Bike Noob

Because I'm Always Learning Something New

Garmin, Shmarmin

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Guest poster Don Blount finds that sometimes, it’s better to just ride.

This was to be an early morning ride. And because of my schedule, I had to be back home no later than 7:30 a.m.

I don’t like these early wake up calls when it is dark and cold. According to Accuweather, the windchill was about 34 degrees.

But I was set to go. I was dressed, tires inflated and even had warm non-caffeinated tea in my water bottle. I pushed the button on my Garmin 305 to get it powered up as I hit the road.

I hopped on my saddle and looked at the screen of the Garmin, it was blank, showing none of the familiar settings. I pushed the button again. It beeped, the welcome screen flashed, and then it went out again.

I had charged the darn thing, or so I thought, two nights earlier. I tried two more times. Nothing.

So it was 6:30 a.m., my choice was to either go back inside and not ride or ride without a bike computer. I had my Blackberry in my jersey pocket, so if I stopped I could use that to view the time. However, I had nothing to track distance, cadence, speed, heart rate or any other of the data that I use while riding.

Left, what it's supposed to look like. Right, what it looked like on this ride.

I decided to set off on a familiar route of about eight miles out, focusing on the bottom part of my stroke. I felt as if I were riding blind since I had no idea how fast I was pedaling, or my speed or my heart rate.

But I was comfortable, warmed up quickly and my breathing was steady.

I arrived at my turnaround point and stopped to check my clock. If my calculations were correct, I had gotten there in about 25 minutes.

I doubled back, and arrived home – another eight miles – in about 25 minutes.

It was a short ride but a good ride for that time of the day. I felt I had worked but enjoyed the ride and really could’ve gone much farther.

And by not having my Garmin available to show me what I was doing, at least for this ride, I enjoyed myself in a different way than I usually do. Maybe because it was more of a self-regulating challenge and less of a “trying to do what the reading tells me to do because I want to get a workout challenge.”

I do all of my riding alone because of my work schedule and family obligations. But, I think I had gotten so wrapped up in the numbers of my Garmin that I was missing out on enjoying the ride just for the sake of riding. (It’s the Type A part of me.)

My Garmin is charged and ready but I’m going to find a way to do this type of riding more often.

CO2 or a pump? — It never ends

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I was chatting with a friend the other day who’s just getting into biking. He was telling me of his experience with his first flat. No pump, no CO2. He had a patch kit in his seatbag, but realized it was worthless unless he could fill his tire with air, so he wound up walking the bike home — three miles.

CO2
Do you prefer these?

“I saw these canisters of CO2 at the bike store,” he said. “Are they any good?”

Here we go again — the endless debate between CO2 and a pump.

Well, I told him, each has its advantages. CO2 takes up just a little space in your seatbag, and you don’t have to carry a pump. Just attach the inflator, stick it on the valve, and whoosh! you’re back in business. He liked that. He thought he’d try it.

But wait a minute, I said. There’s a problem with CO2, too. Sometimes, you misfire it and waste all the gas in the canister. Then, you can find yourself in the same predicament you were in last week.

Pump
Or this?

I told him of a recent A ride from our club, where a guy flatted along a major highway. One of the other guys had several CO2 cartridges — and managed to depressurize all of them. Without inflating the tire. Luckily, another rider in the group carried a pump, and stood by to watch the antics — then stepped in and saved the day.

“It took me probably 10 minutes to pump up a tire to 70 psi,” said guest poster Don Blount in an email awhile ago. “That’s longer than it took to change the tube.”

I’ve been there. It doesn’t take me that long to pump a tire up to 70, or even 90 psi. But those last 10 pounds to 100, to make it roadworthy again — I should be doing some strength work at the gym.

But Don also said he blew a tube with one cartridge, and when he went to use another one on another tube — it was a dud. He thinks he might just suck it up and go back to the frame pump.

At least that’ll get the tire inflated. With a cartridge — I’m guessing 50-50 odds.

My friend went back to the bike store and got a frame pump.

Coughing up the dough

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Just out of morbid curiosity, I started keeping tabs this year on how much money I spend to feed my biking habit.  It’s barely mid-April, and I’m surprised.  Here’s a quick rundown:

  • New helmet                          $33
  • Three tires @ $15 ea.         $45
  • Two tubes @ $4 ea.            $  8
  • New cassette                        $35
  • Ride entry                             $30 (for a ride I didn’t start because of illness)
  • Team jersey for MS 150    $70
  • Chamois creme                   $16
  • Total:                                  $237

The Ms 150 is a week away, and I know I’ll be incurring a lot of ancillary costs connected with that one.  This all seems like dribs and drabs here, but over $200 in just over three months?  It’s a good thing I’ve received a lot of biking items as gifts, because otherwise, I might have dropped even more money.

A lot of my purchases are impulse buys — oh, I gotta have one of those.  In other cases, they’re purchases of things I got along without, but being around biking and bikers, I realized they’re things I should have.  Shorts and jerseys probably fall into this category.

A biking friend told me he didn’t realize how much money he would spend once he got into riding.  He thought just getting on the old beater bike that was gathering dust in his garage and riding it longer distances would get him into better shape.  But he found the biking culture too, and soon was dropping money even more prodigiously than I account for above.

“What does a biking noob really need besides a bike, a helmet, shorts and shoes?” he asked me. “And is there any way to get quality at an affordable price?”

Good point. Your friendly LBS probably sells most of its stuff at retail. You might get a good price from some of the big catalogs, but sometimes the quality isn’t what you were hoping for.

If you were going to advise a new biker, what gear would you suggest they must have?  What gear could they get by without, at least until they decide that they’re in biking for the long haul?

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