Bicycle Gear

Its been one week since I started tracking my bike rides. Before I go into details, I want to let everyone know I'm having so much fun riding! One, my bike is awesome, two its a nice change to be outside away from my computer and three, I enjoy riding my bike because its exercise. I've never taken exercising seriously. I've had a gym membership for years and don't even know where I put my membership card. Buying this bike has changed the way I think about my health. That's a post for later. Today I want to talk about gear.

For anyone who might start riding on a regular basis, you should definitely buy a phone mount for your bike. I bought an Arkon. This mount works really well. It was easy to install and it stays put. You can rotate it in either landscape or portrait mode. Here's what it looks like.

 Screw the base to the handlebar-

Attach the phone holder-

Snap the iPhone into position-

Front view-

The mount is a must have for bike riding. It keeps the iPhone off of me and in plain sight. Easy to change the music or read emails while I'm riding. 

The next must have is an app for tracking your ride. I bought Cyclemeter. I picked this app because at the time, it was the only one that worked with multitasking. Its a great tool. The app tracks my speed, calculates my distance and even tells me how many calories I've burned. When I'm done riding, a woman's voice starts speaking and tells me all my stats. It also sends me an email showing me a map of my ride. I can even use this when I'm jogging. Super cool app! 

Here's the map that was sent in the email.

Lastly, I bought the S9-HD bluetooth headset from Motorola. This headset is nice except for the ear bud design. One of the rubber ear buds keeps falling off when I carry it around. Once its snug in my ear it doesn't move. The HD sound quality is great and best of all, there's no wires to get tangled in. I don't think its legal or safe to ride with these on but I'll leave that up to you to figure out. Here's what they look like:

I'm happy with everything I've bought for the bike so far including the gloves and riding shorts. Soon I'll be buying cleats to help pedal more efficient. I don't really want to but, after almost getting hit twice today, I think its best I buy a helmet. 

_Vince

Giant Seek 0

I spend money foolishly without thinking about it. Its a terrible habit. Like I've said in the past, I'm an impulse buyer and sometimes it backfires. I've bought things in the past that I thought I needed or at least convinced myself that it was going to make my life easier, and sometimes it didn't. Hate to say it but I've wasted money so many times.

In a past post I showed off my trail bike. Bought it, rode it once and sold it. I was disappointed. I didn't do enough research on the bike. After riding it, I knew it wasn't the right bike for me. It was meant for dirt/trail riding and not the street riding I want to do. So I took a HUGE loss on the bike. After spending countless hours at the local bike shops and many hours online reading, I decided to buy a 2010 Giant Seek 0.

I absolutely love this bike! I wish I would have known about this bike before the XTC1. It's a cross between a mountain bike and a road bike. Very light, fast tires and an incredible internal gear hub. Unlike traditional gears and de-railers this bike can shift at a complete stop. When your riding and you want to shift into another gear, you push a lever, it makes a subtle "click" and its in another gear. Its very quite and smooth. In fact when I ride all I hear is a light humming sound of the  tires. It pedals very easily and it coast for a long time. The bike has hydraulic disk brakes with Shimano levers and an Alfine crank. Anyone who appreciates aesthetics or the "fit and finish" of a product, will really like this bike. I spent a lot more on this bike than the previous one but its well worth it. I'm having a lot of fun riding. I bought an iPhone bike mount and a program to track my speed and distance. The program even emails me a map of where I rode. How cool is that? I will post info on that later.

I plan on writing about the gear I buy for the bike. I have to test it before I can write about it.

_Vince