Luddites of the world unite

For the past 8 years I have depended on a palm pilot to keep me sane and to store all the useful and useless bits of information that I need on some sort of a periodic basis. This information included the ususal necessary stuff like names, telephone numbers, social security and account numbers, upcoming appointments, dates to remember and a lot of less useful but still necessary stuff like the order of all of the Elizabeth Peters books featuring the archeologist Amelia Peabody, the sett and make of various looms that we store for the spinning and weaving guild and a couple of standard weekly grocery lists, books I wanted to read someday, books I started to read and decided to avoid. In short the device acted as my brain, which I actually lost to menopause a few years ago.

For some reason, on the recent long bike trip, it drained itself down to nothing and then reset itself. That's fine you say, just resync it with the computer. All well and good except that I haven't been able to get the palm program to work with my lap top since our big computer bit the bullet two years ago and I switched to the laptop. The first time it reset itselfI managed to slavage the important familial telephone numbers and contacts by culling them from Phil's blackberry, and supplemented them by sending out urgent emails to friends requesting their addresses adding them into the palm pilot day by day.

The damn thing reset itself again the other day, for no good reason that I can see since I know it was fully charged. Obviously it has made up its' mind to die, shuffle of the mortal coil, cease cooperating, no longer be a slave to the electronic reality, discorporate, discombobulate and declare itself thorough FUBAR. Once again I am adrift without addresses for family, friends, doctors, lawyers, bank, bike shops, financial advisor etc., and once again I will have to solicit everyone's information and re-enter it somewhere, somehow.

I used to keep all of the information like this in a small pre-dayrunner type telephone book, the kind with small removeable strips so that you could keep the information updated. Unfortunately, it has disappeared into one of the fourth dimensional entry points that inhabit my universe and is nowhere to be found.

I will go and buy another telephone book and start posting the stuff there but in the meantime rescue man Phil has found a free download computer program that is an electronic phone book and is putting in as much information as he can for me. Bless him for that, but the fact of the matter is that the computer is far less portable than the palm pilot. Unfortunately, they no longer make palm pilots, and I simply cannot face fighting with the cell phone to put in anything more than absolutely essential emergency telephone numbers, nor can I face having to learn a whole new PDA system, so luddite that I am, I will go back to a paper/computer contact system and plan to pre-label anything I want to have sent or mailed, in the comfort of my own home or on a post it note stuck to the item.

Another Luddite moment

I have reached a comfort competence strength sort of plateau in my bike training and needed to step it up a bit. After several weeks of talking with a variety of biking trainers and other riders, I decided that what I needed to do was start really working on maintaining a set cadence along with a set speed while riding. I don't have the advantage of hills around Houston to climb, and if I die and go to hell, I will be condemed to a in gym spin class, so maintaining the cadence while cranking up the resistance during the ride sounded like a good solution to the training dilemma. After another couple of weeks talking with bike stores and checking products, I finally found and ordered a wireless cadence computer.

It arrived, along with a multi lingual guide on set up and programming. Bike Guy Phil mounted it and I proceeded to stumble through the set up, getting more and more frustrated as the days passed as it seemed I could program it to do everything else, track mileage, kilometers, speed in mph or kph, laps, stop watch, time of day, start and stop of ride, ride distance, average speed, maximum speed, minimum speed and whistle dixie, but could not figure out how to get it to count cadence.

In despair, I took it in to the gym and asked for help from one of the computer savy guys at the front desk. He spent several hours playing with it , finally admitting defeat and said he would be willing to try again next time I came in if I could bring the instruction book with me.

That was on a Friday, when I showed up on Monday with instruction book in tow, I found out he had quit over the weekend, having found a better paying job as a computer programmer. I figured that I would play with it and the far from logically or understandably written instruction book and then give up and load the bike onto the car and drive everything to the nearest bike shop and throw myself on their mercy. If that didn't work, I planned to send back to the seller and ask for a refund.

Fortunately, Bike Guy Phil offered to give it a try. In less than fifteen minutes he had figured out the instructions and was able to show me how to access the cadence screen. We did a ride today, and after adjusting the little reading disc on the spoke, it worked like a charm. Whoo Hoo! I can now ride for cadence as well as speed and challenge myself that way.

In the meantime, I still need to figure out how to zero out the mileage at the end of each trip so I can keep an accurate daily mileage. I'm not sure I want to go there, and may just content myself with riding with both the garmin computer for daily distance and speed and the cadence computer for cadence and cumulative distance.

I don't even want to begin contemplating relearning the "newly upgraded and improved !" Bicycling.com public site we are both accustomed to downloading our Garmins to. At least the Garmin training log on my own computer has remained as is, so I can download the ride and track mileage and speed, which is all I really need to do since I ride pretty much the same training routes most of the time.

That seems to be pretty much the pattern these days, just when you finally find a system that works and become comfortable with it, they change it, improve it or make it obsolete and you have to relearn another system. That was why I got the palm pilot in the first place. I know learning new skills keeps your mind active and flexible, but I just don't want to waste the time I have relearning electronic and computer systems.

"Frankly, my dear Scarlet," all I want to do is ride and keep a paper log and address book so Luddites of the world unite!

Here endeth the rant.

On a more positive note, today was the first day in six weeks when it has been not too hot to and not too humid to ride some distance. It felt good to be back on the bike for an extended period instead of just the 7.2 miles to and from the gym. The favorite coffee shop is still there and the iced latte is as good as ever. It's nice to see that some things don't change