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Today May 2020

@cosme I'm about 100km up the coast in Kashiwazaki. For road riding we usually head up the coast towards Mt. Yahiko as there are few cars, no lights. Or inland into the hills.

There is good riding near you though. For example around Otari.


I have Japanese friends in Itoigawa and Joetsu if you want to check them on Strava.

I'm doing mostly off road stuff this year on the local forest trails around here if you have a bike for that.

But yeah, give me a shout if you need any ideas or advice.

Andy
 
My Garmin Edge 1000J, "Michiko", and I have been together for a while.

20200425-111342-Exploring-Uenohara.jpeg

Yesterday I leaned my bike against a wall in the sunshine for a few minutes while in a shop. Turned off Michiko to save battery. When I came out and pressed the power button to turn back on... smoosh. The power button had melted, and it tore off under my fingertip. (When I finally managed to persuade her back into life, the display said 35ºC - guess that spot was a sun-trap.)

IMG_6420.jpg

Dammit.

What can I do? It's rubbery. Do I have anything that sticks rubber onto rubber? It needs to flex, as this part moves. Oh wait...

IMG_6421.jpg

Rubber cement from tyre patch kit. Worth a try... maybe...

IMG_6422.jpg

It's sealed up. But will it have any strength?

IMG_6423.jpg

Nope. Disintegrated after 9 or 10 presses. Dammit. TIL that rubber cement does not stick this material (probably silicone?) to itself. Back to the drawing board.

She's long out of warranty. Garmin Japan have a fixed fee of ¥27,000 for repair/replacement. I can get a replacement rear case from eBay for around ¥6,000, but it will be white (EU version) rather than the original red. Or upgrade... but there are no features in the newer models that I want or need.
 
My Garmin Edge 1000J, "Michiko", and I have been together for a while.

View attachment 20138

Yesterday I leaned my bike against a wall in the sunshine for a few minutes while in a shop. Turned off Michiko to save battery. When I came out and pressed the power button to turn back on... smoosh. The power button had melted, and it tore off under my fingertip. (When I finally managed to persuade her back into life, the display said 35ºC - guess that spot was a sun-trap.)

View attachment 20139

Dammit.

What can I do? It's rubbery. Do I have anything that sticks rubber onto rubber? It needs to flex, as this part moves. Oh wait...

View attachment 20140

Rubber cement from tyre patch kit. Worth a try... maybe...

View attachment 20141

It's sealed up. But will it have any strength?

View attachment 20142

Nope. Disintegrated after 9 or 10 presses. Dammit. TIL that rubber cement does not stick this material (probably silicone?) to itself. Back to the drawing board.

She's long out of warranty. Garmin Japan have a fixed fee of ¥27,000 for repair/replacement. I can get a replacement rear case from eBay for around ¥6,000, but it will be white (EU version) rather than the original red. Or upgrade... but there are no features in the newer models that I want or need.

I you want to try to do a DIY fix it job, a search of ガーミン ジャンク might be worth a try on Yahoo Auction.

Andy
 
My Garmin Edge 1000J, "Michiko", and I have been together for a while.



Yesterday I leaned my bike against a wall in the sunshine for a few minutes while in a shop. Turned off Michiko to save battery. When I came out and pressed the power button to turn back on... smoosh. The power button had melted, and it tore off under my fingertip. (When I finally managed to persuade her back into life, the display said 35ºC - guess that spot was a sun-trap.)

View attachment 20139



What can I do? It's rubbery.

Dammit. Back to the drawing board.

You baked Michiko mate. If you don't look after her , you shaln't be allowed to have nice things. 😜

All is not lost
hotroad_7180203211.jpg
it's red and it is tough flexible and cheaper than other options.
but I'm not sure how flexible it is or how much you need it to flex. , but it is strong, will stop moisute and it won't melt next time you take her sunbathing. hope this helps.
 
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On Sunday it had been two weeks since my last ride in the countryside and I decided to head out there again. This time I did not stay within Tokyo but crossed over into Kanagawa and even Yamanashi, but to comply with the spirit of the State of Emergency requests I did not go into any conbini or other shops outside Tokyo so as to isolate myself from the local population. I climbed three Toge: Takao, Ura Wada and Tsuru Toge and covered 180 km with 1,900 m of elevation gain. I left home at 8:00 and got back after 23:00 (on Strava).

The choice of route sprang from one isolated tile next to Chuo expressway just west of Takao that I wanted to clear. So I rode out to Hachioji, bought sandwiches and onigiri and filled up on water. The toilet at a Lawson convenience store I checked was closed to customers. A nearby Familymart still operated its toilets as before, asking people to use them freely. Only the hand dryers are disabled as an anti-Covid measure. Both conbini asked customers to take their garbage home - no trashcans except for coffee-related items (milk containers, plastic stirrers).

It was a hot day, up to 30 C but I never got as uncomfortable as two weeks ago, when I had to walk for quite bit to allow myself to cool off.

After entering my tile, I headed back to where the road split for the rindo over to the west side. There are gates on both sides and the road is closed to traffic, but the west side is in a category of its own. It had deteriorated dramatically since my last ride, with numerous landslides that had buried the road.

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I could just about get past, lifting the bike over tree trunks and guard rails. In other places it was a lot easier, as the road was only covered by a shallow layer of rubble. You could tell there was no traffic, many sections of road were completely overgrown with moss. I only encountered a couple of hikers.

I should have replaced my brake pads before this ride. My rear brakes in particular were not in good shape, which in turn wasn't good for my front brake which must have gotten quite hot on the steep descent.

When i set out, I had thought about taking Rt33 to the tunnel and then to Hinohara T-junction, then Nokogiri rindo to near Okutama, but instead I headed to Tsuru toge and Kosuge mura via Rt18. I love the rural scenery around there.

I was really glad when I finally made it to the toge. The last parking lot before the toge, already within Kosuge mura, is still closed like in Golden week, as a discouragement to outside visitors.

When I got to Okutama-ko it was already in the evening light.
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From there it was another 80 km or so to my home. It got dark after Okutama and I put on my windbreaker because it got a bit chilly but I could recover from all the climbing and the sandwiches helped. The last 60 km was actually the most pleasant part of the ride, as the temperature was just right. I could take my windbreaker off again. Nice cool evening air!

In Ome I picked up a garlic nan takeout set at Sherpa, which I ate on a park bench on the playground across the street. The rest of the ride home was uneventful and not particularly challenging. There was little traffic and only a few runners on the bike path on the Tamagawa.

Based on current numbers, the State of Emergency will probably be lifted soon even in Tokyo and other Kanto provinces, but that doesn't mean that life will be "normal" again. I expect many people will keep working from home (as I have been for the last 31 years) and restaurants usage will not be as it was before. South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand are all much closer to crushing the virus than Japan is and all of them have done much more testing:

Active cases (official numbers):
  1. Japan: 3,992
  2. Republic of Korea: 877
  3. Australia: 556
  4. Vietnam: 61
  5. New Zealand: 40
  6. Taiwan: 35
With widely diverging infection rates in different countries, international travel will be slow to resume. We need to be very careful not to jeopardize what has been achieved so far.
 
Slightly related, my wahoo will hang if it gets to hot and needs a forced reboot (hold power 10s). Now if theres no shade I put my helmet over the com when stopping.
My GPS unit is black, so it gets really hot in the sun. Therefore I have been doing the same thing, even though it has never given me trouble (I just don't like to record bad temperature data).
 
Bit of shopping therapy today. Replaced rusty head set bolts. Removed a taped on light and screwed on reflector from my bars so ortlieb classic bag could be fitted. Looks ace, well chuffed.
 
A friend of mine had a problem like this and some enterprising people have done 3D printing of some of these parts. I'll check with him today to see if he can remember the link to the guy that was doing it,
Ok so apparently it was listed on eBay but no longer listed. It was for an edge garmin but he probably does other stuff. Anyway his email address was [email protected]. Maybe worth giving a try.
 
News from Stravr today: they want users to subscribe (pay), and they are taking features away if you don't pay. I don't know how smart this is as a strategy. "We are not yet a profitable company and need to become one in order to serve you better. And we have to go about it the right way – honest, transparent and respectful to our athletes. Our plan puts subscription at the centre of Strava."
  • Non-subscribers will no longer see full segment leaderboard - just the top 10 overall and top 10 women
  • Third-party apps that used segments and leaderboards will break
  • Route builder is now a subscription-only feature
To be fair, they are adding a few training analysis features. I don't care about any of them. ("Weakly intensity", anybody?)

I care about segment times more than I should, and am rarely in the top ten. And I use Route ßuilder (finally out of beta, so there goes that 'joke') regularly to plan my VeloViewer tiling excursions. So I guess I'll subscribe. I don't want Stravr to fail, and ¥6300/year is not a lot.

Here's DC Rainmaker's take on this news.
 
I'm not sure how much I should care about the changes at Strava. I have never really used Routebuilder (do all my planning in RWGPS, which I've been a paid subscriber of for years now). I couldn't care less if I rank 581 out of 597 on a segment or 541 out of 597 - it doesn't motivate me. Even comparing segment results with my own is pretty much useless: Why should I care if I can beat my times of 8 years ago when I was younger?

Just about the only times that interest me on Strav are how long it usually takes me to get from my home to Takao station, Ome station, Isehara station in case I want to join a group ride that starts at a certain time.

The average wattage estimated for a ride is actually a useful metric for me. It allows me to correlate how I feel after a ride with how much effort I actually put into it. For example, I find that if I ride with others even for less than half of my ride, my wattage will come out about 10 W higher than if I was riding on my own. And if it's hot or I've done very little riding for weeks, my number will be even lower.

In terms of features that I would like and that I would potentially pay for, I reported all of them to Strava years ago and they have done nothing about them:
- uploads from my o_synce GPS (a cycling-specific model that Strava has supported for years) used to default to "Ride", but at some point reverted to "Workout", which means that by default they don't match any segments or any challenges I'm signed up for. I have to manually change the activity type and wait for matches to be recomputed.
- barometric elevation totals from my GPS are shown on upload, but are then discarded and replaced by Strava's own calculations that are routinely inflated by 20% or more. WTF?!
- I don't have a wheel speed sensor, so when I enter a long tunnel, no GPS signals are received and no distance is counted. On a west Izu ride I can easily be missing 5 km over the course of a day. There is no fix for that. It makes sense that Strava does not include route intervals during which the GPS is manually paused (that's what I want), but tunnel entrance to tunnel exit (or any loss of GPS signal for that matter) without manual pause should be counted as straight line distance.

These are my top three. There are other minor ones that I wouldn't pay for, such as supporting metric units on the "Flyby" simulation feature (only 95% of the world's population uses the metric system after all) that I and others have been waiting for for more than 3 years now.

So there you have it, I am not going to buy a Strava subscription because their game is all about competition and mine is about enjoying my rides. Good luck to them, I hope they find enough subscribers to support their business. Far fewer of my friends are on RWGPS so it misses out on the social aspects, but in terms of features it has all that counts.
 
Distance measurement is just a metric in a vacuum that has little meaning....
Sure, going farther is better than shorter - if on the same route (in most cases) - however not knowing the terrain, bike, etc... it is just a metric.

That said... with me ramping up my road and virtual ridings, I have already ridden more distance this year than all of last year.
Last year was 85% MTB, 10% Commuting, 5% pulling my kids around in a trailer.
This year is probably 30% MTB, 30% Virtual, 20% road riding, 20% misc (kids/grocery).

My MTB mileage at this time of year is on par with last year... it is everything else that has ramped up and eclipsed it.
 
for some it goes up, for some it goes down. I've had a knee problem keeping me off the bike for more than a month in Jan-Feb this year, and now this pandemic = 2,000 km in 2020 VS 8,500 km in 2019..... damn
 
The Pandemic is actually making things easier for me to eat right and do my morning virtual rides.
I can't go anywhere, so I have time.
I am with my family constantly... no break - so getting up early is my only me time. That allows for an hour on the trainer every morning.
Lunchtime - it is a little harder since I don't have Costco on my weekly shopping list anymore, but I make salads with fresh veggies from local mom & pop stores and Yorkmart. Since I am home, better options to make a good salad or something.
Then after work.... I can't do anything really... so i prep food. Again - fresh ingredients, time to let things marinade, etc...

So eating cleaner and working out has been my reaction.

I will admit it has been tempting on several occasions to just eat & drink my frustrations away - and at times slip a bit, but I have been trying to take the occasional rage out on the bicycles. Mountain biking is therapeutic in that way. I get to get out of the house, enjoy some nature, beat the shit out myself and my bike, challenge myself, cuss a little, yell a little..... then all is better.

I have not even drank a trail beer this year.
 
funny, I seem to remember a photo of a beer can on a trail somewhere, against the night landscape of a town below ;)
Maybe! I hope so! I will have to go back and look. If so, solo ride.
 
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