Phamilton

It would be really weird to not have one. I’ve thought several times about ditching it for a dumb phone but I stream music and TV. And Bike Forums.

Phamilton

I’ve never heard of shoe goo. I guess double sided tape prob would also work, didn’t think of that. I’m not very handy. Most of that is how I was raised I think.

RubeRad

It's not weird if you never had one yet. I've always hated phones and phone calls, even just landlines. Email is the best. Even my dumb phone I hardly ever use. It will sit around turned off for many days at a time. I basically turn it on by appointment only, or if I am out and want to call home (and happen to have it on me, and the battery is not dead).

I think it's weird to seek detachment by eschewing bike computers, but still stream music on a smartphone.

I listen to podcasts on a by-now ancient, but still-going-strong Sony ICD-UX70 voice recorder. 1GB is small by modern standards, but it's way plenty for a week's worth of podcasts. I don't listen to music so I don't need to keep my entire music library in my pocket.

I've always been content to browse (including BF of course) on a desktop computer with a full keyboard and mouse and at least one large monitor, although this year I got a laptop that I've been using more. I can't imagine trying to view and interact with the internet through a miniature portal like a smartphone. That's just weird.

RubeRad

Shoe goo is good stuff, it looks like contact cement, but thicker, already near solid gel. I always keep it around and keep shoes going for a few more months when the soles start to detach and flap, but I've never tried it for non-shoe applications.

Skipjacks

Oddly I've never used it ON shoes. But I keep some at my house for various other fix it projects.

It's like duct tape. It's uses are only limited by your imagination.

Phamilton

I am quite weird. You ain't wrong.

I always wanted one of those little portable LCD handheld TVs when I was a kid. And I was always walking around with some sort of music playing in headphones on a walkman or discman or whatever I had on hand. I'm a musician, as a hobby, not professionally, always listening to or playing something. I've even used my phone for multitrack recording of personal projects. I used to have to set up the multitrack tape recorder with mics and preamps and effects and stuff. It's amazing that you can plug your guitar into your phone and crack out a song in 15 minutes. Smart phones were like a dream come true for me. Too attached, though. I got enough noise in my head without the internet and phone and texts and messenger and facebook and Bike Forums, etc. That's the appeal of shedding the smart phone for me. I lack discipline. But it's cyclical for me, I go back and forth.

I do have the home desktop hooked up to the LR television now just for fun, it's weird to have a 50" monitor but kind of cool. It seemed wasteful to pay for unlimited data on 3 smart phones and then also have home internet so we haven't had home internet for a few years.

FWIW to me weird isn't a bad word. Just means out of the ordinary for me.

Edit: I don't listen to podcasts often enough anymore but I found SYSK (stuff you should know) to be highly entertaining and informative for quite a while. I SHOULD start working some podcasts back in to my playlist. I just switched back to Spotify premium again and they have a bunch of podcasts but I haven't looked at them yet.

Phamilton

Honestly, my life was weird enough before I was car-free/bike commuter. I'm pretty fringe now.

RubeRad

Oh I'm weird too, if weird just means different than most. But I like to think I'm weird for good reasons.


I'm an amateur musician as well, I'm quite a good violinist (IIDSSM) and play in my community orchestra, but I never listen to music. The exception is, while preparing for a concert, I'll mainline a youtube playlist, but with a purpose of entrenching familiarity, not because 'I feel like listening to some music'. And I try not to listen to -- and wish I didn't have to hear -- pop music in the car all the time, because my family is not as weird as me. If I'm driving alone (which I also try to minimize) it's NPR or podcasts.

Phamilton

Anymore I'm afraid to tell people I listen to NPR. I'd ride in a car with you any day, unless you smell and/or drive bad. There's a lot of inspired, ambitious, engaging music out there in just about every genre, it's just not mainstream. I listen to way more music when I'm not playing.

RubeRad

lol my wife says I smell sometimes, and I definitely have become an 'old man'-type driver, usually pretty slow.

I'm actually a republican, but I like NPR best because there's no shouting. Even though I'm sure 99.99% of NPR employees are somewhere between 'very' and 'flaming' on the liberal scale, I feel they have a lot of journalistic integrity and put forth a good faith effort towards objective, unbiased reporting, and if there's a little bias that leaks out, I'm ok.

noglider 

I appreciate your weirdnesses, @RubeRad and @Phamilton.

Shoe Goo is great. I've used it to attach wires to my bike frame, but it gets messy, so I don't think I'll do that any more. I just peeled it off as I overhauled my bike today. I left some residue, as I'm not in the mood to be thorough.

Phamilton

On the ride home today was thinking I could mount that computer in a weird place where I’m not gonna be able to see it while riding. Then it would work just like an electronic version of that fossil on the front wheel of my Voyageur.

Phamilton

I mounted it behind my seat tube between the seat stays and put the sensor on the one seat stay just below the brake. I took pictures but seems like attachments are broken or something. Still need to pick out a way to stick the computer to the mount but it’s all set up ready to go when I do that.

Oooo and now that the sensor is on the rear wheel I get to count as miles all the times my rear wheel spins. Maybe a mile every ten years.

RubeRad

Also, if you're handy with electronics (I sure amn't), you could shorten the cable to like exactly the length needed. Or maybe just use up all the surplus length with an attractive spiral winding up the seatstay. In the front I always wind around the front brake housing, but still it's awkward to fix the cable up the fork and jump the gap to the housing, and you have to account for fork movement

Phamilton

Attachments working again

veloiste

I use my phone and track all of my miles with Strava. It helps me keep track of how much money I've saved, but also integrates well with fitness tracking and my smartwatch.

Phamilton

I think I’ve made a huge mistake by not tracking my miles.
I don’t know how many miles I rode last week. I don’t know my average speed. MY AVERAGE SPEED.
If a serious cyclist asks me how many miles I rode last week, how am I supposed to answer?
It seemed like such a good idea at the time, but I guess it never occurred to me like the REAL consequences of not tracking.
I can never answer the question “how many miles did you ride last week?” As a
so-called avid cyclist, this is an embarrassment and a failure.
I’m never really sure whether or not I rode more miles than my wife did. This is important to maintaining a healthy balance of power in our relationship. And also she says it’s adorable when I remind her that I rode 25 miles today so who really needs to be doing the dishes, so now she thinks I’m less adorable. That’s not good.
And without yesterday’s miserable fitness failures greeting me when I DON’T open strava, it’s hard to get pumped up enough to really take my morning commute to the next level - no compromises.
I haven’t KOMed in a long time, and I’m not even sure I can anymore. I mean, the equipment is all there and seems to be working but whenever I think about a KOM my legs just get like lead all of a sudden and I start thinking about my dad and then the whole ride is spoiled. Has anybody ever successfully been able to KOM after a month of not tracking? I’m starting to get a little scared.

Phamilton

Oh, and probably the worst of all is the longer I
go without tracking the less aggressive I feel on the bike, and consequently off the bike. Everybody knows that in today’s world, aggression is a highly prized trait in male humans, both in the workplace and in the home. And especially especially on the road with cars. An aggressive attitude was probably the only thing that was keeping me alive. I’m
worried that without this aggression, I’ll forget that traveling to and from work is warfare, and it was meant to be that way. I’m worried that drivers will honk their horn and I won’t even respond. I’m worried that my wife will leave me for a guy who rides 30 miles a day AND wears a helmet AND knows his average speed AND HEART RATE, who is aggressive on AND off the bike if you know what I mean. She loves aggression, she thinks it’s adorable. I think she doesn’t love me anymore since I stopped tracking my rides. We used to sit around the table at dinner and review my ride stats for the day and discuss KOM strategies for the next day (well, that part was after the kids went to bed). Now I don’t have anything to share at the dinner table, I’m not their hero anymore, just a normal guy who rides a bike to work somewhere and gets there and back in some fluid timeframe. I can see the disappointment in my wife’s and daughter’s faces when I just let them talk about things that are important to them instead of my commute times.

Phamilton

Like, is my daughter going to start thinking it’s normal for men to not track their rides? Will she end up marrying some weenie who rides a hybrid? That would be awful.

Phamilton

Worst of all is that without verifiable stats, I’m basically worthless as an internet cyclist.

Phamilton

It’s all the worst, all of it. The not knowing, the less aggression, all of it.
I’m pretty sure my career as an avid internet cyclist is over, my family is in ruins, and I can’t even talk about KOM right now.
Serious avid internet cyclists, please heed my warning - track. You must track. Even when you feel / ESPECIALLY when you feel like it’s a waste
of time. Your wives and daughters and lady Liberty need you to track.
Go and track.

Track.

Skipjacks

People like tracking mileage.

No one is asking you to do it nor does anyone care what you do.

Why do you feel you need to give everyone else a hard time about doing it? And not just a hard time, but making fun of people for it.

What are we, 8 years old? Arguing in the playground over dumb stuff?

RubeRad

Dude, April Fools was last month

robertorolfo

That would be pretty bad, but it would also be really fun to sneak into their house one night and replace his handlebars with proper bars (drop bars).

Seriously though, some of us use Strava and the like to track mileage on specific bikes for maintenance reasons.

Just last night I was explaining this to my GF, and then she make the outlandish statement, "Oh, you've ridden bike X the most, so that must be your favorite bike, right?" I probably make that 'psshhhh' sound loud enough to wake up all the neighbors.

noglider 

I, for one, appreciate @Phamilton's humor.