Friday, March 4, 2011

More Useless Stuff

Okay, not really.
Well, maybe.
I mean it's sort of redundant, seeing as how I already have everything it's supposed to do.
Except it sorta does more:



Probably more than I'll ever need.
I decided to go with a Garmin 500 to replace all that stuff I got attached to my handle bars.
Meaning the Cateyeball and the Polar HRM.
I thought long and hard about this for as I said, the two things above pretty much do all I need them to do.
Except they take up a lot of space.
Here was the chance to go all in one.
Plus more.
I've been reading up on the Garmin 500, and well, it was time.
Time to enter the 21st Century!
Or something.
The unit comes with a whole bunch of reading material:



Whoops!
Not really, for most of that is just the same thing printed in like every language of the literate world.
The real stuff is on the disc.
The unit takes a while to charge up, Garmin recommends three hours before fooling around with it, but hey! following instructions was never part of my plan.
Wait!
What's all this other stuff?



Actually, it's mostly the stuff you need to charge the unit, in every country of the literate world.
Reading the instructions might be a good idea after all.
Don't want it to blow up on the first night!
Or have it send me through a worm hole.
Or something.
The sending unit, or the sensors, are pretty much straight forward, like the Cateyeball.
One unit on the chain stay and a magnet on the crank arm.
More on that later.
One of the reasons I got this thing was the size.
I mean it's not as large as say the Garmin 705, the one with the mapping features, but it's not small like the Cateyeball, which was difficult for me to read:



Since I wear corrective glasses, I was getting sort of tired of lifting them up every time I wanted to check the time.
Or making sure I was going 14.8 and not 14.0.
Yes, my eyeballs are that bad.
Hopefully, this will alleviate those problems.
Still, I feel sort of lame having one of these things in my greedy little hands.
I mean I live on an island.
Sort of hard to get lost.
If you know what I mean.
It is blue.
So it was sort of calling me.
Sort of.
Full review when I get this up and running.
Stay tuned.

6 comments:

Steve A said...

When that Garmin has spent enough time out in the strong, tropical sun, I think it will fade - to celeste!

Seriously, I think you will have much fun with that Garmin and I hear good stuff about them, especially compared to other GPS units.

TrevorW�� said...

I've been using a 705 on my bikes for over two years now and am a great fan of Garmin... It's really convenient being able to swap the unit between bikes with all the recorded information for each bike.
I too have heard great reports on this little baby and lets face it.....blue does go with your Celeste color scheme...!!

Anonymous said...

The blue on your new Garmin thing matches the lettering on your bike, and would also match your handle bars if they were wrapped in blue too... ? :)

limom said...

Blue FTW!
Slight difficulties here.
More on that later.

PaddyAnne, I've been eyeballing some blue tape along with a blue seat, but I bought the black instead.
Just couldn't do it.
Then again, still a work in progress.

GreenComotion said...

Larger fonts help me also! I would be curious about your opinions of the Garmin 500, after you have had some time to play with it.
Peace :)

limom said...

Full review as soon as it stops raining!