Ahead by a century

Yesterday I completed my first (Canadian) century ride! I did a little tour around the coast going through small communities along the way for a total of 101km. It was quite nice despite the hills and wind. I climbed almost 1500 meters during the trip using my road bike, which I find forces me to really exert myself due to the lack of lower gears. I also found my backpack to be a bit of a burden for a trip of that length. All these things tho made for a great training run.

The view near St. Philips

I've said things in the past like, "I'm not sure why anyone would want to live this far out from town", wondering why they'd go thru the hassle of a long drive to work. But seeing how nice these small communities are and how great some of the views can be its a little easier for me to understand now. There is certainly an appeal to living in a beautiful place out in the country.

My mountain bike got some long overdue TLC. I've disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled it as well as replaced the front shocks, rotated the tires, greased all the greasy bits, and sanded the disc brakes after a cleaning with isopropyl alcohol to stop that terrible squealing.  After 3 winters of riding and about 3,400km of travel she is in fantastic shape and it was a great learning experience as well. I highly recommend everyone to do the same to get your bike running great and to learn how it works. You'll also save on maintenance and repair costs!

Garmin Edge 200

An odometer was something I was going to need for my new bike (which still isn't *#$!ing here) so I've gone and purchased a Garmin Edge 200. It cost a little more than I like to pay for such a device but man is it ever sweet. It works via GPS and is able to lock on in 10-20 sec and so far hasn't lost signal while in use while outside. Battery life is listed at 12 hours I believe but after 6 hours of riding and pausing it was down to 60%. It charges very quickly via USB or wall plug and mounts easily (comes with 2 mounts) to the bikes. I was impressed with the rate its able to track my speed and location as well. This little guy was a big upgrade from the GPS on my Samsung Galaxy S.

On the downside, it seems to lack any way of giving GPS coordinates to the user thru its display which would be pretty handy in an emergency. It also has only 5mb of memory (two of which are dedicated to software) so its only able to hold 130 hours of ride data. You can however upload everything onto the Garmin website and even other sites like Endomondo will support it.

Like a broken record, once again I say I should have a sweet update soon with my new bike & bags and perhaps some camping gear! Until then my fellow cyclists, avoid the left side drive.