Walk Away or Kill Time
So I was up and out of bed at 6:00 AM, no joke - and this was after going to bed just before midnight on top of it. My plan - to get a great nights sleep and be able to get up early (just as I did) and go for one of my bike rides I have been thinking about all week long.
Fast forward to me typing this and it's now just after 1:30 PM (yes pm as in afternoon) and here I sit, on my ass and have yet to get a single mile in on the bike. I am furious and really bummed out about it to be perfectly honest.
It all started this morning while having my coffee and breakfast. My plan was to download the route or routes that had I found over the past weeks and put them onto my Garmin Edge 1000. I would first inspect them to become familiar with the route "just in case my electronics failed me". Upon doing so I realized that the route I had chose of the two I was interested in from Reno to Bowers Mansion were really good ones and well thought out. Same with the two I had to chose from for the Verdi ride. Awesome, everything is in place and great! Nope, not so fast cowboy!?!
GPX vs. TCX vs. My Patience
OK so my Garmin will accept most any file format within those that are used for GPS, bike computers and related. But for some fucking reason they would not work for my Garmin today. No matter what I tried the files were not working. They would show up as unreadable or unknown format and I know they are neither because they are from the popular websites that have the data there for their club members and people that come across it and want to do the route(s). Basically do exactly what I was trying to do and have done various other times with my own custom routes mostly, but it's no different using another users route - it's data people, ones and zero's, sheesh!
So that led to me trying to find another one on one of the sites, possibly by another person. I would find some that were close, but either way too advanced for me at this stage of my cycling or those that were just not the way I wanted to get from point A to point B. Maybe they started from a shxtty area that I did not want to have to drive to before first starting the ride or something like that. I would have driven first, I mean I had to for the route that I planned on doing today anyhow but as time ticked away that just added to the problem deciding what I was going to do. If I had to drive somewhere it immediately added 30 to 45 minutes to the ride, plus 30 to 45 minutes after the ride to get back home, unload and so on.
Something Else Then
Once I came to the realization that I was not going to find what I was looking for because what I was looking for was the exact route that I was planning to go on but now did not fit into my day. I guess in a weird way I was hoping that I would find something perfect and trust me, I tried. I did find one that was tempting that started almost from my front door. There is a guy around here that rides and he makes a lot of good routes. I looked it up and sorta scrubbed through it to determine that yes, that was the one I will do today!
I went into the guys profile, went to the route and got my GPS setup for the file. Went to download it and whatta you know - fuck! - he has the thing marked as private which means you can view it but you cannot download his .gpx file so you can do the same route, dammit!
OK no sweat, I will just do the same route but as a custom route within my route builder - using his as a reference and essentially making the same route, only personal to me and exactly from where I want it to start vs. "close enough". Great idea, I was feeling motivation kick in again and looking forward to the ride as I started to map out the way-points on my route builder.
Ka-Boom
So as I am about 45 minutes into setting up this route - yea it takes forever on a small screen, constantly scrubbing around, adding points, checking the original map that I was copying to verify the route was the same and so on. I get to one area of it and whatta you know, the f'n thing would not let me add the points that I needed to, but instead would do this weird re-route that would take you back many many miles and then get you to the area clicked on.
This "usually" happens when the maps on Strava or other sites are not as up-to-date as what streets and roads are in the area currently. Sounds like no big deal right? It actually is because it's in an area that I am not familiar with and needed the turn-by-turn to be on the safe side. I guess I could have taken out a piece of paper, wrote those notes down and then referred to them once in that area to remind me of the direction and roads to take.
But why? Why in the hell should I have to do this? I have over $600 worth of technology on my bike for this exact purpose! If you count my iPhone and other stuff that I have then it gets worse and I have well over $1000 worth of gear. Yet with all of this technology I was not able to put a single fucking point on a map where I needed to.
Shortly there-after I ended up losing the entire thing, all 45 minutes worth, closer to an hour or more at this point, down the drain. OK fine, I will give up on this idea and see if the built in "route builder" in my GPS would create a route for me from home based on my specific variables. I put in what I wanted to avoid riding on (things like major highways, dirt roads) as well as put in the approximate amount of miles I wanted the ride to be and hit "GO".
In a couple minutes it returned with 3 results of varying lengths based on my requests. One that seemed just at the amount I was looking to ride, one that was higher and one that was even higher - each with varying amounts of climbing involved as well. Basically it looks as though it sets them up as a beginner, intermediate and advanced route. It's impressive that it can do this and as mentioned it does it pretty dam fast (remember I was doing the exact same thing, only a different route and it had taken me nearly an hour to get nothing in return).
So what's the problem? Why am I still sitting here on my ass? Well because the thing does not create the routes as optimal as you would hope. It seems to ignore that I did not want major highways (although the highway it put me on for 48 of the 50 some miles I wanted to ride may not show up as a "major highway in databases"). But I would think that based on other inputs it would look for roads that have bike lanes or are highly traveled by bikes (yes it's supposed to, it's not me pipe-dreaming).
I tried a few more times, mixing my variables around trying to get the right combination to hopefully find something I was interested in riding today. Nope, did not have any luck at all. The routes either took me to some strange location via some semi-strange route or they took me to some really awesome destinations that I would love to ride to, but they are NOT SAFE because they are either major highways, have no bike lane or shoulder for that matter, or a combination of both.
So Did I Ride?
That is the big question - "Did I ride today"? In short the answer is a big yes, but not a single thing that I
So all said and done the ride was just over 20 miles with a decent amount of elevation but not as much as I would have had done with the other ride and if I felt anything like I did when I was doing these climbs there is a good chance I would have been stopping to rest or even walking a little bit to finish the climbs. I am a little bit stubborn and I don't like to get off the bike so who knows if I really would have, I guess we will see tomorrow if I end up trying that route. The Garmin was pissing me off big-time because the fucker does not like it when you have overlap.
Say you have particular roads that you come back over to get to other areas on your route, well the stupid ass thing is not smart enough to know that you are crossing "point 1" not "point 100" or what-ever. I swear its the most annoying thing and takes the wind out of your sail when you are only 5 minutes into your ride and the thing tells you "congratulations, you've done it, route finished" or some shxt like that. What's worse is that then the stupid ass thing tells me the REMAINDER OF MY RIDE what street I need to turn on or to make a fuckin' u-turn to "get back on track". Grr, what the hell is the deal with me and technology today?
I know the Garmin Edge 1000 has had issues since it was released and it needs a software update bad. I for one hope that they are working on it otherwise that bitch will be for sale on eBay and I will go with something else - possibly one that I found from their competition Magellan. I would hate to do that because the Garmin is really bad-ass device, but if it cannot do the one thing that it's supposed to do and from a company that's all they do as a business then I have to throw in the towel at some point and quit while I am ahead and make my $600+ work for me the way it should!
Anyway, enough about that - I went on my ride and I feel better now. I need to make a few more adjustments to the bike to get it ready for a longer ride though. I have been tweaking some things to try and get the fit "just right" and it takes trial and error so I am doing-so with the shorter rides that I take after work or like today.
Hindsight
In the end, and of course with hindsight being 20/20 I should have just said "hell with it" and left the house once things were not going as planned after the first hour or so. This was not a plan that I put in place for myself and now I know that I really need to have some guidelines such as this in place to circumvent issues like this in the future from hosing my plans or my day entirely.
Today was nothing more than one of those situations that technophiles fall into where we
Unfortunately if you are anything like me you want it to work the way it's supposed to work and be set-up as perfectly as possible, with realistic expectations of course because technology isn't perfect and we forget that all too often. All along, not recognizing the obvious and remembering it's not perfect - the desire for the outcome we have in our minds eats away at us, in the end being nothing more than a battle you typically don't win. Sitting in from of that same MacBook Pro, in the same spot in the house, on the same couch, realizing the technology you love, you let steal your time, weekend and motivation because it was too difficult to simply walk away.
Not an easy thing for me to write, I am hooked on technology big-time and have been for as long as I can remember. I absolutely love to use it, see it come to life, understand it from an end-user perspective more than a creator / developer perspective, mostly because of my lacking desire to learn crazy advance math and related. I should rephrase that because while I enjoy learning crazy advance math and related, I don't retain it.
Apple Menu > Shutdown....
In the end, I need to remind myself so I can set an example and remind Zoey one day as well that the downside to having technology surround us in our lives, or being - dare I say "addicted to it" is that you have to know that while technology can enhance our lives and make things better, faster, more convenient and all things in-between, it can also bring us problem. Especially on those days when we are not smart enough to recognize this and walk away.
Have a great weekend, I hope that it's everything you wanted it to be and more! Tomorrow I am getting a little bit older and not really looking forward to it but whatcha' gonna do? All I really want is a guarantee that I will raise Zoey right, be the best that I can for her and Cicely as well as Oggy of course and then, in the end, I will be happy and content.
Yea - kind-of a dark, dreary ending huh? I bet it's part of the "getting older thing" - soon it will be time to start shopping for that convertible car I suppose! Nah, not me - well unless it's a Porsche 914 that I can restore. I really did that car and have wanted one since high school. Most peeps think they define "ugly" - that is OK with me, I don't like them to impress anyone else, what - are we back in high school people?
Actually real quick - some people are back in high school today. Cicely's step-mom is over in California at her old school for her class reunion - I think it's the 30th but I don't remember for sure so don't quote me on that k, thanks!
Photo: OK, totally unrelated to anything that I have rabbled about today is what my photo of the day is. I could not help but to take a photo of this killer new material that Cicely ordered and has some great ideas to use it for. If you have never seen material like this it's really cool also because if you rub across it the opposite direction "think petting a dog or cat's fur backwards - kinda feels the same actually" that is what it's like.
Instead of getting bitten or scratched your reward is all of the little pieces flipping over and revealing another color - what a cool material. I for one can't wait to see what she decides to do with it. My bet is she already has something big in mind because she always does, that's my Cizzle!
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