Woo-hoo!

My bike was talking to me.  It was saying, “Ride me, ride me…”

You see, Steve had tuned it up for me, cleaned it, adjusted the handlebars, everything.  “Ride me, ride me…”  The last thing he said to me before I wheeled the bike out of the shop was, “Keep riding.”  Now that’s good advice, and my bike definitely concurred.

Oh, and it was  well tuned up.  The shifting was smooth as silk, but the brakes were tight, everything was excellent.  I knew that within the first twenty feet.  Twenty feet, I might add, which my computer actually recorded!  That’s better than a bonus sock any day.  (0kay, that was a pretty obscure TV show reference right there.  You get extra points if you recognize it without any help from your friend the interwebnetthingy.)

Now, of course, I had my chance to compare technologies. 

My way of keeping track of solo rides when my computer wasn’t doing its thing:  look up a route on the interwebnetthingy and note the distance the mapping program claimed.  Carry a stopwatch on the ride to keep track of the time.

My new way of keeping track of rides:  Ride and let my bike computer worry about it.  Woo-hoo!

The interwebnetthingy mapping program claimed the route was 11.23 miles long.  My bike computer said the route was 11.28 miles long.  Well, that’s good.  What’s 0.05 miles (or, to put it another way 264 feet,  0.4 furlongs, 16 rods, 0.043 nautical miles, or, roughly speaking, 2608 attoparsecs) among friends? (Actually, some of those numbers make it seem like quite a long way, but never mind.)

The ride itself was grand, though I’m still trying to figure out how you can be riding into a headwind, make a 90-degree turn and still be riding into a headwind.  You know, I’m beginning to think there might actually be a little fitness in my legs somewhere…