The Lounge of Terrestrial Wheelmen

[SportWagon]

Annoying Strava feature.

I was finishing up one of my regular rides, and felt like I was going pretty good through one familiar segment. When I got home I did some check of various segments. But after going away from my phone I realized I hadn't checked the one in question. Eventually when I made a deliberate effort to go and check the segment, I realized it must have been deleted!

All that personal history.... Gone! (Yup, it's gone from previous rides too!)

Now, although I believe the creator can delete a segment at will, I suspect the segment in question was deleted because it was a "Make that light" segment, ending just after a traffic light. Now, yesterday, I actually did properly make the lights at both start and finish so my time would have looked good in my own personal rankings; me, personally I never did anything dubious just to "make that light"--just comparing the times with recent and similar times, assuming particularly good times had been lucky ones.

I have created a new segment ending well before the light, and it confirms I was moving fairly well yesterday.

It's odd that you can't just pick two points on a ride and get the elapsed time between them. I'll try and suggest it. Of course, that also suggests the ability to compare that same personal time with recent and not-so-recent efforts--which could be expensive to implement if everyone is doing it. Of course, you *could* create a temporary personal segment and throw it away after you've seen as many results as you want. I wonder if Strava gets a lot of that?

[SportWagon]

So, is the smoke getting as far as Colorado and keeping George from getting out on his bike? Obvious Tom Serve must be affected.

[Tom Servo]

It's pretty gruesome here, though nowhere near as bad as northern California or Oregon. AQI has been 160+ most of the time, so I'm not getting much exercise these days.

[George]

Skies haven't been too bad here lately. It's hazy and the mountains look sort of out of focus, but that's about all I'm noticing in the last couple of days. It was worse maybe a month to two weeks ago. Labor Day (Sept. 7) was about as bad as it got, with skies bordering on red (although nothing like pictures I've seen from California and Oregon) and a constant smell of smoke in the air. There are fires in western Colorado and we get smoke from California too, but it was much worse several days ago. We had a day or two of snow and near-freezing temperatures last week, which was fun. Now it's back to around 90 degrees F / 32 C today, but the nights are getting cooler and I'm noticing the days getting shorter.

Here's a picture from this morning's "working from home" ride.

[Tom Servo]

Oh yeah, didn't you guys have that crazy thing where it was like 93F one day and by the end of the next day it was 34F and snowing?

[George]

Yes. That was last Tuesday and Wednesday - just a week ago.

[Tom Servo]

I've heard of dressing in layers, but this is ridiculous! *slide_whistle_noise.mp3*

[SportWagon]

Last weekend here was cool (about 7C) but warming up early Saturday morning, and then 19C dropping just a little Sunday morning, with a strong south wind (headwind home) though not really a stormy wind.

My Timex Ironman Triathlon watch had died overnight, but luckily I had a speculative spare I could just use.

Today I finally got around to changing the battery in the first watch.

Spoiler:

I could not have done it without YouTube. Luckily a search finds a video which even I did not find irritating. Somehow he moves at a quick enough pace that you can easily stop-motion at the parts you need.

I could not figure out how to unlatch the battery, and eventually, after seeing what he did, used a sewing needle to do it.

For a while I thought the watch might have just plain died, but eventually I managed to accomplish the "short to reset".

I disassembled it more than I really should have, but it seems properly back together now. All five buttons even work easily (other Timex I've had have had some switches get really difficult to use). I might have mucked up the seal too, but we'll see. I'll use the replacement watch from now on, unless perhaps I encounter a particularly warm sunny day and will use the old one experimentally.

Or if the new one dies, I guess.

[Cam]

Swervo, I was pleasantly surprised to see your wife posting on Strava from Innsbruck! That's really awesome, but how the heck was she let in the country? Are you with her?

[Tom Servo]

Hahah, we finally set up the Wahoo Kickr that we bought at the beginning of lockdown and got her going on Zwift. I'll likely join in as well, but we currently have some difficulties in sharing the setup (her bike has a 10 speed cassette, mine's 11, and Zwift doesn't do multiple profiles on a single subscription whereas I'm a little hesitant to pay for another subscription while unemployed). The first problem should be solved very soon, turns out they make 105 11-speed shifters for flat-bar bikes now, so a set of those are on their way and I'll just convert her bike to 11-speed. The second might take a little longer, though thankfully the job search is actually going rather well right now.