The Lounge of Terrestrial Wheelmen

[FaultyMario]

Is this map of the bike network in LA an accurate depiction?

LA.jpg

[Tom Servo]

100% yes. I live just off the left side of that, right by the park area near Beverlywood. That whole deadzone in around Hollywood, Koreatown, and Central LA is pretty unpleasant. I know a few ways through there that work, but there's a huge swatch of the city with absolutely no infrastructure.

Fun part, Michele works just south of Runyon Canyon Park. We've bike commuted a few times from our place. It's often a little unpleasant.

The line going east-west that goes by USC is basically the main east-west route, it follows the Expo Line light rail system. You get a little stranded right by USC, but quickly pick up lanes up Figueroa that will take you into downtown LA, which has a pretty good bike network. To the west of this map is Santa Monica which has really good bike infrastructure (where my work is). The city isn't all as bad as this section, but this does show basically the heart of LA.

[FaultyMario]

Gotcha.

[Tom Servo]

After breaking my Garmin 810 a while back, I finally decided to get a new bike computer and switched allegiances over to Wahoo, buying an Elemnt Bolt (no, that's not a typo, they really annoyingly leave off the last 'e' in their product names). Overall, it's a bike computer, so you basically know what to expect, so I figured I'd just throw out a list of what I like and don't like vs. my old Garmin (and the one before it, an Edge 500).

Pros:

• The screen is really nice. Black & White LCD, but with nice, clear text on the screen. I find it much easier to read mid-ride than either of the Garmins.
• Super easy to configure. You do everything from your phone with their app, which makes it a hell of a lot easier/quicker to customize than fiddling with the buttons on the Garmin.
• Turn-by-turn navigation is incredibly easy to setup. I never could figure out how to get my 810 to do that right, and the 500 didn't support it at all. With this, you can create a route on RideWithGPS, then it just shows up as a possible route on your phone. It'll alert you about 500 feet before a turn, and the LEDs across the top scroll one direction or the other based on which way you're supposed to turn. It's also got a decent on screen map on one of the pages.
• Great connectivity. It'll upload rides on its own via WiFi if it's available, otherwise it'll try to do it through your phone via Bluetooth. It also supports both ANT+ and Bluetooth sensors, the Garmin generally only supports ANT+ (though almost all sensors also support ANT+, it's mostly Polar heart rate monitors that do Bluetooth). It also doesn't continually lose the Bluetooth connection when I'm riding, or if it does, it doesn't complain about it like the Garmin 810 did (which beeped incessantly every time it happened unless I completely muted the device).
• Along the connectivity lines, it uploads really quickly. The 810 was fiddly with how it uploaded, I would have to unlock my phone and start the Garmin app or it would just hang on upload, the Garmin app had to be the on-screen app for it to work. This uploads so fast I don't even realize it did it.
• Battery life is comparable, but it seems to do pretty well even with the backlight set to always on, which the Garmin struggled a bit with.
• The physical button layout is nice with three hardware buttons on the front that change with context. The screen basically always has little tabs just above the buttons that say what they do in that given context, and they're easy to read. No matter how long I had my Garmin, I'd often hit the wrong button for something, it feels less likely with this unit.
• Supports Strava Live Segments, though you have to have Strava Premium, and I don't feel like paying extra to find out how much I suck.
• I like that you don't have to have your phone on you or use it at all to use the computer. Once you've got it set up the way you like it, it can handle everything on its own including uploading to Strava.

Cons:

• Everyone who told me the Garmin mounts are compatible are dirty liars. You'll need new mounts, though it does come with two, one stem mount and one K-edge style bar mount that extends out in front of you. Still, having to buy a replacement K-edge dual mount (computer + GoPro) meant that was another $65 piece of gear I wasn't expecting to buy. At least I can use my previous Garmin one for Michele's bike.
• It can't fully be muted. For some reason you can't turn off all the beeps. This was a little embarrassing when I bought it on my lunch break and thought I'd do a little configuration at my desk before my ride home from work.
• It, like most Garmins, can't re-route if you go off course with navigation. All it can do is point you back to where the route you already programmed is in a general "it's over there" kinda way. I understand the Garmin 820 can actually re-route. Also, it will beep at you mercilessly when you go off route, which is a little annoying when you're like 30 feet off the prescribed route.
• While it's easier to configure with the phone, I have a feeling at some point it'll be annoying that you can't configure it just from the unit itself.
• It does have a mode from the phone where you can just say "find me a route to some location". Not just an address, but you can do something like a business name - I put in my favorite Mexican restaurant. That said, the route it came up with was not exactly bike friendly. It'd be nice if there was a way to use google maps to send a route to the device, but I don't think you can do that just yet. I haven't tried to map something out with RideWithGPS's mobile app while on the road yet.
• No touchscreen like the 810 had.
• A lot of services (like Garmin Connect and Endomondo) aren't options for sites to pair with the device for automatic uploading. I didn't love Garmin Connect, but I do like Endomondo. Have to see if maybe I can get Strava to automatically sync.
• LEDs across the top to aid with navigation / staying in a "zone" for speed/cadence/heartrate are cool, but at least for navigation they're really hard to see during daylight.
• It's annoying that there's no visible indicator while charging unless you wake up the screen. The LEDs across the top seem like a perfect way to let you know if it's done charging or not.
• It feels weird to say "It said I was doing 17 on my Wahoo"
• You can't (or at least I haven't figured out how to) set a threshold speed for pausing when stopped. I usually set the Garmin to pause under 3mph since that usually meant I was just tooling around by a red light or something. Only really matters if you care about your average speed and you do a lot of urban riding around lots of stop lights and stop signs.

I'll update that if anything else comes to mind. I think I prefer it overall to the Garmin, and it's nice to see some real competition come in, as Garmin had stagnated over the years. I especially am not going to miss the unintuitive mess that was configuring the screens on both the 500 and the 810.

[Freude am Fahren]

I have one as well. Works with Strava. It can automatically upload via BT through the phone, or on its own if connected to wifi. It can also do live segments if you pay for that feature in Strava.

edit: I read the cons first, so yeah, you already knew all that

[George]

Too much fresh snow and old, melting snow on the ground around here to make riding any fun around here lately...at least to me.

I got nuthin' on bike computers, but here's a small but growing subreddit of interest to me because some of the pictures show old mountain bikes still in action: https://www.reddit.com/r/xbiking/

[tigeraid]

Anyone try out fatbiking in winter, at all? Considering giving it a shot.

What I really hate about outdoor activities is wind though, in the end. Running, trailrunning, kayaking, cycling, I'm into them all, but if there's a hard cold wind blasting me in the face I immediately regret the decision.

[Tom Servo]

On the other hand, a tailwind when cycling is just about the greatest thing since sliced bread.

[George]

I think fat bikes are cool, but not for me, personally. Where I live, we get inches rather than feet of snow and it melts pretty quickly.

If I lived in rural Vermont again, where it snows in November and keeps piling up until it starts melting in March and April ("mud season"), one might be fun. Some of the ski resorts here in Colorado have fat bike rentals and guided fat bike tours, and at least one LBS in my local area rents them.

I stumbled upon a cycling show on the Japanese (but English-language) NHK channel recently. A guy was riding some fancy carbon-looking road bike with a 1x drivetrain around Japan and doing a show about his travels, sort of like Samantha Brown or Anthony Bourdain, but on or near his bicycle for much of the show.

He visited a place that rents fat bikes in the one episode I've seen. He and the proprietor ride though some really tall grass to find some great view from the top of a mountain. They actually talk about the bikes (Surly brand) and why they're different from regular bikes for a minute or two, how they run really low air pressure in the tires, and whatever else - gearing, maybe? This was not in the snow but just regular dirt and grass in the summer.

Edited to add: Here's a link to the show (not the specific episode) I must have seen on NHK, if anyone's interested: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/o...m/video/cycle/. It's called Cycle Around Japan.

[tigeraid]

Neat.