OLPH Does Battle with Technology on a Late December Ride

Who else but Chris?

26 December 2016

Weekend weather hasn't cooperated lately. With the week off and itching for miles, Tom put a call out to some of us Slugs to meet him at his house for the extra miles to Monday's Team Social Security Ride at Etra Park.

With most of our guys laid up, out of state, or otherwise occupied, only Pete and I heeded the call. We added miles from home to Tom's (Pete drove to my house, "adding miles to miles to miles" seeming a bit much for the end of December). 

Jack gave me a GPS for Christmas. After doing battle and losing to our desktop PC, which refused to recognize the device, then getting help from a few Freewheelers who were online, I plugged the unit into my laptop and got it working. I gave it the route to Tom's house, one that I know anyway, and mounted it on Kermit's handlebars.

At the last minute, I put in my old hearing aids. Now that I have new ones, I can risk the loss or destruction of the previous pair. They're halfway to useless now anyway. I figured that with the balaclava over my ears, the wind noise (the microphone is exposed, behind the ear) wouldn't be unbearably loud.

When we left for Hightstown, the air was a touch above freezing. We had a rare southeasterly wind and dense cloud cover. I could hear the wind loud in my right ear, and it was annoying. But I could also hear Pete, and cars, and the sound of our freehubs clacking. When we met Tom at his house, I could hear him, too, and his voice is smack dab in the range that gives me trouble. Also, my GPS knew all the turns, and when we pulled into the driveway, it declared, "You win!" Shit. I've got to get this bugger out of competition mode. I set it to record the remainder of the trip.

Chris met us at Etra, where Joe was taking over leadership from Al and Dennis (both having decamped to Florida until the robins return). With them were two Mikes and Bill B.

Tom and Joe compared routes. Tom had 45 miles in mind, while Joe had something less. Only after Tom turned right on Etra Road when Joe turned left did I talk Tom into going together. We caught up soon enough and stayed with Joe on his circuitous route to Allentown. We hung with them for another ten miles, then broke off, Chris coming along with us.

We were heading into the wind again, but I wasn't hearing it loud in my right ear like before. And I was having trouble hearing Tom, too. The aid was still in my ear. This is why I have a new pair; the right one cuts out.  The left side, though, was doing its job, which is good, because that's the traffic side. The GPS map was telling me each upcoming street, which was amusing, because I never pay attention to the names of side streets. 

We dropped Chris off at Etra and Tom peeled off near his house. I was glad to have the GPS, which was confirming what I was reasonably sure I already knew. As we approached Windsor Road, we felt a few rain drops.

The rain picked up the closer we got to Mercer County Park. It let up about four miles from home.

"I'm going to need a ruling on this," I told Pete. "This was a Tom ride, and we got rained on, but after he left." Pete reminded me that we hadn't been blessed with the Holy Kickstand today.

In the end, we had covered 70 miles and earned the right to a handful of Christmas cookies. I hosed Kermit down before bringing him inside. 

I'd made a few beginner errors with the GPS: I hadn't started it properly in the beginning, so it missed the first two miles of the day; and I hadn't set it to record a moving average, so it factored in our rest stop. Getting the route up to ridewithgps, where I store everything, took more time out of my life than was necessary. Jack and I tried to get the desktop PC to recognize the unit again, deleting "unknown" drivers and giving the GPS a factory reset. Nothing worked. Also, the rubber door that protects the USB connector fell off. It's probably in the house somewhere. I'm probably going to spend hours on the phone with Garmin later this week.

As for the old hearing aids, I'll probably use them all winter. Come spring, when my ears are exposed and I start to sweat, I'll need to leave them at home. They'll be five years old in May, two years past warranty, and if I break them, that's the end of them. I'm going to look into an in-the-canal pair that only amplifies. I don't need surround-sound or a tinnitus blocker when I'm out with the Slugs. For the first time in many years, today was the first where I didn't have to say, "I'm sorry. I'm hard of hearing. Can you repeat that?" or "Say that again?" or "I'm sorry. I didn't hear you." Not until I didn't have to say any of these things had I realized how often I had been.