stem and fashioned another holder for my battery powered LED light. I already had the mount for a screw-attached light, but needed to take a small piece of 1" dowel (broom handle) and drill a hole through it to create a mount point for the LED support bracket which is designed to go on the handlebar. It worked quite nicely on yesterday's ride -- not that I needed the light, but I wanted to ensure that I didn't have some problem on Saturday morning riding in the dark.

I decided to go for a longer ride, rather than a typical ride, so I mapped out a 125+ mile route south and back. Normally I would simply ride on US1 but freed from either having to memorize maps or going out and just "getting lost" as Aaron does, I'm now able to vary my ride. I'm not very good at memorizing directions or maps. Aaron doesn't really get lost -- he seems to have a built-in GPS and can always retrace his steps.

Anyway, as a result I rode on small roads that I wouldn't normally see. It was a great, albeit exhausting ride. The reason that it was exhausting was the wind. At times I was pushed down under 10 mph. The turnaround point was at 65 miles, because the way back was a shorter route -- it took me almost 5 hours to the turnaround point, and just over 3 hours to come back. Even though I had a pretty good tailwind most of the way back, I was out of gas, so to speak.

The route that I took was interesting. South to Merritt Island as usual and over the causeway back to Titusville would be a "normal" 78 mile trip. I turned south at Titusville and crossed back over to Merritt Island on the next causeway, which is the Kennedy Space Center parkway. I was relying on my pre-mapped course at this point, but not altogether sure that I was not going to run into a roadblock at NASA. Just because a road shows on the map doesn't mean that it's accessible to the public !

It worked out quite well though -- just before the space center there is a right turn and I headed south, following the GPS, through an area restricted if you get off the road (like the wildlife refuge) that gradually turned into residential, lovely homes -- not very many for sale (I guess that NASA is still at full employment). Further south it got busier and my lovely winding road following the river turned inland on the island and became a road like US 1 leading me to my destination causeway heading back over to the mainland.

There's a lot to explore here, with two islands between the mainland and the ocean. The first causeway takes you to Merritt Island. The second causeway takes you to Canaveral -- north where I usually ride the Canaveral National Seashore is a 50 foot wide strip of beach and vegetation -- parkland. That widens and becomes Cape Canaveral and NASA Launch Pads, which, as you go further south, becomes Port Canaveral, where cruise ships dock and further south Cocoa Beach. Each estuary is 1-2 miles wide at this point, so it's quite spread out. The Intracoastal Waterway runs down the estuary closest to the mainland. Sandy and I came as far as Cocoa last year, having launched our boat at the Haulover Canal on Merritt Island.

On my ride, I headed back to the mainland and then rode along the mainland side of the estuary, following my pre-mapped route and avoiding US 1 for as much as I could. It's safer riding, albeit slower. It's easier to grind along on US 1. The traffic creates an air flow that helps you along. It's more enjoyable off the highway, with more to see.

I don't know if I mentioned in an earlier blog, because I hit this route during the brevet a couple of weeks ago, but this is the only time that I've seen a "no wake" zone on a road. There are parts of this road that are so low that they regularly flood at high tide -- not daily you understand, but when the water is higher. So -- drive slowly and don't leave a wake !

The 705 is doing its job. I will have much more varied riding. I'll be tempted to do what we do with the boat sometimes -- drive and park at a "launch point" and see new territory.

The 705 records stats from rides which can be downloaded to the computer as well. On yesterday's ride, for instance, I burned 6199 calories over 125.5 miles, 8:05 hours rolling time, 15.52 average speed, 68 average cadence. The cadence is low ... I'll have to get that up higher. the average speed would have been a lot less at the half-way point and obviously I never made it up on the way back even though a lot of the time I was rolling over 20mph. The 6,199 calories is obviously an estimate that it makes based on averages because it cannot know the wind but does know about any climbing. I don't know if it produces a more accurate figure if you have a rear wheel hub that measures wattage output. Somewhere it stores elevation gains as well -- not very interesting in this part of Florida, probably only hitting 1500 total feet for the ride yesterday. That stat will be higher on the ride this coming Saturday, both due to the longer ride as well as the fact that it is hillier in central Florida.

Yes, Saturday is my next ride. I don't plan anything for today and tomorrow afternoon I'll be doing the 3 hour drive to Gainesville. Sandy isn't coming with me this time but will likely come along for the 400 in a month's time. She won't actually see any of the ride, she'll visit with Barb Nute. The only thing that I "might" do today is go out for a few miles with the heart monitor strapped under my jersey, just to see how that feels. I cannot imagine riding with it for a long ride. I'd probably have all sorts of chafing. It would be good for the stationary trainer though.

That's it ... that's enough ... I've bored you enough.

Abby got to go to the beach with Sandy yesterday and reportedly had a great time playing with a Golden Retriever puppy. I've left it to her (Sandy that is) to decide on the door for the master bath. She went to Home Depot yesterday and will likely go back today and place the order. It should take 3-4 weeks to get the door at which point I'll have some work to do.

My conditions on the door were simple -- whatever she picks should be a design (eg. 4 panel) that works for the rest of the house when we get around to replacing the other three doors as an upgrade. It should also be something that is "open stock" as it were, that we won't have difficulty matching in a year or two. Of course that depends on companies staying in business ... but to be realistic, I don't have a place for storage here. Up north, faced with a similar decision, we would order all four at once because I have storage room. Here I'm pretty limited.

Ok, that's really it ...