Review: Demon

Demon is the last book in Varley's Gaea trilogy. It's a grand finale, with lots of action, set pieces, and a long intro that shows off how bad-ass Cirroco is. The problem with the series is that it was never more than science fantasy. We never do get insight as to how the Titans were created and evolved, and the takeover of the consciousness of Gaea was never explored in any form.

As a series it's very much worth reading, since the characters are interesting (as are the aliens such as the Titans), and the plot as a whole is satisfying. And unlike more modern series, the entire story just ends here, no 10-book epic.

Recommended.

Review: Columbia Montrail Outdry Running Shoes

Last year, Arturo got us a big discount visit to the Columbia Outlet store. I found a pair of Montrail Outdry shoes for a substantial discount and bought them. I should have bought more than a pair, that's how good they are.

I'll contrast them with the Salomon XA Pro 3D Waterproofs. Those are currently on sale at REI but they are crap. They claim to be waterproof, but even a little bit of water will soak right through the uppers and into your socks and then you'll have a squishy hike for the rest of your day.

By contrast, the Columbia Outdry actually works. I've walked into ankle-deep puddles, been caught in thunderstorms, and at no point did these shoes ever fail. If the inside got wet, it was always because my socks were wicking water down into the shoes. (Even the waterproof socks do that, since those are effectively two non-waterproof layers with a waterproof layer in between).

I should have bought more than just one pair of these shoes. As it is now, I wear the Salomons for unchallenging conditions, and save the Columbia for the toughest rainiest outings. How often do you ever see me regret not spending money? That means these shoes are highly recommended.

Review: TaoTronics True Wireless Ear Buds

My beloved LG Tone headset died recently after 3 years of hard use. It appears that the follow on units aren't of similar high quality, so I went looking for new headsets. The TaoTronics won the race because of a feature that I couldn't find anywhere else: the charging case for these ear buds also double as a battery bank for your other electronics!

The case with earbuds comes to 97g. The Anker 3350 mAh battery (same capacity as the earbuds charging case) comes in at 80g. So for 17g more you get a pair of wireless earbuds as well, which is a bargain any way you look at it, especially if you use the coupon code I found (which seems to have expired) to get them for $30 instead of the regular $46. Wireless earbuds are easy to lose, and also easy to damage (e.g., by getting them wet or dropping them), and these are IPX 67 certified, meaning that they're waterproof enough for rain.

The earbuds come with 8 different sized tips for customization, and are just a bit uncomfortable (not as nice as the Moto Hint+ I used to own). The charging case has two seats for the earbuds which are magnetized, so you can't screw up the positioning of the left and right, and even if you did, the charging indicators wouldn't flash, which would tell you that something is messed up. I was concerned that these would be a massive pain to take out and use while cycling, but in practice they weren't bad at all. Certainly the case means much less fumbling than say, the single-ear hook pieces seen in Premium Rush.

The sound quality is just good enough for gym use. The music is listenable, and audio books are just about this side of comprehensible while cycling with only one earbud in your ear. (Don't ride with both ears blocked!) For phone calls, the  response time between pulling it out and answering the call is so long that I've missed a few phone calls because of this, so now I just answer the phone with the handset and then if it's going to be a long call I pull the ear pieces out and plug them into my ears (the transition is fairly easy). For phone calls, it definitely is not as good as the Moto Hint was.

When touring, the most common use case for these is that you're riding around in circles trying to find where your AirBnB is and need to call the owner. These are good enough for that so you can listen to spoken directions over the phone while your host is directing you to their house. The second most common use case is as an emergency charger for your flashing front light, your radar tail light, or your phone. At 3350 mAh these won't charge anything quickly, but is great for topping up your battery lights during a playground stop, or keeping your phone from going dead while you frantically search for a hotel for the night.

There might be other true wireless ear buds with better sound quality, better microphones, etc., but the combination of price and features on this set means I won't bother with others. How long the batteries in the earpieces last is a different story --- I was forced to retire my Moto Hint+ not because the charging case went dead, but because the earpiece batteries could no longer survive a phone call longer than 15 minutes.

In any case, if you're a touring cyclist, get these. Recommended.

Review: Spark

Spark is John Ratey's book about exercise and how it impacts the brain. It's a pretty old book, but is still worth reading because there aren't actually that many books about how physical exertion affects how your brain works. John Medina's Brain Rules, for instance, mentions it as important, but not the physiological reasons your brain works better after exercise, and how much exercise is actually enough.

One of the repeated themes in this book is that the medical establishment used to think that exercise was bad for you. Even now, it's an uphill battle for physicians to prescribe exercise for patients. The book covers (in compelling form) a high school in Illinois which managed to reduce obesity to 3% of the student population while increasing student school performance in standardized tests by 14% through the introduction of a daily PE lesson. What distinguishes this book is that the PE lessons aren't the traditional PE classes, but highly focused on aerobic and cardio exercises that gets the kids moving all the time while in class. The classes even hand out HRMs to the students and issues grades by how hard the kid is pushing themselves! The author points out that traditional PE lessons focused on team sports (basketball, soccer, etc) are actually terrible for encouraging exercise: the kids who got picked last, for instance, get an immediate discouragement, and worse, many of these sports have a bunch of kids who are just sitting on the sidelines instead of actually getting physical exercise. So if you hated PE in school, it's because your teacher was just doing it wrong!

Then Ratey goes into the various mental disorders like depression, anxiety, addiction, and even PMS and aging, and talks about how exercise helps those disorders. (Note that he leaves out stuff that's truly degenerate, like Parkinson's, Schizophrenia, etc, though he does mention that exercise seems to retard the progress of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's) He further discusses how much exercise is needed (and once again reminds the reader that the National Guidelines are set deliberately low because the medical establishment is afraid that the real recommendations will scare most Americans away from even  starting to exercise, so 20 minutes a day isn't even close to the optimum dosage!), and how high intensity work differs from low intensity exercise. (Basically, the pituitary gland emits HGH, which reshapes the body --- the author describes how his final ounces of belly fat only disappeared after he added high intensity exercise to this regime)

This is an astonishingly good book, full of details about the various pathways through which exercise shapes your brain. You might get the impression that exercise solves all health problems, and you might not be far wrong. Maybe my frequent mantra (often said in jest) that "cycling solves all problems" isn't that far from the truth!

Review: Wizard

Wizard is the second book in the Gaea trilogy (mis-spelled on Amazon for whatever reason). I'd forgotten how good these books were, and these are certainly page turners. Not quite science fiction, not quite fantasy epic, there are quests assigned by a goddess, and then a motley group of people put together, all of whom have mixed motives.

When we encounter the continuing characters from the previous books, they're transformed beyond recognition,  but still recognizable. When the action starts you're drawn in and then after that it's world-building interspersed with plot unfolding.

Unfortunately, it suffers from the middle book syndrome: enough plot gets unfolded to get you going, but not enough gets resolved for you to feel satisfied. Nevertheless, it's exciting reading and well worth the effort. Recommended.

Review: Titan

I remember recommending Titan (and the follow-on books) to Arturo. It's been so may years since I read it that when I saw that it was $3 for the Kindle version I just grabbed it and started reading. Of course, the book just sucked me in.

It's basically an Alien Worlds/exploration story, but as I reached the end I was blown away by how Varley makes even more recently written science fiction look as though it was written by an uncreative scientific illiterate. There's plausible explanations for how come the alien creatures encountered bear even a passing resemblance to humans, and the characters are actually much better than the usual cookie-cutter stuff.

I thoroughly enjoyed my re-read of the book, and can recommend it to anyone. It does have sexual themes that make it not suitable bed-time reading for those with little kids however.

Review: The Orchid and the Dandelion

The Orchid and the Dandelion is a great counterpoint to The Highly Sensitive Child. On Amazon, the reviews of this book are not as good as the reviews to The Highly Sensitive Child. I can see why. The book is couched in academic, rhetorical language, and doesn't praise the Orchid-type children uniformly. This is important, because the author makes several important point that Dr. Aron (the author of The Highly Sensitive Child) never makes:

orchids and dandelions aren’t a binary division cutting humanity into two categories. The two flowers are powerful metaphors, or a vivid shorthand, for what is actually a spectrum. (Loc 3740)

Furthermore, there's intriguing information in this book, indicating that it might be possible to physically figure out whether your child is an Orchid or Dandelion by measuring temperature differences between left and right earlobe. This sort of identification work is very useful.

The book identifies a lot of importance about teachers:

while some teachers were exploiting the children’s social hierarchies as a means of controlling child and group behavior, others were explicitly attempting to minimize the visibility and potency of the hierarchy by employing more child-centered, egalitarian teaching approaches. Some teachers, for example, might quell a disagreement by taking a dominant child’s side or might avoid a conflict or disappointment by allowing certain kids to be marginalized or excluded. Others, by comparison, seemed to consciously employ techniques and strategies for undermining or challenging their students’ hierarchical order. This could occur if the teacher publicly noted a subordinate child’s special artistic or intellectual or athletic gift, or banned exclusionary social behavior, establishing a classroom policy in which “you can’t say, ‘you can’t play.’ ” (Loc 2611)

What's even better is that Boyce debunks Quality time as something of a myth:

I would like to debunk what has become enshrined as an almost holy artifact in the mythology of contemporary life. Quality time is simply a cultural myth. There is no such thing and never has been. So we should not count on it happening and should not try to create it. The reality is that the very best of moments with our children come at unplanned, unexpected times—during the car ride to a Saturday morning soccer game, in the middle of an otherwise uneventful bathing of a toddler, or while scrambling to get breakfast and the kids off to school. Try as we might to orchestrate such times, the closest, most cherished moments with our children come during intervals when they are least expected. Such moments cannot be arranged or planned. They simply surface out of the normal, monotonous flow of daily life, when sufficient ordinary time has been passed between parent and child. It is during such ordinary time that these moments of extraordinary communication and intimacy can occur. (Loc 2801)

So forget the Orchid/Dandelion distinction. You just need to spend more time with your children. You probably already knew that, but the book is full of stuff that reminds you to be a good parent. For that, it's well worth reading, despite the archaic and rhetorical language. I recommend this book over The Highly Sensitive Child, and I recommend this book for anyone who needs another parenting reminder.

 

Review: Magicians Season 3

Continuing on from Magicians Season 2, Season 3 focuses on the restoration of magic. In the mean time, we get various subplots involving fairies, subquests, how rulers are determined in Filory, and timeline jumping, all of which could have served to make the season unwatchable and confusing but the writers somehow managed to avoid all the traps.

Some of the plots of the episode are quite annoying, including one that might as well have been a “It was all a dream” story.  For the most part, however, the execution of each story is well done, including an episode that ended with “Under Pressure” performed by the cast.

Everything comes to a head at the end of the season, with multiple members of the story (all of whom have been working as a team for the most part) all running their own plots. Ultimately, the season ends with a cliffhanger that leaves as many questions as it answers but is still more exciting than the books the series is based on. I’ll look forward to picking up the next season to see if the level of writing and plot execution continues to be superb.

Post Tour Review: ResMed Air Mini

This was the first bike tour using the ResMed AirMini. As noted previously, I bought this mostly for the weight, and while I was doing point to point touring this year carrying my own luggage, I still had to fit the luggage within the weight limits of a cheap flight.

My biggest concern about the device was the noise, and I have to say that it was great. The device was as quiet as the big machine from the perspective of Mike, who had to share the room with me. Furthermore, the auto-on/auto-off feature meant that if the mask bothered me (which wasn't frequent), if I took it off I didn't have to go hunting for the button to turn off the machine.

The humidifier wasn't quite enough for Mallorca, but was too much for a camping trip in California during a humid period in Spring, resulting in a wet nasal pillow in the morning. I'm guessing that you would need the HumidX plus for Mallorca and California when it's dry, but otherwise the rest of the time you should be ok with just the regular Humid X.

The app was great, eliminating the need for a display on the unit, and also the need to download data to the computer. I did wish it output something to SleepyHead, but I'm guessing that's not going to happen any time soon.

Once in a while I think I should buy a backup for my 7 year old ResMed S9 (which I still like better than the S10), but this experience has taught me that the AirMini is more than an adequate backup device. I'd be happy to use it long term if I had to, and stop hunting around for distilled water. Highly recommended.

Review: Mpow Foam Ear plugs

I usually bring ear plugs when I travel. There was a time when I'd carry them to hand to people I'd be sharing a cabin or tent with, since as a Sleep Apnea sufferer, I snore'd like crazy. Now my CPAP machine solves my snoring, but I carry them anyway in case the hotel room is noisy.

To my surprise, the quietest hotel room we had this time was the Hotel SM Sant Antoni in Barcelona. By far the nosiest was Hotel Ultonia, right next to a major throughfare. We used the Mpow Foam Ear Plugs to sleep every night and it worked great. For $10, you get 60 ear plugs and a hard metal carrying case. The ear plugs are just right, fit nicely in ear, and for my ears I had to replace them once every week or so. Mike needed to replace his every 5 days or so.

Recommended!

Review: Utopia for Realists

Utopia For Realists is a book about how to make a better world for people who are not in the top 1%. It is a radical book of policy proposals that are backed by research and data, which ought to be convincing. Bregman is apparently well known as the Universal Basic Income man, and not surprisingly, the book is at its very best when discussing the topic:

Liberia, an experiment was conducted to see what would happen if you give $200 to the shiftiest of the poor. Alcoholics, addicts, and petty criminals were rounded up from the slums. Three years later, what had they spent the money on? Food, clothing, medicine, and small businesses. “If these men didn’t throw away free money,” one of the researchers wondered, “who would?” Yet the “lazy poor people” argument is trotted out time and again. The very persistence of this view has compelled scientists to investigate whether it’s true. Just a few years ago, the prestigious medical journal the Lancet summed up their findings: When the poor receive no-strings cash they actually tend to work harder. (Kindle Loc 360)

And argument that it's too expensive to do this:

 Eradicating poverty in the U.S. would cost only $175 billion, less than 1% of GDP.48 That’s roughly a quarter of U.S. military spending. Winning the war on poverty would be a bargain compared to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which a Harvard study estimated have cost us a staggering $4–$6 trillion. As a matter of fact, all the world’s developed countries had it within their means to wipe out poverty years ago. (Kindle Loc. 485)

When reading this book I've had to re-examine how I thought about society problems. In the past, I've always thought that drug addiction, etc., is a result of unalterable circumstances with no good policy solutions. The thought that the policy prescription that's most effective, efficient, and direct is so easy (those in poverty don't have money, just give them money) and even better, socially beneficial is radical, and worth pursuing:

 A British study discovered that the costs of poverty among children in England top £29 billion ($44 billion) a year.12 According to the researchers, a policy to eliminate poverty “could largely pay for itself.”13 In the U.S., where more than one in five children grow up poor, countless studies have already shown that anti-poverty measures actually work as a cost-cutting instrument.14 Greg Duncan, a professor at the University of California, calculated that lifting an American family out of poverty takes an average of about $4,500 annually–less than the Cherokee casino payouts. In the end, the return on this investment, per child, would be: 12.5% more hours worked $3,000 annual savings on welfare $50,000–$100,000 additional lifetime earnings $10,000–$20,000 additional state tax revenues Professor Duncan concluded that combating poverty “pays for itself by the time the poor children have reached middle age.” (Loc 636)

When I think about what how little with done to combat poverty over the last few years, I think by far the most pernicious problem with the conservative ideology are exemplified by attitudes like the ones expressed in this Quora answer:

What is the politically conservative answer to child poverty?

Obinna Onwuchekwa, Libertarianish conservative

Answered Apr 18

People should only have kids they can afford.

You have to be extremely hard-hearted, not to mention without a sense of social justice to have constructed an answer like this. Even if you believed that the parents of children born into poverty do not have a right to escape poverty because they made dumb decisions, that children who themselves were born into that poverty did not choose to be born, and the permanently penalize them or turn them into an under-class by denying them the necessary conditions for an optimal upbringing (which includes having parents that are not economically stressed all the time and hence can provide quality care!) is in the long run not a very smart thing to do. Some of those kids might have the potential to contribute greatly to society, and our current polices simply do not allow them to live up to their potential, and in some cases (as discussed in the previous quote) might turn them into negative elements in society.

Once you leave the subject of universal basic income, the book is still full of great titbits and I found myself highlighting passage after passage.

Whereas couples worked a combined total of five to six days a week in the 1950s, nowadays it’s closer to seven or eight. At the same time, parenting has become a much more time-intensive job. Research suggests that across national boundaries, parents are dedicating substantially more time to their children.21 In the U.S., working mothers actually spend more time with their kids today than stay-at-home moms did in the 1970s.22 Even citizens of the Netherlands–the nation with the shortest workweek in the world–have felt the steadily increasing weight of work, overtime, care tasks, and education since the 1980s. In 1985 these activities were taking up 43.6 hours a week; by 2005, 48.6 hours.23 Three-quarters of the Dutch workforce is feeling overburdened by time pressures, a quarter habitually works overtime, and one in eight is suffering the symptoms of burnout.2 (Loc 1368)

 Ironically, medieval people were probably closer to achieving the contented idleness of the Land of Plenty than we are today. Around 1300, the calendar was still packed with holidays and feasts. Harvard historian and economist Juliet Schor has estimated that holidays accounted for no less than one-third of the year. In Spain, the share was an astounding five months, and in France, nearly six. Most peasants didn’t work any harder than necessary for their living. “The tempo of life was slow,” Schor writes. “Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure.”29 (Loc 1394)

 A study conducted at Harvard found that Reagan-era tax cuts sparked a mass career switch among the country’s brightest minds, from teachers and engineers to bankers and accountants. Whereas in 1970 twice as many male Harvard grads were still opting for a life devoted to research over banking, twenty years later the balance had flipped, with one and a half times as many alumni employed in finance. (Loc 1704)

 There's a great section on "RCTs" (randomized controlled trials) to determine which interventions in the developing world are most likely to add economic value. It's great stuff and worth reading:

Thanks to RCTs, however, we know that $100 worth of free meals translates into an additional 2.8 years of educational attainment–three times as much as free uniforms. Speaking of proven impact, deworming children with intestinal complaints has been shown to yield 2.9 years of additional schooling for the absurdly small investment of $10 worth of treatment. No armchair philosopher could have predicted that, but since this finding was revealed, tens of millions of children have been dewormed. (Loc 2107)

There's a very salient observation in the book where Bregman says that the best paying jobs in the world are the parasitic ones: investment bankers, financial advisors, mergers and acquisition folks, analysts, ad-tech engineers, etc. We're spending the smarts of those people by having them prey on the foibles of human nature and human society. The worst paying jobs are the really important ones where you make a positive difference to real people day after day (teachers, etc). It's as though we're managing society by saying: "You get to have a real job where you make a difference to people's lives positively. You expect to get paid well too? No way!" That observation touched me deeply.

 I'd say the weakest part of the book is the prescription about immigration. (Bregman claims that open borders would work) There's simply not as much detail there supporting his argument (certainly, no RCT here!) and I'm not sure he's worked through the political challenges there and how one would go about the approach he wants to take here (for instance, he says obviously you can't just open all doors everywhere right away, but doesn't say how you would stage it). But even here, he won so much credibility with me that I found myself wondering if there's some argument he's made in that very short chapter that I'm missing.

The book ends with both a call to action and an indictment of the Clinton model of neo-liberalism, and a plea to both leaders, voters, and people of action to drop the incrementalism and "working within the system" and go back to the radicalism that's won so many victories in the past, such as the demand for voting rights for women, the elimination of slavery, and of course, the 5 day work week:

Historically, Politics was the preserve of the left. Be realistic, demand the impossible! rang the rallying cry of the Paris demonstrators in 1968. The end of slavery, the emancipation of women, the rise of the welfare state–all were progressive ideas that started out as crazy and “irrational” but were ultimately accepted as basic common sense. These days, however, the left seems to have forgotten the art of Politics. Worse, many left-wing thinkers and politicians attempt to quell radical sentiments among their own rank and file in their terror of losing votes. This attitude is one I’ve begun to think of in recent years as the phenomenon of “underdog socialism.” (Loc 2532)

 If you've been a progressive voter for the past 20 years or so, it's hard not to get depressed about how little progress has actually been made towards policy goals that get people excited. This book brings hope that perhaps there are policy options that are radical, yet realistic and effective that the progressive movement has yet to adopt. The book has certainly changed my mind about the effectiveness of cash handouts for poverty reduction, and just that alone makes it worth the read.

Highly recommended!

Review: Pilot-24 Lite CPAP Battery Bundle

I've spent way too many years carrying around a big heavy lithium ion batteries. For my recent ResMed AirMini, I decided that I'd upgrade to a later model and see whether it makes a big difference compared to what my older HMD Z1 could do.

The Pilot-24 weighs 567g. With the Airmini adapter cable (24g), that's a total of 591g. The HDM off-grid power pack (shell + battery) comes in about 100g lighter at 490g. But the HDM Z1 battery could only get me 4 hours per night for 2 nights, while the Pilot-24 happily gave me 7 hours of therapy a night for 2 nights, so the additional 100g is justified. (In addition, the Resmed AirMini is a much quieter machine than that HDM Z1!)

The biggest issue with the Pilot is that the charger requires a heavy duty charger to charge fast. The official pilot-24 charger (24V@3.75A) weighs 376g. You could just carry the charging cable for the Airmini, but at 20W, it's going to take 5 hours to charge the battery, which isn't acceptable on a sailing trip.

For backcountry camping, the entire package (ResMed AirMini + nasal pillow + pilot 24 + adapter) comes in at 1242g, or 10g lighter than the HDM Z1 equivalent, while giving more hours of therapy. I'd venture to say that the combination is a significant upgrade over the HDMZ1 and well worth considering.

Recommended.

Post Tour Review: Garmin Varia RTL510

When I first bought my Garmin Varia Radar, it was meant to be a safety feature. Being able to get notified on a lonely mountain descent when the wind is generating too much noise for me to hear an over-taking car could save me a ton of stress, I figured.

The Mallorca and Girona bike tour with Mike showed me that the Varia RTL510 was also a touring tool par excellence. We would frequently ride on lonely roads where when traffic showed up, it would be fast since those same roads would enable fast drivers to drive even faster. Those same gorgeous country roads would tempt me into shooting pictures of Mike with the accompanying scenery. (While you can stop and pose and reshoot pictures, that so disrupts the flow of touring by bike that I never do it!)

Well, when is it safe to do so? I relied on my Garmin radar to warn me. If it was clear, I could ride out in the middle of the lane and shoot.

 I normally don't bother with selfies, because the positioning of the camera and concentration needed while riding was even worse than shooting a picture of somebody else. With the RTL-510 warning me of any approaching traffic I shot more selfies.

One interesting thing I've noticed about the RTL-510 is that it doesn't actually know that the object coming up behind you is a car. All it cares about is speed differential. Which is what you want: another cyclist or motorcycle coming up at you at speed is just as dangerous as a car. But it does mean that when you're climbing sometimes that beep is your companion catching up to you, not a car or something dangerous. None of the false positives have been an issue.

If you tour and shoot while riding, the RTL-510 is an essential touring tool. Those of you using other ecosystems should switch just for RTL-510 compatibility. For me at least, Garmin has won it all. Between the new Garmin Connect app's ability to create routes on the smartphone and the excellent head units (watches) and radar, I see no reason to consider any other ecosystem. They've shown how a big company can acquire and maintain an insurmountable lead over less well-funded startups and up-starts (even those with lots of experience in this field like Sunnto, Polar, etc).

Highly recommended. Don't talk to me about your spanking new head unit if it doesn't support the Garmin radar!

Garmin Fenix 5X Post Tour Review

This was my first bike tour with the Garmin Fenix 5X and it came through with flying colors, despite my failing to properly load Spanish maps into the device prior to the trip! At least part of the credit belongs to an app upgrade that occurred in the middle of the trip!

During the trip, Garmin upgraded Garmin Connect so you could now create a route on the smartphone and sync it directly to the watch, with no wires required. The route creation isn't the smoothest thing in the world (no undo button!), and it's a bit clunky (you're not tapping on roads, but sliding the map under a dot to indicate the next waypoint), but it's way better than trying to use say, RideWithGPS on a phone (and yes, I asked for the feature for the app a year ago, but RideWithGPS keeps thinking that people want the app to record a ride --- not me!), and even better, it uses Garmin's "Popularity Routing" feature, which should improve over time. (You have to be careful --- people like me would prefer climbing and scenery over flat route, and judging from how Garmin likes to route, most people don't have that preference!) I guess RideWithGPS has now lost me as a potential paying customer because this is more than good enough.

Sendpoints is an essential app when touring. I highly recommend that you install it on your Fenix. It lets you send an address to the phone without typing or creating a course, and use the onboard routing engine to get you there. (That one doesn't do popularity routing)  The big penalty is that unless you had the forethought to preload the locations you want, you'd have to stop your activity to run sendpoints in order to load the new location. So this might force you to break your ride in two. I don't expect this to be a problem (I don't particularly care about splitting tracks in Strava) My habit is tour book at the last minute when I know where we want to stay, so this would force me to stop the day's track after booking the hotel in order to use the device to navigate there.

The biggest issue is HRM. With the Vivoactive I never cared enough about the data to put the device on the bars. But for navigation, I wanted the Fenix 5X to be on the handlebars, and when you do that you obviously lose the HRM. Even worse, the HRM will just make up values by default instead of reporting no HRM. You'd have to manually turn off the HRM, which is too  much of a pain to do, since you'd just forget to turn it back on again when the ride's over. For touring, it's no big deal, and a minor glitch on what is otherwise an excellent product.

Amazon sells Refurbished units that come with a full warranty, and they're every bit as good as new units. I'd watch the price and when it drops below $400 I'd jump on the 5X. I thought when I first bought this unit I might end up with a bigger display for touring. Nope. This is as good as I need it, and I'd recommend this to any bicycle tourist with good enough vision. You won't regret it.

Mallorca and Girona: Thoughts

After the hype from Brad Silverberg, I had high expectations from Mallorca and they were exceeded. I was impressed by the prices, the friendliness of people (especially Linus and Karsten), and how perpetually friendly the drivers were in Mallorca. The cycling was first class, and Brad was prescient in predicting that I'd get bored right around the 1 week mark. If I'd thought about the trip or planned it better I would have gotten in Cap de Formentor as well within our 6 days. Port de Soller was great if a bit touristy (but much less so than Pollenca), and we ate superbly throughout the trip.

Without similar guidance for Girona, I almost expected to be let down. For a couple of days I wondered if I should have organized a point-to-point tour instead, especially since Mike's knee was doing better and he was more able to keep up with my cycling. But as the days wore on Girona made a bigger and bigger impression on me until by the end of the trip I was starting to think that this was a place where I could retire to.

Girona had all the attributes of a city that I liked in California: lots of different riding variety with very few repeats. It even had attributes that I didn't have in the Bay Area, such as easy access to the Pyrenees (when the snow's melted) either by train or even just by riding to it, because it was so close! If you wanted an easy short tour, you could take the train over to the French border and ride back with the wind at your back (easily accomplished in 2 days, or 1 long day).

Girona also has all the European conveniences and qualities that make Europe a far better place to live in general than the USA. The city was clean, you could walk from downtown and never need a car, and the prices were reasonable, unlikely many other places in Europe. I could definitely see myself living there for a long stay, and never getting bored of the cycling. I do not say this lightly, as I've been a Bay Area advocate for almost the entirety of my residence in the USA since 1988.

One of the big concerns for a Bay Area cyclist is that of course, the best time to visit Spain also coincides with the best time to ride in California, because their climates are so similar! On the other hand, if you've lived in the Bay Area for awhile, you've probably done all the local rides, so this is a chance to explore a new place. The climbs in Mallorca and Girona are also much more gentle than Bay Area climbs, so if you've had a difficult winter season (like I did), then it's a great place to go to get back in shape, as the number of "training camp" type bike tours on offer indicate. So I'd say you should go if you'd like something different and maybe even gentler. Non-cycling partners would have plenty to do as well, with a lot of options from cooking classes, food tours, to visiting the museums celebrating famous artists like Picasso and Dali. This trip put Spain on my map in a way that wasn't there before, and I was very glad that Brad sold it as hard as he did!

Overall, we spent $550 each on the round-trip flight to Barcelona, and $200 each on the round-trip flight to Mallorca (because we brought our own bikes). On the ground, we spent about $1000 each on hotels, and about $800 or so on food, tours, and other miscellaneous. That meant that the entire cost of the trip including flights was around $2500 per person. Scott Hess likes to make fun of me by saying that my trips aren't that cheap compared with guided tours, but for comparison, the Trek Tours charges $2000 per person for 6 night tours in Mallorca and the same for Girona without including the price of the plane ticket (though including a rental bike, so you'd have saved about $320 on the flights). So for the cost of less than one of the Trek Tours (and surprisingly enough, Trek wasn't the most expensive trip --- do a Google search and you'll discover $4000 6 day 5 night tours --- I had no idea people spent that much on cycling trips), we got 2 tours plus 3 nights in Barcelona and the misc activities, etc. Independent Cycle Touring literally saves a thousand dollars on each trip.

Epilogue: April 24th & 25th

We got up and caught the early train to Girona, paying an extra 3Euro for the faster service which had seats for us as well as plenty of room for our bikes. I looked at a map and found a much closer train station which enabled us to get to hotel within 10 minutes of departing from the train station, getting us to the hotel by 10:30am. The staff of SM Sant Antoni were once again very accommodating, giving us plenty of space to disassemble and pack our bikes. Even more amazing, by the time we were done packing our bikes, they'd somehow gotten our rooms ready, 4 hours before the designated checkin time. I cannot praise the hotel highly enough.

Google Trips suggested Montjuic Castle, and I suggested to Mike that we visit the market for lunch, but he misunderstood and thought I meant the supermarket and objected violently. Non-plussed, I pulled out trip advisor and we ended up picking a restaurant that was horribly over-priced despite its good reviews. After the restaurant, we took a taxi to the castle and got grand views of Barcelona as well as an overview of the history of the Castle, which was unusual in that it wasn't just a defense against external invasions, but also a tool of oppression against city citizens.

We bought a combo ticket to the botanical gardens, but that was a surprisingly long walk, and by the time we got there Mike was too tired to go in. I went in and enjoyed the strangely empty botanical gardens, but we had limited time before our tour if we wanted to walk (or even take the bus) there.

The walk to the bike tour place was fun, taking us through parts of the city new to us (and old to us), and mostly downhill to soothe Mike's aching knees and feet. We arrived at the e-bike tour place and were surprised to be told that we were the only people to have signed up, so it was like getting a private tour from Juleo.

The bikes were obviously in bad shape, squishy brakes and rattles from daily use by tourists. But Juleo was great as was the tour. We got a great feel for the city, as well as a ton of history, including how Catalan the region came to be part of Spain. He explained all the yellow ribbons we saw painted on the roads as we rode around in Girona, and also the recent politics. What was amazing were the pictures of Barcelona from before the Olympics and the explanation of why a lot of the infrastructure was so new. This was a great tour and I'd highly recommend it. We even got to see inside a building (what was originally proposed to be a library which got canceled once they discovered ruins of medieval Barcelona underneath the proposed site) where medieval buildings were preserved.

After dinner, Juleo sat down with us and gave us a bunch of recommendations on what to bring home for friends and family as treats, and where to go to dinner. We picked 4 Gats, a Picasso themed restaurant nearby, which served a large portion and was opened early.

With our bikes packed we were in no hurry to get back to the hotel but we were already pretty worn out by the day's activities, so we went to bed early anyway.

The next morning, we had breakfast at a chain breakfast cafe recommended by Juleo which was very good, and had great stuff that you could pack and bring onto the plane for food as well. As scheduled the taxi arrived to take us to the airport where I scanned my VAT refund documents easily and got through customs in record time. To make up for that when it came time to board the plane I was randomly selected to undergo another major inspection.

The flight passed by surprisingly fast (I had plenty to do), and at Oakland Airport I was once again reminded by how onerous passport control and customs was on the USA border. Once out, Supershuttle again disappointed us by taking half an hour to pick us up, but we were soon home and I was saying hello to Bowen and Boen. What a great trip!

April 23rd: Rocacorba

As predicted, it rained all night and was still raining the next morning. That meant we could wait until 8:00am when the cafe opened to have breakfast. We walked over using umbrellas borrowed from the hotel, had a relaxed breakfast, and went back to the hotel to read, start the packing process, and wait for the rain to end.

By 11:00am, the rain had finished and we could ride out, and finally, on my last day of cycling in Girona, I had to repeat the route out to Banyoles! We took the direct, Garmin-directed route, and found ourselves in Banyoles by 12:00pm, too early for any of the restaurants along the lake to serve lunch, so we stopped at the Aldi supermarket to buy lunch. You know you've picked the right supermarket when a swarm of tourists on European-style trekking bikes descend on it as well. A supermarket lunch (2 buns, chocolate, and fruit) cost about 3 Euros per person, and was just the ticket for climbing prep: not so heavy to weigh you down, but enough that you don't have to eat during the climb and on the way back to the hotel. I'd long since ran out of Clif bars and the like.

We knew we were on Rocacorba when a serious looking woman cyclist rode on the road, turned around, and not 15 minutes later passed me at high speed in her highest gear, deliberately mashing her pedals as if she was on some coach-specified power-training regiment. The road looked smooth and welcoming, but of course, the day was cloudy so I worked as hard as I could to try to get to the top fast in the case of pending rain.

Cyclists have a perverse need to brag about their local climbs as being challenging. Rocacorba is somewhere between a consistent 10-12% grade. It's steep, but nowhere close to Pragelpass or even the Bay Area's Bohlman-On-Orbit Bohlman. Knowing that today was a short ride anyway, I just stayed in my middle chainring and went up the climb, feeling small raindrops all the way to the top, which was a disappointing looking cell tower building.

At the top, I got a text from Mike that he'd encountered rain mysteriously on a ride where the pavement was never soaked, and had turned around and was headed to the hotel. I rode down, but  by the time I'd gotten to the bottom he was tired of waiting and had turned around and headed home. I explored the alternate route I'd seen on the map, but when I started on it, I realized that this was just the reverse of the route we'd taken on the Olot loop.

It was a pretty loop, however, so I didn't complain, though I became unhappy at the end when I realized that I'd routed myself onto the biggest highway into Girona. Fortunately, I only needed to be on it for 3 hair-raising exits before I recognized a signpost and bailed out, getting a scenic entry into Girona. Of course, being on a big highway had advantages --- the fear and shorter route got me back to the hotel before Mike!

Back at the hotel, we took a walk around after a shower (no laundry to slow us down this time!), and discovered that the streets were full of flower vendors and book sellers. Since we walked past the visitor's center, we stopped by and asked what it was about, and the lady explained to us that during the festival of Sant Jordi, men were supposed to give their women flowers, and the women were supposed to give their men-folk a book. What a great twist! The Wikipedia entry mentions that UNESCO has adopted that date as World Book Day, but of course in the USA you'd never hear about that!

Dinner was a L'Aglica, still to me the best restaurant in Girona, and we ate grandly, dessert and all. After dinner, the streets were still filled with flowers and book vendors. We spotted a cafe near the hotel that was opened early the next morning (it'd been close nearly the entire time we were in Girona because of the holiday, and this was the first day it was opened after the holidays), so we knew we could eat there for breakfast. We wanted an early departure to Girona, as we had to find the hotel and pack the bikes. I looked to see if this time we could sign up for any walking tours, but none of them were appropriately timed --- they were too early in the day and we wouldn't be done with packing the bikes until at least 12:00pm. We signed up for the e-Bike tour via TripAdvisor that started at 4:00pm instead. It would feel strange riding an e-bike in a place that didn't really need it (tour companies are unlikely to let you ride up and down major descents since foreign tourists would probably scare themselves silly), but the reviews were great so we took a leap of faith.

April 22nd: St. Hilari

I was now convinced that there were an infinite number of non-repeating exits out of Girona, as the Garmin-generated heatmap-driven route led us out of Girona on various bike paths with a tailwind on the flats. Garmin loves bike paths, even unpaved ones that ran alongside the road. On a morning with not much traffic I preferred the asphalt, but Mike liked to exercise his 32mm tires.

Under cloudy skies we started up the climb. It was gentle and long, and didn't grant much in the way of views, but with no traffic (I think we saw 3-5 cars the entire climb) it was pleasant. I stopped once to put on rain pants when I felt several drops of rain in a row, but then almost immediately took it off as I started getting wet from sweat instead!

In the village of Osor I saw how little traffic people expected. 2 kids were walking their dog right down the middle of the only street in town, barely even lifting their heads to glance at me as I rode past. Once I decided to just hammer up the climb at a good pace, all my pictures were either of the scenery or of the 2 goats I saw.

 When I got near the end I saw a huge chapel, and thought that might have been Sant Hilari, but I was wrong! Sant Hilari came much later, and it was a ridiculously large town, complete with appliance shops in the middle of main street. The town went on forever, but I'd already agreed with Mike that I wasn't going to wait at the top of a summit with impending rain, but would descend and we'd meet up later.

Descending, I saw a few views but no good vantage point to take pictures from. All the area around roads were farmland with fences, etc. The overcast sky had a few holes where sunlight would beam through, giving a surrealist effect. The descent was sketchy, with lots of chip-seal sections that were still loose, so I couldn't take corners at maximum speed.

Near the bottom, the minuscule traffic pretty much disappeared as the freeway available sucked up what traffic was left, and I had to road all to myself. The road surface was great, however! We rode back into town against a headwind, but started feeling drops of rain. Right at the edge of Girona, however, I saw a gorgeous farmhouse, and felt obliged to stop for a good picture.

As we entered Girona, the raindrops became more frequent and we got to the garage of the hotel Ultonia just as a downpour ensued! With that kind of ending we definitely felt like we'd squeezed every ounce of riding out of the day!

Of course, the rain had stopped after we'd showered and did our laundry, and we walked out to the cafe for lunch. The rain was supposed to run until the next day around 3:00pm, so I looked online to see if there were any alternatives we could do. I noticed that Girona Food Tours had a Catalunya cooking class, and tried to sign up for it but they said they were full. Restaurant L'Aglica was opened for business the next day, so I booked a dinner spot for that, as it was our last day and I really wanted to eat there again before we left!

I convinced Mike to take a walk around the city, and we got to see the Arab Baths, which was interesting in a "it's only 2 Euros, we'll take a look since we're here" kind of way.

Dinner was a wild goose chase. Mike found a restaurant that looked good, we went to it to discover that it had moved, then after we'd walked over there, the opening hours were different than what was posted on TripAdvisor. Finally, when 8pm arrived we walk there and discovered they were still not opened. We ended up eating at Brots di Vi, which had competent food but in insufficient portions for a cyclist. That wasn't a bad thing, since it meant we had room for desert, and so walked over to Cafetaria el Pessic, where the desserts were so tasty we decided to come back again the next morning for a sit down breakfast, since it was going to rain.

April 21st: Costa Brava Loop

Costa Brava was strictly speaking a lollipop. There's the initial run from Girona to Llagosterra, and then from there, you'd do a loop out to the coast and back and then ride the same way back to Girona.  As usual, we reversed the loop figuring that would give us a tailwind on the coast. In practice, this wasn't a factor as the rugged coastline prevented the wind from being a huge issue.

To my delight, the ride out of Girona was yet another route that I hadn't discovered before. This was my fourth day in Girona and I had yet to repeat an exit from the city! "This place is growing on me," I told Mike, "By my 4th day at Port de Soller, I'd done every exit from the place, some twice or three times!" The road had nobody that early in the morning, and we pretty much had it to ourselves.

In Llagostera, we stopped for a quick coffee, and then rode on up towards Sant Grau, the grade was very easy, and the top was non-descript. The weather looked very unsettled and the wind built up, but once over the top we got nice grand views.

The Costa Brava coast was definitely dramatic, with switch-backing corners and the kind of swooping turns as you approached the inlets where a stream had cut through, very similar to Big Sur. What was different was that the resort towns were huge and very built up. I was very shocked at how little time the ride spent on the coast, as we were soon in Tossa de Mar, where Mike discovered he had a flat tire.

While he fixed his flat, I went into the supermarket across the street (what a great place to have a flat!) and bought lunch, eating it. We resumed climbing out of Tossa de Mar, and the climb back into Llagosterra was in an isolated wind environment, so I hoped that the forecast might be wrong and we wouldn't have to fight a headwind back.

In Llagostera the headwind came back. I'd noted that there was a train station nearby so we didn't have to ride back if the wind was bothersome, but Mike decided the ride was worth it, and it didn't look like it was going to rain soon, so I assented.

Back in Girona, we bought lunch at the local cafe, and then I had time to walk around Girona proper, noting that I hadn't probably explored the city. I visited the Cathedral, walked around the city wall, which was surprisingly intact, and found another bike shop that had the cute name of "Eat Sleep Cycle".

What blew me away though were the tour prices offered. These were expensive bike tours, and I always thought that over-paying for bike tours was something that only Americans did! They were charging Euro 2500 a head for a 7 day trip in the alps, which I guess compared favorably with the Trek Tour for $4000/head.

Dinner was at the Argentinian BBQ beef place. For a change I had no complaints about the portion size. The food was plentiful (I did have a couple of empanadas to bookend the meal), and it was very good. Mike said he didn't want come back, because the food was just meat that was grilled, but I would have been happy to eat there a second time to try the different cuts of beef.

The weather forecast had shifted again, as the forecasted rain was moved to the next day. I noted that the rain would start around noon, so if we got out early we could get in the St. Hiliari climb, which looked attractive and could be knocked out in just a few hours if we started early.

April 20th: Olot Loop

When examining the route the day before, we decided that going through Banyoles first was the right thing to do, since the final descent into Girona would alleviate any pain from the expected wind from the North and East.

The initial ride out looked like a reversal of yesterday's entry into Girona, but our GPS kept telling us that we were going the wrong way. We finally realized that we were reversing the loop given to us by the bike shop. I didn't know about the Fenix's "Reverse Route" feature, so I just kept my Fenix 5X on the map screen so I could see the turns that were coming up. What I didn't know was that this actually drains the 5X's battery super-fast, as it keeps computing how far you were from the next checkpoint on the GPX file, and trying to restart the route from then. Fortunately, the 5X has such a big battery that it was still enough to get us home with a bit to spare.

Once out of the initial area, the loop took us alongside beautiful fields of mustard until we got to Bayoles, where we took pictures with the lake, scullers in the background.

Past Banyoles, the road took on a very rural aesthetic. We weren't seeing too many cyclists at this point, though two women were riding behind us but never got close enough for us to even identify them (we heard their voices), before they turned off on a different ride.

The descent into Olot was gorgeous, with turnouts for glorious views of the Pyrenees, with its snow covered peaks. The day was warming up, but never got hot, and we were very pleased by what we discovered. The roads designated by the GPS routes were scenic and never had too much traffic.

At the turnaround, we found ourselves riding now with a headwind, but fortunately there were hills. Even better, the biggest hill had a bike path side-route that eliminated all the traffic and noise, enabling us to climb in peace and then descend using that pavement. It was quite clear that the area near Canet d'Adri was famous for its beauty as many tourists (with cars) were parked along the road and hiking, cycling, or just taking pictures.

Then between Sant Feliu and les Planes d'Hostoles the route took us on a perfect tiny little road of such beauty and perfection and flow that Mike said "It sent shivers up my spine with pleasure." It was so good and required such attention to bike handling that we did nothing but ride, ride and ride. It was one of those roads that you wished would go on forever. We had found cycling heaven, and I never would have thought in a million years to have to discover it in Spain!

The last several miles into Girona was into a stiff headwind, but during the final approach we started climbing a few hills which made the descent down into town very easy and pretty. I was delighted. For a change we had arrived back in Girona early enough to eat lunch, which was a burger place. I then realized that I didn't have to live with not having a map in the Fenix 5X, since I could just download and install it using the hotel's lobby computer! That same computer could be used to help upload Mike's photos from his Ricoh GR2.

So after showers and laundry we did all this computer stuff. The forecast was for rain the next day, but I noted that the rain was not scheduled to fall until later in the afternoon. Mike was all psych'd out to do the Costa Brava ride, and I agreed that it looked great.

Dinner was at the Mexican place John Mitchell recommended. Unfortunately, it suffered from a comparison to L'Aglica: it felt overpriced and there was nowhere near enough food. We got dessert elsewhere, and I bought some fruits.