Riding Up into the Sky

My training partner and husband, and survivalist at heart said even if Doomsday 2012 comes around in the middle of December, we should still be able to get in some type of bike ride at the beginning of each month.

January 1, we rode our road bikes with friends along the Santa Ana River Trail to Huntington Beach.

Today, February 1, we took the mountain bikes up Skyline Drive.....and up it is.

I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to test out the Christmas present I bought for Robert. A Garmin 705.


The truth is he probably will never use the thing. Robert has the worse sense of direction and a few years ago for Christmas I bought him a Garmin GPS for his car. He never could even figured out how to use it so he gave it to me. I have been wanting a Garmin for my bike which will not only keep track of distance and speed (like my cat-eye), but also keep track of heart rate, and elevation, and cadence and, whatever awesome things it can keep track of.

So I bought Robert one for Christmas. He quickly handed me the box and said to let him know when I figured it out.

I had Robert put a bike mount on my rode bike and one on my mountain bike. I programmed the Garmin for my bike, my height, my weight, etc. I figure I'll get the Garmin working, which means first I'll understand how it works before I try to set up the heart rate monitor and the cadence and the whatever else it does.

So today I hooked the gizmo onto my bike and started out.

It should have been easy enough. You push start to start and when you stop you hit stop and when you start again you push start, and so on and so on. EXCEPT, one time we stopped and then when we started riding again I THOUGHT I had hit start, but I guess I didn't.  When we stopped again to turn around I realized I hadn't hit start. So the Garmin map looks like we were riding along and then dropped off the face of a mountain to start riding again.

I am such a goober when it comes to these training tools. Good thing my Coach is going to have a class on "training tools" along with wine tasting. Hey, my Coach has class.

So I am going to learn how to use this tool one way or another. I'll just keep practicing on my rides and one of these days when Robert and I take our First of the Month ride I will have it down. Or Coach will train me in "training tools". Or the Mayan Calendar will end and I won't have to worry about it anymore.