Cycling Thread 2.0

that is so fucking expensive, i am irked. edit: it’s not too bad really is it, but:

that place doesn’t even say what bike you’re getting. “super deluxe road bike” :expressionless:

They tell you in advance, obviously, as it depends on sizing and stuff.

It’s a trade off, innit? I thought that shipping a bike over + insurance would be significantly more than £80, to be honest. The bike hire pricing will reflect that, I guess, for them to be able to compete.

i’ve been spoiled with hiring bikes in spain where everything is detailed before you even enquire about what bike you’ll be getting.

on also for that on your bike place:

image

Well yeah, because it’s popular.

you booked the return coach for dunwich yet?

my flat, obv

  • GOOD: This fuckin’ weather, man! :sun_behind_small_cloud: AND Tour Series starts tonight :biking_man: :dash:

  • GOOD: Just picked up my new team coat. Perfect for this 20 degree heat. :sweat_drops:

  • BAD: Missing alllllll the Giro, think I only saw the first four off in the TT so far

  • BAD: Been appointed Commissaire to a significant race that I wanted to ride

:sweat:

Great idea! I can probably wave a :black_flag: as I go round, but then I’ll have to DQ myself. Argh!

I suppose I’ll just have to let them all have a chance, eh? :eyes: :pig2: :laughing:

Can someone tell me which GPS I should get? Only experience I have is borrowing @Matt_was_taken’s when I cycled to Bilbao last year, and I was pretty impressed.

Basically I will (only) be using it for navigation when I’m away touring - not bothered about any monitor-y type stuff. Being able to import GPX files would be useful. Presume they all do waypoint navigation?

Asking as I can get Wahoo Bolt for £160 atm, but have vague memories of someone on here saying it needs to be paired with a phone for full functionality.

Is there a budget option just for what I need it for?

EDIT: basically I just want simple mapping/navigation and a massive battery life, for as little money as possible. What do I get?

Wahoo Elemnt Bolt tbh. Garmin Edge Touring might be an option? Basically the lower-end Garmins don’t have any mapping functionality (and don’t really do turn-by-turn directions), and the mid-range ones don’t have much space for maps. The Bolt comes with all the maps you’d need, and syncs directly with ridewithgps (ie, you make a route on rwgps and the next time yr Bolt connects to the internet, voila, it’s on there). You need your phone to set it up, and if you want to change any settings / re-route yourself, but that’s it. I have never needed to use my phone to do something to the Bolt while out and about. The Bolt lasts me a 200km ride with about 20% (ish) leftover, so it’s an easy 15 hours, probably more, on constantly.

However, the maps on the Bolt are quite basic. When I had a mid-range Garmin (the Edge 520), I had to do some OpenMaps wizardry to get decent ones on there, and even then it could only hold about 70mb of maps, which isn’t much. Like one county of England. The whole reason for me getting the Bolt was for touring, and it worked perfectly. It won’t show road names or places of interest like a Garmin, but if you’ve pre-made routes and intend to stick to them, the Bolt is the best thing for it imho.

@dots

some audax people use Garmin eTrex units because they are simple and have massive battery life. They take AA batteries. There’s a thread on yacf here: GPS for Audax - which one?

Edit: blimey, they’re still pretty ££ aren’t they?

Thanks!

One thing I found utterly infuriating was all of the icons for ubiquitous businesses and facilities that appeared on the Garmin with seemingly no way to remove them. Made using it in any kind of built-up area useless.

A lot of the time I’ll be using it with pre-decided routes but equally sometimes I’ll just want to stick an address in and for it to generate a couple of routes that I can choose from - like a quickest route, most direct, one that avoids big roads etc. Can it do that?

Can you plot a route on rwgps on your mobile then sync it to the Bolt via Bluetooth? Presumably you can tether it to your phone’s internet if needed to?

you can do that using the Bolt via your phone. in my experience it’s a bit rubbish, as it sometimes sends you down paths not suitable for road bikes (might not be an issue for you). you also don’t get a choice of the route, you literally type where you want to go, it makes a route (I think using Google Maps engine) and sends it to your Bolt via bluetooth. but there’s another option, detailed below…

I don’t think you can plot a route on your phone using rwgps (might be wrong), but you can with Komoot, which is similar to rwgps and also has an Android app. I’ve done it on the fly and it was quite good, and you can specify “road bike” suitability. I have even used this instead of going it via the Wahoo app for immediate route-planning. Also, if the Bolt itself isn’t connected to the internet (yes you can tether), you can send routes to it via your phone. So on the Wahoo app there will be a list of routes you’ve made via Strava / rwgps / Komoot and you can select it and “send” to yr device via Bluetooth.

Tell me about this. I’ve never used the maps, but found myself genuinely lost a couple of weeks ago on shit setup and phone battery dead, so couldn’t work out where i was when i turned them on the 520.

Never made it home. Been posting from a ditch near Thame for the last fortnight. Please send fruit pastilles (keep the red ones).

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they come with really un-detailed shit maps of the UK, i think only a-roads or something is on the edge 520 when you buy it?

anyway, i had to faff around a lot to get maps on there:

and even then, you can’t enter an address into the mid-range (edge 520 and below) garmins and get it to take you there, they don’t have that functionality, nor do they have proper “turn-by-turn” directions. any time it tells you to turn would be because it’s analysed the gpx track you’ve loaded and it’s sensed that there’s a turn. stupid. i think you can route on the fly with more expensive garmins, but i fucking hated the one i briefly had (edge 810, really rubbish piece of shit, hated the touch screen and it would crash at the same place EVERY DAY on my commute. i wasn’t even using navigation. fucking idiot).

Hmm cheers I’ll give it a look tomorrow. Never ever see me using it for navigation other than “exactly where the fuck am I, and where’s the nearest actual town?”

Was staring at the utterly blank map screen wherever it was I ended up and all I knew was I was heading north. So went south instead thinking well at least I’ll hit the coast eventually then can work it out :joy:

people posting memes as activity photos on strava… stop it

anything other than a photo of the ride is a big no-no imho.

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