Monday, May 4, 2015

Hidden features

Amber, Iria, and I rode the Back Bay loop on Saturday. I was hoping Tracy and Elizabeth would be joining us, but it was not to be. Amber and I haven't ridden this route in a while and Iria has never ridden it before. We ate at the Champagne Bakery as usual and it was tasty. We tried a new bike path that heads north from Champagne Bakery and heads around a lake to Yale Ave and then joins the familiar Walnut Trail. I took a wrong turn so we left the path early, but I'd like to try it again as it was very picturesque.

It was very hot - my bike computer was reading 102F so the real temperature was probably in the mid-90s. I was so sleepy on the way home I had to pull over and take a nap until the car interior got too warm. Hot rides always do that to me.

Iria has decided that the Grand Tour triple century option would be good training for PBP so she's trying to persuade us to ride it with her. I've been thinking about riding the double for a while (we haven't ridden it since Rod Armas was killed back in 2009) but I'm not sure about the triple. We'll see.

I was reading an article about the new Apple watch that has a sensor in the back that monitors your pulse using a green led. Apparently the device can also measure blood oxygen levels but that feature is not currently turned on. Odd that Apple would chose not to enable a powerful feature.

I was playing with the Garmin Nuvi GPS system in my Prius the other day and accidentally found that it has free traffic monitoring. When I turned it on I started getting updates suggesting faster routes and showing congestion ahead. It's a really cool feature that I've not been using since I bought the device a year ago. I don't understand why it wasn't turned on by default.

Given that both Apple and Garmin are selling devices with unactivated features, I decided to see if maybe my Serotta road bike has a motor in it that no-one told me about. Alas, I have yet to find it. But I keep hoping...

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