Garmin Edge 705
Now that the season is drawing to a close the news for the cycling industry is slowing down as well. In order to keep my blog going I will probably be adding many boring super interesting personal stories to the blog in an effort to drawn in my audience.
Earlier in the season I was on a 30 mile group ride and got dropped. It was mostly my fault for trying to be a badass and taking off up a few hills; which led to me getting a pretty painful stitch in my side. The only way to relieve myself of that pain the ass..err.. ribs was to slow down and watch the pack ride off in the distance. The route on this ride had changed almost every time I’d ridden it due to construction in the area, so I had never been able to memorize the route. Being relatively new to the Atlanta area didn’t help either. I’ve only been living here for a little less than 2 years.
So, I had a cue sheet, but that was no help because the cue sheet was for the normal ride; which as I had mentioned above was so graciously changed every week without updating the cue sheet. I am a gadget freak, but don’t have enough to shell out for a computer with GPS. I did have my blackberry, which does have GPS; however, I do not have it activated as part of my plan. It was about 7:00pm at the time I was dropped and about halfway through the ride. I stopped on a street corner of a major intersection of a road I had heard of, but wasn’t familiar with to see if I could my bearings and think things through. My wife didn’t get off work until 8:00pm. I figured ‘Well I’ll see if I can find my way back until 8 and suffer the humiliation from my wife and call her then if I was still in limbo.” There was no way I was going to pay to activate the GPS on my blackberry for something that I considered a non-emergency(I’m also pretty cheap). So, I decided to go down Buford Hwy as opposed to following the road I was on, Satellite Blvd. After a few minutes I passed a sign that said “Duluth 6 miles.” I was headed in the right direction. My main goal was to get back to the shop before the group I was with to avoid any.. shall we say “criticism” of my pack etiquette. I’m sure there were plenty in the pack that were not happy with my pace antics earlier and then me dropping out. I would feel the same way if it was me in the pack and some kid I didn’t know too well did the same thing. I got back to the main neighborhood that is the beginning of the ride; which is a serpentine last few miles with what seems like 30 turns. I wound up getting lost again, but was able to backtrack easily enough and made it back to the shop about 10 minutes before the pack got back. No harm no foul.
With such a wide range of location/GPS devices available, does anyone even use cue sheets anymore? If one was so inclined, you could even take most of the newer SIRFstar III based car GPS devices in a jersey pocket.
What did you do when you got lost/dropped on a ride and didn’t have a GPS?
Links of interest:
Garmin Edge Reviews: 305, 605, 705, 705, 705
Polar RS series of watches with WIND GPS sensor
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