How Low Can I Go, Part II

A couple weeks ago I wrote about putting a 22T granny gear on my bike.  It is still taking me a while to get used to it as I now have to shift both front and rear derailleurs at the same time so that I am not just spinning when I drop into the tiny gear.  I've found that because of this, I use the granny gear less, but that it really does nicely lower my range.

One problem with this gear, also because the large difference in size between the granny and middle gear (38T), is that the chain will fall off the granny gear when I'm shifting down to it.  To stop this problem I bought a (34.9mm) N-Gear Jump Stop Chain Guide.  Because of the pulley near the bottom bracket for the front derailleur, I couldn't get it quite as far down as I would have wanted, but it does seem to have stopped the problem.

Chain-stop from the front.

Chain stop from the side

When I originally put the triple crank on the bike, I found that the chain actually fell off the crankset less frequently than with the original double. With the small granny gear, the problem was worse than with the original double.

In the same vein as the last post, I moved the seat on my Sofrider as far forward as possible as well as lowered the angle of the seat. Lowering the angle means I've reduced my cross section to the wind.  Moving the seat forwards means that hopefully my center of mass is now closer to the front wheel to help with wheel slippage when climbing.

You'd think that when somebody is writing about this in a blog called The Recumbent Quant, there would be a quantitative measurement about how much forward the seat has moved, or by how much the angle has changed.  Well, don't worry.  I'm disappointed in myself too for not having these things.  My guess is that the seat angle changed from 50 degrees to about 45 degrees.  Part of me would like to be able to lower the seat even more, but given that I use it to pull a trail-a-bike, I think this is about as low as it can go.

New seat position.  It few centimeters further forward and probably about 5 degrees more horizontal.

 I've been riding this way for about a week.  I guess the biggest surprise is that there really isn't much of a difference while riding.  The handlebars are further away and feel a bit less "cramped" (although it was never really a problem before) and the viewing angle to my bike computer is a bit worse.  And I had to extend the boom so the bottom bracket/crankset moved a bit more forward. So I can tell that the seat is in a different position, but the bike basically feels the same when I'm riding it.

Another possible difference is that by tilting the seat back, I'm able to ride further without "recumbutt" (which is having your butt fall asleep (this is much better than having your "what-what" fall asleep)..  This is a problem that I used to have on longer rides.  I haven't had any symptoms yet, but I've only ridden for just over 16 miles since I made the change.  I'll probably eventually add padding to the seat bottom as well.

I do feel as if I am cruising at a little faster on flat terrain and on my maiden voyage, I hit 39 mph on a course that I've ridden on before without realizing I got anywhere near that fast.  And the next day was my fastest every time commuting to work.  All of that being said, I'm not really yet convinced how much of a difference it has made (although it's pretty clear that it hasn't gotten any worse).  Time will tell.

How Low Can I Go?

When I bought my Cruzbike Sofrider, it came with double front crank (with 48 teeth on the big cog and 34 teeth (48T/34T)) and a rear cassette that goes from 11T to 32T.  With this setup, the bike has a range of 26 to 107 gear inches.  (For those unfamiliar, "gear inch" refers to equivalent size wheel without any additional gearing.  For example, 60 gear inches is equivalent to riding a large penny-farthing bicycle with a 60" front wheel).

Almost immediately I realized I wanted more range and although it took me twoattempts, I installed a triple crankset (48T/38T/28T).  This decreased the low end of my gearing to 21.5 gear inches.  This was a big improvement and made a big difference, both when pulling a trailer on "regular" hills and when riding solo up very large hills. It was a big improvement, but it wasn't enough.

After the Bloomin' Metric Century and the problem I had on that large hill, I started thinking about what I wanted to do.  After asking on the 'Bent Riders Online forum and deciding that it was at least worth trying, I ordered a 22T cog.  This is equivalent to just below 17 gear inches (or a reduction of a third over the original crankset in terms of number of teeth or gear inches).

Today, I pulled the crankset, removed the old cog and put on the new one.

Crankset with the original 28T granny gear.

Crankset with the new 22T granny gear with the original gear to the right.  The new gear really does look a loot smaller, doesn't it.

My bike being held on the bike stand after reattaching the crank.

After taking it for a short test drive, I realized I needed to shorten the chain.  The reason is that the diameter of the 22T cog is significantly smaller than the 28T cog and that the chain was too long to be in the small front cog and the higher (meaning smaller in number of teeth and therefore also diameter) gears.

I ended up removing a couple more links than I meant to because the first time I pushed the pin out of the chain, I pushed it completely out and wasn't able to get it back in.  After reading online, I realized my mistake and made sure to leave the pin in the second time.  I had to break the chain one more time (again, I was smart and careful enough to leave the pin in) because I hadn't routed the chain correctly through the rear derailleur.

Here I'm using the chain-breaking tool.  I recommend removing the wheel before trying this.

The second time I was smart enough to leave the pin in and not push it completely out. The white bag is being held by my daughter so the camera phone would focus on the pin and not the floor.

With the new setup, I can still (barely) make it into the large cog on the crankset and the largest (lowest) cog on the rear cassette.  You're not supposed to use this gear and I tried to avoid it before, but I'll try harder now.  I can be in the granny gear on the crankset and easily make it to the 5th gear on the cassette.  I can make it into the 6th gear, but it isn't entirely happy.

Since I had installed a new granny gear, I needed hills on which to try it out. After putting the kids to bed, I took the bike out for an 11 mile ride that went up Flax Hill road (one of the worst hills around here) twice.  I averaged 14 mph, which is my fastest ride (over 10 miles) ever.  Not bad considering I did Flax Hill twice.

I like the lower granny gear, but the difference between the medium cog on the crankset (38T) and this gear (22T) is quite noticeable.  When changing from the second cog to the granny, I also need to move the rear derailleur from the 1st (biggest) gear to 4th or 5th gear if I don't want to spin out (meaning spinning but not turning the wheel because it's moving too quickly).  I had similar problems when shifting out of the granny gear and if I didn't change from a high rear gear (say, 5th) in the granny gear to a much lower rear gear for the middle cog on the crankset, I found that it was too hard to peddle.

The first time I went of Flax Hill road, I did use the smallest gear on the bike, but found that I didn't really need to (the GPS claims my speed was as low as 3.6 mph here).  The second time I went up the hill, I found the lowest gear quite comfortable although for that particular hill, I would have been quite o.k. in the next highest gear.   Here the GPS doesn't report as low a speed, it does show me averaging 4.5 MPH for most of the last part of the hill,

For now, I think I'll go up a size to the 24T ring as the granny gear on the crankset.  In the future, I'll consider replacing the middle 38T chanring with something smaller (say, a 34T).  Definitely learned a lot playing with this.  More tweaking coming soon.

Housatonic Rail-Trail

A friend of mine, Oguz, recommended the Housatonic Rail Trail (part of the Pequonnock Valley Greenway) as a nice place to take the family to ride.  So I folded up the trail-a-bike and the trailer and put them in the back of the wagon, put the bike rack and the two adult bikes on the car, and away we went.  (O.k.  It took a bit longer than I made it sound, but let's not dwell on how slowly I pack cars...)

The link above shows parking around here, so that's where we went.  When we got there, we found something like a parking lot that was full.  We found a spot and only realized later when we came back and was the only car parked where we were that we saw the sign saying we had parked in a tow away zone (our car was still there with no problems).

The area was beautiful with great tree coverage for almost the the entire ride.  The downside of great tree coverage is that it messes with the GPS ability to get a signal, so the route it traced out is somewhat deficient.  But that's a trade-off I'll gladly make.

Where we parked was basically in the middle of the trail, so we randomly decided to start by going south.  The trail is mostly paved although it's almost gravel in some places (but I had no problems with traction or pulling the big monkey on the trail-a-bike) and it was pretty much a soft decent until the end of the trail.  If we do it again, we'll give serious thoughts to driving to the end of the trail and parking on the street (I saw cars parked here).  I personally like to start at the bottom so I can end at the bottom of a big hill.

We turns around heading north, rode back to our car, got some food and kept going north.  About a mile north of our car, we saw picnic tables (and restrooms), so we stopped and had lunch.  (Or, well, we didn't really pack lunch, so we had chips and pears).  They also have parking here (more so than where we had parked), so this is another viable choice for starting the ride as well.

The view of the river from our picnic table.

Kate and the monkeys looking at (but mostly not falling into) the river.

The river and the trail on which we had ridden.\

The monkeys posing in front of the bikes.

The monkeys and me.

After lunch, we kept going north for a bit longer.   Somewhere around 6.5 total miles into the ride, we had a choice on the trail to take what I thought was a fork right or keep on the main trail left.  We stayed left, but then we soon ended up right next to an apartment complex.  I'm not sure if the path kept on going at that point or not because we turned around and went back to the car.

The trail was pretty busy today.  Lots of people walking pushing strollers and walking their dogs.  Many others out on bikes.  But there were no problems either safely passing people or safely being past by other bicyclists.  It was narrow in places and there were certain segments that I wouldn't have been as happy riding if it had been raining, but today there were no issues.

When we got to the car, the big monkey was quite tired as she really had pedaled most (or at least a lot) of the way.  The little monkey was a lot more energetic as he just sits and watches his mom pedal him up the hills.  When we were almost ready to leave, we heard that somebody on the trail was having trouble and that an ambulance was on the way.  We watched as they very slowly removed the car blocks on the path.  I certainly hope whomever was waiting for them was stable, because that was not the demonstration of speed or hurriedness that I would have hoped for in a true emergency.

It took us a little bit longer to pack the car than we would have liked, didn't quite have the right food for lunch, etc.  But none of that mattered today.  Oguz was right.  This is a lovely place to take the family for a ride and we all had a wonderful time.

To The Beach

In the week following the Bloomin' Metric Century it rained every day.  Saturday, Kate and I had one of our long time friends and her son come down for a night.  We decided to go out to the Sherwood Island beach and instead of paying for the second car to get in (we've got a season pass on Kate's car), we had the two of them go in Kate's car and I rode to the beach.

I've ridden to the beach from Andrew's house, but since that route is longer (to Andrew's hosue first and then to the beach) and since I wasn't positive I knew the way, I mapped the ride with RideWithGps.com and loaded it into my Garmin Edge 305 (which only stores cue sheets and not the trace of the route).

The ride to the beach was pretty easy.  The beach is 75 feet lower than my house and the hills to the beach are   definitely noticeable, but not too bad.  Once at the beach, we spent a lovely two hours in and near the water.  After about 90 minutes, we heard a siren from one of the boats on the water, probably to warn them about the lightening that was seen not too far into the distance.  That probably should have been my clue to leave then.  But since the weather was still nice where we were (albeit a bit overcast), we I stayed for another half an hour.

The ride back started off quite well.  Within about 5 minutes, however, it started to rain.  It never rained too hard, but it still made the ride a little bit harder.  At about 12 miles into the ride (or 3.4 miles from the beach), I started coughing hard enough that I had to pull over at the side of the rode and rest for a few minutes.  I don't know if I'm still not just over my cold or I've got allergies or what, but I really could have done without that.  (I don't know that I'm allergic to anything outside, but there was so much cottenwood out that it looked like it had snowed.)


One of the reasons that Andrew and I almost always started the rides at his house and ended at my house is that there is a quite substantial hill from his house to my house.  Unfortunately, coming back from the beach meant that I'd have to climb the same hill.  I tried a slightly different route on the way back, but as it turns out (either because I didn't follow the route exactly or because I didn't re-route it as well as I'd hoped), I made it so I ended climbing up more than I would have the original route.

I made it half way up the big hill and decided to take a break.  Unfortunately,  since it had been raining the road was particularly slippery and it literally took me half a dozen attempts before I could get started.  But I did and the rest of the hill and ride went without any incident.

It was good to get back out on the bike after a week off.  It seems weird not to be training anymore ("Dude, that was just for 8 weeks!  Get over it!"), but for now, it's just riding for riding.

After I put the kids to bed tonight I went out for a quick ride of 11 miles (averaging 13.7 mph).  I didn't have any coughing problems tonight and I really pushed myself pretty hard (to the beach yesterday I averaged 12.9 mph for just under 9 miles and home was slower).

I don't have any beach related pictures, so instead, I'll leave you with this cartoon I found out there on the intertubes.

The Bloomin' Metric Centry: We Did It!

They say that every body who clips into their pedals eventually falls because they don't unclip in time.  I knew this and even believed this before I ever clipped in. And for two months, I've managed to ride without falling.  Until the century.  But more on that later...

Up until I moved to Connecticut last June, I hadn't ridden a bicycle for more than 12 miles in well over 20 years.  When I moved here, I started riding my folding bike chasing my friend, Tom, when he went on his runs. I started riding other bikes I own as well.  In February, I decided to buy a recumbent bicycle, the Cruzbike Sofrider.

After about 300 miles on the new bike and a long bike ride of 17 miles, I decided to try and ride the Bloomin' Metric Century (100 km - 62 miles). For the past eight weeks, my friend Andrew and I have been training for the Bloomin' Metric Century with my friend Andrew.   We came up with a training schedule and followed it pretty well.  During the 8 weeks, I was supposed to ride a total of 430 miles; I did just under 480.  As far as the long rides, we always did at least as much as we were supposed to do.

The table of what the plan was and what I actually did.  I was sick for part of week 7 so I missed the mileage for that week.

That being said, last week's training ride did not go terribly well.  Both Andrew and I felt quite tired at the end, and we knew that the century would be another 15+ miles more than that ride.  Up until that training ride, each new ride had been getting easier and easier.  Last week's ride was a little longer, a bit more clmbing (2200 ft total), but none of those statistics were majorly different.  My bike computer told me I burned 5800 calories, where as the previous high was 5100.  So that was definitely more.  During this ride, there were more sustained climbs.

The week before the ride it was raining most of the week.  I did get a few miles in on Thursday and Friday, but quite a bit less than usual.  On Friday, Andrew sent me a few links on carb loading.  They all said that for my weight I was supposed to eat basically a kilogram of pasta (over 2 pounds).  I ate a pound of potato gnocchi and some pizza for dinner, so I got close.  I don't know how much it helped, but I did avoid crashing from low sugar during the ride.

A couple days before the ride, the organizers of the century, the Sound Cyclists Bicycle Club, sent out the route for the century (which I uploaded to Ride with GPS).  This ride has over 4000 feet of climbing, but when I looked, I swear that it told me there was a maximum grade of less than 2.5% (when I look now, it says 7.5%; update: I just got an email from Ride with GPS that said that they recently fixed the maximum grade: "Even the max grade is a fairly reliable number now!" so maybe I wasn't seeing things after all).  So there was a lot of climbing, but I thought, nothing too steep.  O.k.  So maybe we would be o.k. after all.

The day of the ride, the weather was perfect. When it was time to start riding, it was just warm enough to ride without a jacket.  And while it warmed up, it never got too hot. We arrived at Sherwood Island (the start) by 6:45 and man! were there a lot of road bicycles (bicycles with the drop handle bars).  Miles and miles of bicycles. I've never seen so many close up.  And we're not talking about cheap bikes either.  My guess is the average bike cost 2 grand.  The event had 2500 people registered, so that's (back of the enveloppe) 5 million dollars of bicycles (give or take).  And I wouldn't be too surprised to find out that's low.  We saw more recumbent and tandem bicycles than "regular" hybrid/comfort/moutain bicycles.   And almost everybody was wearing their Sunday spandex best.  This event was full of people who ride their bicycles a lot.

There were several interesting bicycles.  A recumbent trike and long wheel based recumbent bicycles were there (so I wasn't the only recumbent).  There were at least half a dozen tandems including a family riding a triple tandem bicycle pulling a trailer (and they completed the 75k route!)

The triple tandem bike pulling a trailer. The family riding this bike was wearing jerseys that said "Team Zombie"

The line for registration was long, but it started to move fairly quickly just after 7 and we were on the road by 7:30.

 A picture of me waiting in line in my unshaven glory.

The line.

The route was well marked and well laid out.  There was very little traffic and the route was very attractive and scenic pretty much the whole way.  The arrows they used to mark the path didn't have any words on them which usually wasn't a problem, but there was at least one case where a realtor set up an open house and had an arrow that looked just like the bike path arrow and some people did follow it.  (My recommendation for next year would be to just put SCBC (Sound Cyclists Bicycle Club) letters on the arrow.)  The food stops were well stocked and run.

Most everybody there was quite friendly and encouraging.  It really was a great atmosphere.  There were a few riders who insisted on both passing a bit too closely to the other riders or wouldn't let the cars pass when they really ought to have.


Just before the first rest stop at 20 miles, I was riding up a fairly steep hill, probably moving at around 5 mph.  I can't really tell you what happened, but one moment I was riding and the next I was lying, still clipped in to my bicycle, on this very comfortable grass.  Andrew, who was behind me, says I hit the curb.  I can't say any differently.  I've been clipping into the pedals for about 2 months now and I find that it helps a lot with the control of my bike.  I've almost fallen several times and I haven't enjoyed that part of it at all.  But it turns out that falling (at least as I did it) is actually kind of fun. (O.k.  That might be a slight exaggeration).

The first rest-stop.

Still the first rest stop.

We got plenty of food, drink, and rest at the rest stop and continued on our way.  At about 34 miles, we decided to stop and catch our breath.  We stopped at the bottom of a fairly impressive hill.  After a bit, we started up this monster.

This hill was not as steep as "the biggest hill I ever saw,"  but it was a lot longer.  After a couple hundred meters, we saw a sign that said "8% grade, summit in 1 km." About half way up the hill, my heart rate was 170 and I stopped to catch my breath.  After letting my pulse drop a bit, I was ready to go.  The only problem, on very steep slopes, my front wheel slips (issues with having  front wheel drive).  Andrew literally got off of his bike and gave me a push for a couple of feet (basically throwing me up the mountain).  Worked extremely well and we both made it to the top without further incident.

At about 37 miles, we had a long beautiful open, straight, downhill ride. Part of a decent of over 250 feet, I found myself cruising along at 35 mph.  At that point, I stopped pedaling and still managed to hit 42 mph. There were several nice downhill stretches where I really cruising.

On the downhills where there was room to move, I was never passed by anybody going faster than I was. The up hills was a completely different story.  My bike was probably one of the heaviest (non-tandem) bikes there (probably almost tipping the scale at 50 pounds including the Camelbak water bladder, lock, rack, etc).  I did manage to ride up all of the hills (which is better than many of the participants.  But I'm consistently one of the slowest climbers.  I'm (mostly) trying to live up to Eddy Merckx's "Don't buy upgrades; ride up grades." quote, but I'm starting to be curious as to how much a lighter bike would help.

The final rest stop was at just over 50 miles.  With the end in reach, we were feeling pretty good. We finished our ride at just about 1:30 p.m., just a bit over 6 hours after we started.  We had an average moving speed of 12.2 mph (which is better than last week) including not only almost 50% more miles, but more than 50% more climbing than our longest training run.   We did it!

A Hard Week

First, a disclaimer.  There are a lot of people who have real problems in their lives.  Nothing I'm going to be bitching about below falls in that category.  Sometimes, (well, often, actually) I just like to complain.

By Sunday night last week, I had come down with a cold.  It wasn't a horrible cold (indeed Kate's cold was much worse than mine).  But it meant that I didn't ride my bike to work all week.  By Friday, most of my symptoms had gone, but I was still feeling a little bit "low energy" so I drove that day, too.  Since Andrew and I have begun training for the metric century next week, this is the first time that I haven't met my weekly mileage goal.

Driving home from Mother's Day breakfast with Kate and the monkeys, my car started to overheat.  I made it home and realized that it was low on both radiator fluid and oil.  Not good.

I went to the store in my wife's car and got both.  It seemed to be running much better, so I drove it to the mechanic (who fortunately, is open on Sunday).  I then rode my folding bike the 1.7 miles home.  This was the longest I had ridden an upright bicycle since I got my Sofrider recumbent bicycle.  And I really didn't like it. The seat felt not very uncomfortable almost immediately.  And I really felt quite high up (even on my folding bike).   It also didn't help that the gears are now messed up on my folding bike, but hopefully that will be easy enough to fix.

(As far as the car, the mechanic couldn't find an active leak, but thinks it might be the water pump.  Oh joy.)

I was running late for when I told Andrew I'd meet him at his house, so I got everything ready and left. On the way over, just before his house, I saw a fully spandexed rider gaining on me.  I pushed it into high gear and pushed as hard as I could.  He overtook me on a relatively flat stretch when I was going about 22 mph.  I looked over at him and said "I tried."  He just looked back, smiled, and said "Nice job!" as he continued to fly past me.  At some point in my life, I hope I grow up enough to stop doing (somewhat) silly things like this and just let those with more energy pass me so I don't keep blowing all of my energy reserves too early (although in this case, it was a fun interaction with some random cyclist, so I shouldn't complain too much).

So I arrived at Andrew's house and we took off north.  We rode a very similar route this time to what we had done the first time we made it to New York state. The last time, we turned around where the "experienced gentleman" told us the rest of the route was quite hilly.  This time we kept going.

Not surprisingly, the gentleman's description of the route was right on.  We climbed almost 250 feet in just over 1 and a third miles. Then another 100 feet in a third of a mile, followed by 85 feet in a quarter mile.  That may not sound like a lot, but it really took it out of both Andrew and myself.  Here's a picture of myself at the top of the last big hill:

As you can tell by the picture (which was taken after a couple minutes of rest), I look beaten.  And we still had another 20 miles to go to reach our target.

So I've complained a lot so far.  There were a lot of nice things about this ride.  Most of the scenery was quite nice.  For example:




And just after this bit of going up and up and up, there was a nice stretch of coming down too.  I didn't get as close to 40 miles per hour here, but I did hit a respectable 35 mph.  When Andrew caught up after that bit, he proclaimed "You're the king of the downhill, Charles!" A silly comment, but it helped me get back some more energy.

Both Andrew and I felt quite tired after this ride, compared to the others.  Although the elevation gain for this ride isn't out of line with the others (2600 feet uncorrected compared to 2200 feet uncorrected for our City Island ride), my Garmin also thought this was more difficult as it decided that I burned over 5800 calories on this ride compared to just over 4800 for City Island.  My heart rate also seems to think that today's riding was much tougher. So I don't know that I really believe these calorie calculations, but this time, it does make me feel better.

We don't know if it was the heat (it was definitely hotter), the hills, or even the lack of pretzels (which Andrew has been bringing regularly, but not today), but this ride really does stick out in our minds as being, well, hard.

The Bloomin' Metric Century and its 62 miles are next week.  It shouldn't be nearly as hilly as today's ride and we'll start much earlier in the day, so hopefully heat won't be an issue.  So although this last ride really isn't giving us too much confidence (since next week we'll need another 17 miles on top of what we did today)., I really do believe that we'll be o.k.  And just to make sure,  Andrew will bring pretzels again.

Biking for a Breakthrough Diabetes Ride

This Saturday, Andrew and I rode the YMCA's Biking for a Breakthrough Diabetes fundraising ride (pdf file). The ride was supposed to be 31 miles which was shorter than we were supposed to ride (according to our training schedule for the Bloomin' Metric Century, so we started at his house and we rode the 7 miles to and from the start of the race.

Tbe weather wasn't nearly as good as the previous weekend.  It was either overcast or light rain during the ride.  When we got there, we found that the YMCA had staffed the ride quite well.  It turns out they had more staff than riders.  This was the first time they had the ride so hopefully it will be better attended next year.  In addition to our T-shirts and water bottles, they had a nice spread of food out for us.  It did turn out that instead of 31 miles we were expecting, they were now only planning 24.  Since we were riding back home anyway, the shorter distance wasn't a problem (and it turns out their portion of it was closer to  just under 29 miles).

We got to the ride early so that we could start near the front (not realizing when planning that there would only be about 20 riders) since I had to get back for my daughter's ballet recital that afternoon.  The ride started about 20 minutes late, but then we were off!  The course was marked pretty clearly and they even had police at some of the busy intersections.

The whole group rode together for the first bit.  This is the first time that I've ridden with a large number of people on diamond frame (DF or regular) bicycles when I was on my recumbent.  I've been riding with Andrew for several weeks, but he's used to the idiosyncracies now (specifically that I am slower going up the hills than most DF riders, but a lot faster coming down the hills).  Andrew and I were leading the pack until the first big hill (Turkey Hill Road).  At the top of the hill, we stopped so I could put my jacket into the trunk bag and that's the last we saw of the group.  (I think we would have caught them except that one of the signs we saw said "Kid's ride, turn here"  and we stopped, took out the map, and made sure we were really supposed to turn there.

All-in-all, it was a nice ride.  At the end of the Diabetes fundraising ride, they had a nice lunch for us.  And we managed to eat enough and still be able to ride back home.  At the end of the day, we rode 43 miles in total and averaged 12.7 mph (which is our fastest ride yet).  And I made it back in plenty of time for my daughter's recital. And since I don't have any bike pictures for you, here's a picture of her and her classmates:

New York City, Here We Come (or The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Navigating with a Garmin Edge 305)

This week Andrew and I decided to go big.  Our goal: New York City.  O.k.  So not Manhattan, but City Island, which is part of  the Bronx.  Andrew had shown me that Google thought the bike route was pretty reasonable. And then he found a bike route online from Stamford (a couple towns over) to City Island, so we decided to go for it.

The idea was that Andrew and I would leave around noon and that while taking our time (and giving us a time buffer for getting lost), we'd meet our families at a Restaurant and then drive the bikes back home.  It's a little more adventurous than I usually am, but worse come to worse, we could get picked up in some random spot if we needed to, so why not try.

I have a (refurbished) Garmin Edge 305 bike computer.  It uses both GPS as well has sensors for wheel speed and cadence (how fast I'm spinning the pedals).  The newer Garmin bicycle computers can have maps loaded on and be used very similarly to how the GPS in your car works.  The problem is those GPS units cost several hundred dollars more than mine so I ended up with what I have now.  And I do bike with my phone which has GPS as well, so if I get really lost, I'm pretty well covered.

It does turn out, however, that there are some very basic navigation abilities with the Edge 305.  Frank Kinlan has this very nice blog entry about one option.  What I did was:

1. Create a route using RideWithGps.com.  I tried uploading the Google maps route into this site, but it didn't list the turns (which is the part that I needed to export).  It turns out that the route that RideWithGPS came up with was more or less identical than what Google maps did, so I didn't lose much having to do the route on that website.
2. Export the GPX route (not the GPX track).
3. Use GPSBabel to load the track onto the Garmin (after deleting all way points so that there is room).  Select GPX XML for input file type and device output with Garmin Serial USB protocol selected and click apply.
4.  On the Garmin, under Navigation, chose Rouse and pick the route you just loaded.

The basic idea is that when you are approaching a turn, the GPS beeps and gives you a visual queue that lets you know which way to turn.  And it almost works as you would hope.  Except:

1. You can only load up to 100 way points/turns so very long routes won't work well.
2. It only saves the turns and not the roads.  When it draws the map, it connects all of the turns by straight lines (which can be quite different from reality).
3. If there are several possibilities close together, then it can be very difficult to figure out which turn you are supposed to make.

There were several times that we missed turns and in almost all cases, I was able to get us back on track without too much trouble.

The exception is that at about 32 miles into our ride, we tried several times to figure out which way to go and we just could not find it.  After three tries, we stopped, took out the phone and used Google maps to get us on our way. If we hadn't had that option, I'm sure we would have made it eventually, but having a phone with GPS to fall back on is a great backup.  It is  interesting to compare where we actually went to where we wanted to go; we didn't do too badly for the most part.

The ride itself was a lot of fun.  We did just over 42 miles in just over 3 and a 1/2 hours.  There were some very scenic views during the ride (including an extra mile where I was too busy admiring the view and missed our turn) as well as some very urban places that weren't as much fun to ride in.  And it was truly amazing at how quickly it went from very run-down urban to very natural almost rural scenery.

City Island itself is also quite strange.  After thinking about it, it is pretty much what one might expect.  It feels both very urban as well as "islandy."  

The Long Island Sound and Brooklyn 

The view from the southern tip of City Island.

Me after 40 miles

Kate and the monkeys arrived just after we got back to the restaurant and locked up our bikes. Andrew's wife Amy arrived 20 minutes after that and we had a nice dinner at City Island Lobster House (warning, the site has annoying music) The restaurant was o.k.(not fantastic) but the company was great.  After a lovely dinner, we loaded up the bikes and heading home.  

All in all, it was a gorgeous afternoon for a ride (sunny and about 60 degrees),  Parts of the route weren't as nice as, say, what we did last week, but having a destination (and not having to ride home afterwards) was a great fun.

To New York and Back

Andrew and I went for another training ride.  Today we went on the ride that we had meant to last time, which was start of similarly to what Tom, Andrew, and I did on our first training ride and just keep going north.

Almost 17 miles into our ride, we crossed the Connecticut-New York state line.  Neither Andrew nor I had ever crossed a state line on bicycle, so that was kind of a cool milestone.  It would have been quite a bit cooler if we actually knew where the state line was.  On the way back to Connecticut, we saw a sign saying we were entering New Canaan, Connecticut, but I still don't know if this is the state line or not.

Just before the state line and then again just before we turned around, an "experienced gentleman" on a road bike stopped to make sure that we were o.k. (we were just taking a map/Gatorade break).  It's nice to see people out there with a sense of community who do look after their fellow bikers.  Both this gentleman as well as another guy (this one inside a BMW SUV who rolled down his window at a stoplight) asked me how I liked riding my Sofrider.  Maybe we'll start seeing more recumbent bicycles (or even Cruzbikes) out here soon.

The total ride was just over 40 miles and we averaged 12.5 mph.Both of us felt much better at the end of this than at the end of our 32 mile ride last week (where we averaged just under 12 mph).  Last weeks ride felt hillier (although we gained more elevation this ride by about 500 feet), but we did a much better job  eating as well as we each had a bottle Gatorade.  And I did considerably better post ride this time than last week as well.  Very promising, indeed.

Like last week most of the ride was on streets that were not empty, but traffic was generally quite reasonable.  There were several very nice descents, including a nice long one where I managed to hit 39.5 mph.(!)  I almost certainly would have hit 40 mph, except that there was a stop sign at the bottom that I had to stop for.  Oh well.  Maybe next time.

Again similar to last week, the nice rural scenery is quite nice.  On the way up, we saw a humongous wild turkey.  We didn't stop to take a picture of it, but last week Andrew saw a turkey on his way into work and did stop and take a picture:

Quite impressive birds, aren't they.

The Biggest Hill I Ever Saw

Andrew and I went for another training ride today.  We kind of had a route in mind, but we decided to start by going a different way and ended up gong a completely different route.  We did just over 32 miles averaging just under 12 miles per hour (almost a mile per hour faster than our last, shorter ride).

I'm not very good at climbing, but at least I recognize this.  So when we had choices to make, I'm glad to say that we never chose to avoid a hill.  (After today, I'm willing to believe that will change...)  We were about 21 miles into our ride when we crested a hill and saw what was before us.  I was a bit ahead of Andrew, so he just heard "Holy S..t!" before he saw it.  Andrew climbs better than I do, but he looked at that hill and suggested that we go another way.   "Nah.. Let's go for it."

The hill turned out to be about 80 feet of elevation in a tenth of a mile. The highest I saw my Garmin quote was an 18% grade.  And I even made it up the steepest parts.  Early on, I found that if I sat back, my front wheel would slip.  So I had to pull myself up with the handle bars for more aggressive climbing.  And I made it 3/4s of the way up before I just couldn't go any further.  It's possible that I would have tried a bit longer if my feet weren't clipped  into the pedals, but it's also likely I wouldn't have gotten as far as I did without them being clipped in, so I won't blame that.  And I was tired enough even after resting for a couple minutes that I didn't think I'd be able to start on that slope.  So, with Andrew at my side (he made it up to the top of the hill, parked his bike, and walked back down to make sure I was o.k.), I walked it up the last quarter of the biggest hill I ever saw.

(The picture really doesn't do this hill justice, but look how small the car is on top of the hill compared to the cars at the bottom.  When I went back to take this picture and was trying to drive up the hill in my car, it wouldn't go up in third gear and I had to downshift to second.)

I'm sure I've probably seen bigger slopes for longer distances at some point in my life, but I can't actually remember any and I've certainly never tried to get up them under human power before.

It did take me a few hours to recover from this ride.  I did drink (almost) enough although we probably didn't consume enough calories.  After a couple glasses of orange juice, a glass of milk, and a few ibuprofen, I'm feeling pretty good (although I think I'm driving to work tomorrow).  The climbs (more than 1500 feet) were hard, but except for the big hill, quite manageable.  And there were some very nice descents - one road had a 35 mph speed limit and I maxed out at 35.1(so I was technically speeding!) and the route had much less traffic than the last route we tried. It was a good ride and assuming my recovery keeps going, I'll be ready for more next week!