Junk Miles

I havent had a good chance to try it out on the bike yet (it rained during the week, and I spent a quiet weekend at home with an ice pack and a bottle of methocarbamol) but here are some initial impressions of the Colorado 300, currently on sale at MEC.

While I was waiting for it to arrive I read a lot of mixed reviews, and thought maybe I should exchange it for a 60CX I’d initially wanted. But the latest firmware seems to address a lot of the issues and adds a few neat features. It’s got a nice big high resolution screen, which is good since I’ll primarily use it as a map on the bike. Reviews say it’s a bit dark due to the high pixel density and I guess it is, but barely darker than my brother’s Edge 705 bike computer. It’s a bit hard to see with sunglasses on, but legible. I keep wanting to poke it to scroll the map – a touchscreen is a little easier to move around, but I wonder how rugged even a rugged touchscreen is, and the Colorado’s wheel is probably easier to use with mittens on.

Some people find the bike mount is slippery and maybe it is on a smooth handlebar (in which case, wrap a bit of rubber around it first), but it’s solid enough on my rough finish stem, even riding over roots and rocks. I really like that it has a stem mount option too, because that’s the best place for it and it leaves the bars free to mount other things:

One really neat feature is custom maps – you can georeference an aerial photo, trail map, or whatever else you can turn into a jpeg by making it an image overlay in Google Earth, and save it to your GPS which sees it as a map layer.

I even went and found a geocache:

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Posted By: Adam

Which is slower — Canada Post delivering my on-sale Garmin Colorado 300 plus bike mount (costs less than a Legend HCx at MEC right now) or Rogers Cable throttling my bittorrent of the Ibycus free Canadian topo map pack?

Update: Canada Post is slower.

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Posted By: Adam

The cherry trees in High Park (a gift to Toronto from Tokyo in the 1950s) have started blooming in force. It was supposed to rain this weekend, which can knock all the petals off, so I rode out there on Friday afternoon to have a look. A lot of other people seemed to have the same idea.

Also, here’s a free bonus goose. High Park geese are smaller and friendlier than the geese in my end of town.

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Posted By: Adam

Happy Halloween! Only about 20 of the lazy ass local kids bothered to climb my front stairs this year… well those 20 weren’t the lazy ones but I’m still saddled with a surplus of junk food. I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in costumes over the last couple of years of fewer girl pirates and way too many princesses, and this year I didn’t see any pirates at all. Kids today…

You can feel November in the air tonight. I better buy me some ice tires soon before it snows and they sell out, and I need to find all my wool socks…

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They said “tornado watch”, so I rode down to the beach to watch. I didn’t see any, but there was a tornado just outside town, about 20 crow miles away (and at least 3 others in Ontario)… and of course someone filmed it put it on youtube.

But I did see a really big puddle:

… and I wasn’t the only one out on a bike: (Read on …)

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Posted By: Adam

What with stuff, and rain, and what I’ve decided to believe was the swine flu even though it probably wasn’t, there’s not much to report for May. I even missed most of the Contact photography festival. But I did get out to the country last weekend to get rained on again.

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Posted By: Adam

Saturday was the Alpaca Ontario Alpaca Show.   While all other animals are quite obviously evolved, alpacas must be intelligently designed:  they have a communal dung pile.  I wonder if they do their own laundry, too.  I bought myself some alpaca socks and they’re so comfortable I’m never going to take them off.

It was hard to take good pictures (we were segregated from the alpacas and there wasn’t really enough light for the long zoom)  but there are a couple below the fold.

(Read on …)

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Hooray, not only is the  Bike Train to Niagara Falls running again this summer (it’s been running for a couple of years but for some silly reason I haven’t taken it yet), but they’ve added a route to North Bay as well!    It would be a fun few days to take the train up north and ride home.

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Posted By: Adam

Reporting on the bike things you tried and liked (and didn’t like) began as a yearly custom on the excellent iBOB (internet Bridgestone Owners Bunch) mailing list, and it’s now an annual tradition. Here’s my (slightly edited for style) list for 2008.

Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:48:00 -0500
From: Adam T <>
Subject: Re: [BOB] It’s Tried & Liked Time Again (2008 Edition)

On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 10:13 PM, (another ibob) liked:
> 1) Cyclocross.

I’m noticing a pattern here. If fixies are the new rollerblades, I
think cyclocross is the new fixed gear. Here’s my list:

1) Surly Cross-Check. I got the frame and stole the parts from my
touring bike because I seldom tour, and it was a bit of a tank for the
mixed pavement and dirt day rides I like. I still want a nicer
lighter faster long distance all-roads sort of bike, but when I get
one the Surly will make the ideal city bike (for the whole city, not
just the flat downtown bit where all those posey dutch bikes hang
out). I’m half tempted to put an ironic argyle top tube pad on it,
but earnestness is the new irony, so I put some reflective tape on the fender.

2) Schwalbe Marathon Cross tires (700×35). They had more centre tread
than I wanted for those mixed surface rides, but they were in stock
and they felt fairly supple so I got ‘em. I think they might actually
be a little faster than the Tourguard Paselas I was using before, but
it’s hard to tell with all the fluctuations in temperature, wind and
tire pressure. They did OK in the snow, too, though with today’s
storm I think it’s time to cobble together a proper snow bike.

3) Pumpkin Ale (St-Ambroise Citrouille, Post Road, and Great Lakes
Brewery). I never would have thought of it.. but it’s really good.

4) Creative Zen mp3 player. I have no iPod to compare it to, but a
lot of the user reviews I read say they like it better than the Nano.
The earphones sound as good as my AKG monitor headphones, which
impressed me. APart from running I lost interest in portable music
after high school, but I recently realized the streetcar is a lot less
annoying when I’m listening to Miles Davis instead of other people’s
phone calls.

5) Car sharing with www.autoshare.com: besides the convenience,
you’re a better spokesperson for the bicycle lifestyle if you aren’t
cadging rides off friends.

6) Fleece lined jeans from the farm & feed store

I’m ambivalent about the paselas… they roll, they aren’t egregiously
slow, and I reckon I might even appreciate the tourguard layer in
March when the snowbanks melt.

Things I might try in 2009? Cyclocross (though the surly isn’t quite
built for racing, and neither am I, and I cringe at the thought of
removing my fenders). Grand Bois tires. That removable Wald basket
looks good for grocery getting on the non-grocery-getters.

–
Adam “now where did that ski wax go?” in whited-out toronto.on.ca

http://walkonearth.net

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Posted By: Adam