Blank to Work Day
Today was Bike to Work Day. After numerous days lately when I just didn’t feel like getting out there, because it looked like it might rain or it drizzled a little bit, I was determined to ride to work today. The forecast called for a slight chance of sprinkles. Yesterday, it was supposed to rain.
It was pouring. I decided to go ahead and ride the full distance to work in the rain, wearing my clear PVC cycling rain coat. Somewhere in Palo Alto, my cyclometer started acting weird, counting 0.3 miles over a half mile stretch of road. After getting my goody bag at the refreshment station (thanks, Bike Coalition people!), I got to work exactly 0.2 miles short. During the weird stretch of counting funny, I had stopped to tilt the cyclometer mount up (in case water was in the contacts), and despite a full kick at what could not have been less than 22 miles an hour, my little Cateye measured my speed between 2 miles an hour and 15. At work, I flipped through the modes, noting the numbers. I went into my building to change into my regular clothes and out of my extremely soggy cycling stuff. When I came back out of the locker room, my cyclometer was blank.
After one too many cracks and smacks, it probably got water in the electronics somehow. After some consultation online, I decided to purchase a Cateye Mity 8 cyclometer. Luckily, they have them in stock at Bicycle Outfitter, 5.75 miles from my office by my usual ride home route.
I picked the Mity 8 because of the ability to manually set the odometer, so a few years down the line, when the battery goes dead, I can replace said battery and put my odometer back. After some experimentation, though, I figured out that odometer miles over 10,000 do not include tenths. So, I added up all my mileage since I started cycling, subtracted 10,000, so I could get my decimal, and put that on the cyclometer. When I pulled into my driveway, the cyclometer reads 12,219.4. Now, the next time I take one of those marker photos, I should be right on the money.
After an hour installing the thing in the shop (and shooting the breeze), I hit the road. Mity’s speed indicator is big and easy to read. The only thing that befuddles me so far is that the distance is four clicks from odometer. That’s a little weird. On the newly-busted Tomo, odometer is right before distance. That makes it easier to calibrate the odometer to hundredths of a mile.
One thing I like is the pace arrow. When I’m slower than my average speed, a little arrow next to the speed indicator points down. When I’m faster, it points up. Apparently, I am also able to program the new cyclometer, but I don’t know all of its features yet (like setting the clock to 24 hour time). By the time I decide I really need one with cadence (I considered the Astrale 8, but you can’t set the odometer), there will be one with BlueTooth, a GPS unit, 100 gigs of disk space, a heart monitor, altimeter, and USB connectivity all built in. And I’m sure it’ll be about the size of a dollar in quarters.
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