personality insight

A cold is a cold, and calling it "low-grade" didn't make recovery any quicker. Recovery from that cold wiped out three ride days last week. Not a bad thing really; that day I went out and abandoned almost immediately was actually unpleasantly chilly from wind and radiant cold despite air temperatures in the 70s. All three days were like that. Three days of 20-mile rides would've added up to 60 miles, giving me a total of 180 miles for the month, leaving only one more ride to hit 200 miles for the month; a loose goal, totally unnecessary, that had looked easily attainable. Without those three days, not so much.

Come this week, I gave Monday one last day of recovery for good measure and the last three days of the month were forecast to be in the high 70s and sunny. Days I would regret if I didn't take my bike out. It occurred to me if I did 25 mile rides, I could break the (totally unnecessary) 200 mile mark. And so it was, no longer sick but still coughing. 25 miles the first day, 26 the second and I only needed 20 miles the third day. What a difference between 20 and 25 miles. It's just 15-20 minutes more, but at my age feels like it's starting to take something out of me. Mind you, 30 miles used to be the minimum of what I considered "a ride". 20 miles will do as a standard outing now, a daily constitutional. It's a quick jaunt and on with my day. Don't even need to shower if it's cool enough.

The "duckhead" is the upper left portion of the ride. If I didn't cross that bridge, it's a perfect outline of a duck head:

26-mile duckhead-Waishuangxi-Maishuai:

After over a year off bike, I got back on this month. I don't know how I feel about it yet. It was slow going, mind you. Not just the riding, but even the getting on the bike. I took it slow; step-by-step. The first step was pulling my road bike out from the corner of the room where it lives and wet-wiping off the layer of dust and spider webs. That was depressing and discouraging. And that was it for that day. And my first forays were on my clunker, daily-use street bike going farther on the riverside bikeways than I have in over a year just to test my fitness.

There are several reasons for doing this. A trigger excuse was getting sick of a growing paunch and wanting to do something about it, but I don't think this my paunch has anything to do with being active or not. It probably has more to do with alcohol. It was just an excuse; a feeling that exercising would be working on the paunch, but it isn't. Hopefully it'll help tone the paunch.

Another reason may have elements of self-punishment for not carrying out my ultimate goal in this time. August of last year I was wanting to stop or get off the conveyor belt of daily routine that got me from day-to-day, and running or cycling was part of that. Over a year later, I'm still on the same conveyor belt, but it's occupied by other neurotic activity getting me from day-to-day that completely fills my time. Forcing more than an hour of exercise into the routine is really inconvenient and it's me telling myself if I insist on continuing being here, it's not going to be just all comfort and convenience and doing what I want.

It's, quite honestly, so stupid. It's totally neurotic. And working on neuroticism is my next mindfulness project after years and years of working on negativity and internal anger issues.

Twenty miles on every rideable day weather-wise is the goal and limit, although knowing myself I will probably extend it to 30 to 35 miles if I persist. Neurotic demands it. The question is whether the neurotic schedule of things that artificially completely fill my time will be overcome by the neurotic drive to uselessly go farther and faster.

20-mile Nanhu Br-Bailing Br loop:

Xizhi-Wanli Rd. (汐萬路 2,018 ft.):

北3 Danshui->Beitou (1,121ft. climb):

Rte. 109->深坑->full bikeways home:

The night before last was a full insomnia night: inability to maintain sleep on the front-end, unsettled fading in and out on the back-end. It was less than a week since the previous bout of full insomnia. That's not debilitating. 

Since weather permitted yesterday, I decided to go on my planned ride up Yangmingshan, the highest climb in the Taipei area which I haven't done in probably 4 or 5 years. The climb was fine. It's a challenging climb so I didn't mind going down to the granny gears at times. I don't think I ever went down to the lowest gear which means I was never anywhere near tapping out.

I gather Yangmingshan isn't actually a mountain as I thought at first. It may not even refer to a range. It is the name of the national park that contains Taipei's highest peak(s). The highest peak is called Seven Stars Mountain (七星山 Qixingshan). The main road that climbs up to that peak offers two alternatives. One road circles around the peak and heads back through Yangmingshan to Taipei proper. That's the route I usually think of when going up there.

The other road heads north out of Yangmingshan and descends to the north coast area and Danshui. That's the one I did yesterday and I think it actually reaches a higher altitude than the one that circles the Seven Stars peak, but I'll have to do that ride to confirm it's highest altitude. Doing that route meant traveling farther than if I had looped back into Taipei directly, and the ride exceeded 40 miles. So hopefully I expended enough energy to improve sleep, despite my type of insomnia having nothing to do with fatigue or tiredness.

And I did sleep solidly last night. A dead sleep until the end. Today was rain so I went to the gym, but energy levels were low and I attribute that to the combination of insomnia and exertion of yesterday's ride. Nothing unexpected.

After the Yangmingshan climb and the 40-mile+ route, I did reward myself on the way home by stopping off at what may be considered a Western-style deli, called 1bite2go in Shilin, with a corned beef sandwich. Absolute heaven.

Yangde->Yangmingshan->101甲 (2,753 ft.):

Xiadongshi 下東勢 Rd.->Chinese Cultural U. (1,312 ft.):

I tried this route up to Yangmingshan that was completely new to me, not using Yangde Rd, which is the main road up. I know there are numerous roads that go up from Beitou District, but they are mountain routes and very confusing unless you're a local and use them regularly. I plotted this route using Google maps street view and it seemed pretty defined. And fucking hella steep actually doing it! That's the reason Yangde is the main road to Yangmingshan, it's longer, but not as hard.

I had all but forgotten how wretched full insomnia is. Recently my sleep has been consistently unsettled on the back-end, but never enough to call it insomnia. Then the night before last night I had a remarkable full night sleep; solid eight hours, no waking, no dreaming. Rather than being refreshing, I think I was a bit dull and dead the whole day. That's not unusual.

Then similarly out of the blue, last night was full insomnia. I played three full mix CDs, which is 4 hours, and though I started sliding into sleep during the third CD, I was never totally out. Some songs I don't remember at all, so I must have gone below the threshold of sleep, but never for long. Most of the time, even when I was on the fringe of sleep, I could hear the song playing, even if I wasn't conscious enough to identify the song until I came up enough.

After four hours, it was 7 a.m. and at that point I stopped turning music on and for the next three or four hours it was like the usual unsettled back-end sleep; constant waking up and fading out. That kind of unsettled sleep after three or four hours of regular sleep doesn't qualify as insomnia. On the back-end of insomnia qualifies it as full insomnia. If I managed to fall completely asleep at 7 a.m., then it would've been a night of front-end insomnia.

Even being disconcerted by the full insomnia, the weather was nice as forecast and I decided to go on a planned bike ride. Cumulatively insomnia has its effect, but just one night is nothing. And going into winter I want to take advantage of any nice days as there will be weeks on end of no riding soon enough.

Having been able to climb hills recently, I decided to make a foray up the Yangmingshan National Park range (which includes the highest peak in the Taipei area, Qixing (Seven Stars), although I didn't do that today). It's the first time going up there with GPS so part of the reason is to make sense of the mess of roads and bike routes up there. It's a well-settled mountain, hardly backroads.

I went up from the only southeast access road off Zhishan. That way is pretty steep with lots of switchbacks. The highest point I reached was decent at below 1,700ft., but doing more of the mountain range goes considerably higher. Getting close to 1,700ft. on some Taipei area climbs is success, but in Yangmingshan, it's just passing through.

Yangmingshan from Zhishan Rd. exploratory foray:

After 3 mornings of fading in and out sleep with continued crazy, carnival-esque dreams, I should have and did anticipate insomnia; back-end this morning after 3 hours of sleep. On the other hand I could have reverted to normal sleep like I had last week. There are no patterns or predictors what sort of sleep I'll have.

And it's useless to make any connection between insomnia and the fact that I went on a ride yesterday with over 2,700' of climbing total. That's a lot for me these days. The most in a long time, I shouldn't wonder. It did entail, however, freely allowing myself to go down to the granny gear and even the lowest gear and going as slow as I was able. At my age, it's encouraging that when every next section of climbing appeared, I just had at it and tackled it despite being at no impressive strength or speed.

Energy expenditure has nothing to do with insomnia, nor does fatigue. Yesterday was a warm one as days have been getting cooler into autumn. Climbing was hot and when I got home, I used the air con to lower my core temp (air con has been off for several weeks now). My body temperature remained high into the evening and night and it may or may not have contributed to insomnia.

Today was a wreck. Probably because I started drinking even though insomnia. I think there's a window in which insomnia combined with alcohol leads to a mess of a day. If I had managed to lay off for several hours, I may have been fine. Instead I put on a DVD of a movie, "Suzhou River"; an art/foreign film I used to love, but I'm not sure where I stand with film now. I enjoyed watching it, but not with the depth I did when the film first came out. I suspect the same with many films I've bought on DVD over the years.

I drank through the course of watching the film and did manage some zzzz's afterwards. Riding and gym were eliminated as options but I productively got laundry done. Including my sheets, which requires going to a laundromat to dry them before use at night.

Laundromat has come to mean Domino's pizza, which is on the way to the laundromat. Wash the sheets at home, en route to dry them place an order at Domino's, dry sheets, pick up order on the way home. In the U.S., I never ordered from Domino's, but here it's a taste of home. I'm not sure I appreciated it as much slightly sloshed as I would sober.

Triumph! My method in trying to get my climbing legs in shape has been wrong all year. I kept getting discouraged struggling on what I was calling "training climbs". Actually the climb I kept struggling on was an actual climb, not just a trainer.

It's not high, it's not long, but it has challenging steep sections for someone my age. If I had to categorize Taipei climbs, it would be a category 5. The lowest in difficulty, but it's not an automatic breeze to get up it like my other training climbs.

Anyway, all this year I've been trying to prepare for bigger climbs, only to be thwarted by long periods off-bike because of weather or being discouraged by struggling on training rides. 

Recently I had a spell off-bike for no reason. There has been fine weather in the past few weeks and I couldn't make it out for a single ride. I even finally bought one of those chain-cleaning machines to alleviate the guilt of not maintaining my bike properly (although I wonder if part of the difficulty getting out on a ride is because my chain was finally pristine and I didn't want to muck it up!).

So coming into this most recent opportunity to get out on a ride, I said fuck it, no more training climbs. I'm hitting the big climbs and see what happens. I'll freely go down to the lowest granny gear, I'll crawl at 3 miles per hour, and if I really can't go on, I WILL abandon and come back down and do whatever alternative ride and not be disappointed.

So I chose the closest obvious big climb to do in the mountains north of Taipei, starting in Neihu and riding up to a gap from where you can alternatively go to Wanli on the northeast coast, or come back to Taipei's Shilin district, or take any of several routes on the same side (south) of the mountain range down to Xizhi and return to Taipei.

I had no expectations. I could have abandoned as soon as I hit the lower slopes of the climb. And, yea, I felt it right away. Immediately I was struggling with breathing and focused on maintaining cardio-vascular stability; deep breaths to get any remaining alcohol metabolized through my system.

For breakfast I had half of a leftover Quizno's tuna sub and that was in my stomach. I usually don't eat breakfast or eat much before rides, and I felt it when my stomach decided it needed to digest it in a rush for more energy.

I don't know how physiology works, but I felt the sharp pain in my stomach as I continued on the climb, and it felt like an increase of acid to metabolize the sandwich into energy. Anyway, the pain didn't last long, and the higher I went, the higher the gear I was riding on.

It could be that the slopes are steeper lower down and ease off higher up, but I was able to get off the granny gear higher up. The important thing is I didn't abandon. My condition is no where near where it was when I was riding in San Francisco, and I'm not so reticent about riding in lower gears. Now, if I can manage it, no matter what gear, I'm alright with it.

And I completed the climb. Unfortunately it wasn't the 2,000 ft. climb I thought it was. It was 1,950'. Psychological disappointment. In these cases, you want to break that 2,000 ft. threshold. And as many routes lead up to that pass, they only go as high as 1,950'. I'm targeting a climb over to Pingxi next.

This after a night of total insomnia. After several incidents of one-offs of insomnia, this appears to be a stretch of it. A stretch of back-end insomnia maybe I can deal with, but add in total insomnia, well I guess I'll just report on it. 

Today was forecast to not rain, and even though the rain is supposed to return tomorrow and for the forecast future, I decided to go out on my bike just to see how it felt. I figured with going to the gym, my fitness should be pretty good and I contemplated doing two small climbs to end up in Shenkeng and stopping for stinky tofu and then either a third climb to come home for a 30 mile ride, or take the riverside bikeways home for a 40 mile ride.

Instead, I decided to do my default 32 mile bikeway ride with a 4 mile extension, which is all flat. This default ride is the one I do to check my fitness after long periods of time off bike. When I committed to start riding again at the end of last year, that's all I did for a while. It did feel good being back on my bike, but very quickly I knew I wasn't up for anything. I wasn't going 30 miles, much less with the extension. Those hills were out of the question. I settled for cutting the ride short to a 20 miler and getting home intact.

It did occur to me that even with regular workouts at the gym, none of that compares with the real thing; going out and doing something that can be considered sport. But in retrospect, I think what might have beat me down was the midday heat. It was hot and I knew it. I don't think my GPS has a temperature sensor, but the Garmin ride data includes temperature, which might come from internet sources(?), and the average temperature for the ride is 95 degrees! Significantly hotter than anything I've ridden in in recent memory. Anyway, I'll go back to my policy of riding any day the weather permits, even if it's just one day in a two week period.

I mentioned before that on high school track, my coach noted that I ran the 110m hurdles faster than the 100m sprint. At the time I actually did realize a reason for that. It was desperation. When trained for the 110m hurdles, I was taught that between each hurdle were three steps plus the landing step (or take off step depending how you look at it). So feet hit the ground four times between each hurdle. This was not easy for me. It required a vast stretch in stride to accomplish. And this is going to sound ridiculous if it even makes any sense, but the only way I could complete the race was by hearing the rhythm of that famous piece in "Carmen" in my steps. Doing hurdles for me was "bum-badum-dum/bum-badum-dum/bum-badum-dum...". And in desperation to keep that rhythm, I had to push myself which in the end decreased my time. True story.

Westward bikeways (Erchong)

Running out of steam on this getting-back-into-cycling-thing-because-now-I-have-a-GPS. I've started shying away from climbs (which was the thrill of cycling when I first started), ergo this quick and completely flat bikeway ride.

And after this ride, I won't ride for nearly three weeks despite numerous perfect days for riding, and by the time I go for another ride, summer will be officially over and it will show in the weather and temperatures. A typhoon will also stymie any attempt to ride through that third week.

Perfect weather days, I plan to ride, but then I just can't bring myself to drag my ass and my bike's ass out of the apartment.

I've noticed that these Garmin maps don't always load properly on the first try and require reloading to appear. The mildly perplexing part of that is that when they don't load properly, the default map is Manhattan, which includes my childhood stomping grounds in New Jersey, including Fort Lee.

It's a map that's immediately recognizable and as my childhood stomping grounds, has a hint of "home". Certainly more home than any map here in Taiwan.

Xindian->Rt. 110->Dahan River east bank

This was a revisit of a ride that I used to do when I lived in Xindian, south of Taipei. Now I live in east Taipei, and the rides I discovered while I lived in Xindian require the extra ride of going to south of Taipei, so I haven't done any of them in quite some while.

Although I knew this ride could be of considerable distance, I knew this ride didn't have any challenging climbs. As it turned out, at 35 miles, it wasn't even of considerable distance, although there were a couple of ways I could've extended it well beyond 40 miles.

This ride had 3 sections: the urban ride through Taipei and down through Xindian, then the significant portion of the ride on route 110, which is pretty rural and contains the only modest climb, and then the return home which is almost all on riverside bikeways.

Towards the beginning of the route 110 section, I caught up and passed another cyclist who was decked out in full cycling gear, riding a fancy bike. I wasn't trying to be dominant or drop him, I was simply riding faster than him at that point.

It didn't bother me when he got on my wheel and got in my draft. Sadly, many Taiwanese riders I've encountered aren't aware of cooperative drafting and their responses to me drafting them have been pretty variable and some silly.

Basically drafting is when you ride right behind someone else. The person in front is doing all the work of cutting through the air, and the person behind benefits from being in the slipstream and not using as much energy to maintain a certain speed.

In professional cycling, a person takes a turn in front and then peels off and goes to the back to let someone else take a turn. In hobbyist road cycling among strangers, it's not that organized or certain that they have the concept, and if someone gets on someone else's wheel, instead of the person in front peeling off, the person behind will push forward to let the person in front know they are taking a turn.

And with this guy, I thought I found someone who knew drafting etiquette; he got on my wheel and then pulled in front to take a turn, then I pulled in front to take a turn, but then he pulled in front on a hill and dropped me. He even looked back to see if I was going to challenge him. Fuck no, you keep your Tour de France fantasy, I'm too old for this shit.

I dunno. Did he think it was some competition? I sure didn't and didn't give a crap. Although the fact that I couldn't keep up with him emphasized the fact that I am old and I've gotten seriously weak, and should be wondering how long I'm going to keep this charade up just because the market has produced the bike GPS device I wish had existed more than 10 years ago.

泰安路 (Taian Road, 1,473 ft.), Cidu

Another example of the advantage of having GPS on a bike. I was planning on doing a tried and true ride out to Ruifang and Taiwan's east coast and looping back through Keelung and heading home. I recall the ride being long, but with only a little climbing.

But while heading out to Ruifang, I came across a road that had always intrigued me and made me wonder if there was anywhere worth riding. There was a bunch of signage at the intersection that led under a railroad overpass that made me think it was a tourist destination.

So I checked the GPS, found that it was a climb, but it was an out and back road. It didn't go anywhere. I decided to abandon the original ride and do the climb, knowing it was out and back, and having done an unplanned climb, I could just go home with a satisfactory ride.

The climbs I've been doing have been increasing little by little. I'm still convinced I'm cooked on climbs, due to age and/or alcohol. I just can't do them like I used to. I have yet to break either a 2,000 foot climb or 2,000 feet of accumulated climbing.

And there are limitations to the GPS because of human error. I found a certain bridge closed on my return home, and in plotting an alternate route to bypass the bridge, I didn't follow what looked on the map to be the most direct way to get back on the road to Taipei and went on what was familiar and "made sense" and ended up taking the long way just to backtrack to the exact opposite side of that closed bridge. I ended up riding several more miles than I had to, albeit the shorter way would've been through car and truck-choked urban streets of Xizhi.

Shortening miles isn't necessarily the point of rides or GPS, but sometimes it comes in handy when running out of fuel or time.

Danshui

Completely flat ride to Danshui, one that has been typical during the past two years that I say I haven't been riding. Riding on riverside bikeways is not riding. Training perhaps. There's nothing challenging about riding on riverside bikeways aside from not getting annoyed at other people on them who aren't cyclists or who don't know proper etiquette.

The big loop on the map is due to the GPS when I decided to test navigation using the GPS without having pre-planned where I was going, and it worked like a charm and I was easily able to figure out where I was and where I wanted to go based on previous experience (although annoying is that the MRT red line is depicted by a . . . red line, the same that indicates the GPS route).

Shenkeng-Shiding climb

Shenkeng-Shiding climb

This ride was the product of having a GPS on a bike, for better or worse. The GPS allows, either upon doing or reviewing a ride, to discover other possible routes and roads to try. In this case it was a road that I noticed and decided to try. It was a climb and slightly higher than the climbs I had been doing, and ended up in familiar territory.

As a climb, it was fine, and fortunately with the GPS, when I went off course two times, I noticed and was able to get back. But the descent into Shiding was pretty miserable with ridiculously steep downhills and ending up on a bit of road that was unpaved, making this a ride that I won't be doing again.

I thought of returning to Taipei using an easy climb from Shenkeng that I found earlier, but I started late in the afternoon and it looked like it might get dark while still on inclines, so I abandoned that idea and backtracked my way home.

two easy climbs

FDK->ShenKeng->舊莊 (2 easy climbs)

This turned out to be an anti-climatic ride. The first climb was Fudekeng that I'm well-acquainted with as an easy climb. I anticipated the second climb to be more challenging in my old age and alcoholism, and while doing it I was constantly paranoid of finding I couldn't do it. After multiple instances of going down to my grandpa gear, I realized the climb wasn't going any higher and I was on the descent, and it was, in the end, easy.

Qidu hills

七堵 hills (Keelung)

Because of this Garmin GPS, I've been starting to ride again for the first time in two years. I don't think I rode at all last year, and any riding was all on flat, off-road riverside bikeways.

Unfortunately, due to age and alcohol intake, I'm a lot weaker now than I was even 4 years ago and hills are killing me. I just can't tackle them the way I used to and I wonder if I'll be able to even challenge more serious climbs.

But I've been testing myself on lesser climbs. The climbs in Cidu, east of Taipei and a part of Keelung district, I knew were probably manageable. Although before the GPS, I never got a feel for the routes because the previous times I went there, there was always some issue that never allowed me to discover a definite route through the hills. 

Now it all makes sense, and there is a definite main course through the ride, and with variations that can take me into Keelung or other routes to complete the same climbs. With a maximum height of 858 feet, it should be a very manageable climb, and after the first cursory moments of suffering, I did manage it just fine.

And the GPS has been awesome in keeping me on course. Already several times I've started in the wrong direction and then noticed it only because of the GPS and was able to turn around and not get lost. 

Minor double climb

Fudekeng/Jiannan double climb

Neither Fudekeng nor Jiannan is a major climb. Fudekeng is a 600 foot climb on an easy grade, and Jiannan is a slightly steeper grade, but a lesser 500 foot climb. The two climbs are separated by almost 10 miles of flat riverside bikeway (about 37 minutes).

I did cut this ride short because of time, and once I finished the Jiannan climb and descent into Shilin district, near the National Palace Museum, I took a shortcut through a tunnel back into Neihu district where the climb started, rather than taking an extended route on the riverside bikeways in Shilin, which was the plan, which would have added perhaps a few miles to the route, and which I'll probably do at some point.

Testing. And blowing my mind. And pondering:
FDK->ShenKeng->full bikeways home

So about that windfall I mentioned. I've been loosening my attachments towards money, about which I profess is not an issue in this lifetime, and it isn't. I really believe it isn't.

I've been buying stuff, but it's not like I'm suddenly indulging in new found luxury. Mostly I've just been replacing stuff that I've been holding out upgrading. And the things I've been upgrading have been long due.

The Casio G-shock altimeter watch replaced the Timex Helix that I've had for about 10 years and which finally died while I rode over cobblestones that it couldn't handle. My focus on G-shock was specifically related to that.

I bought new tires for my bike, which replaced tires I bought 4 years ago, and it was not the first time I rode tires to the point of being able to see the steel wires at their core. Believe me, by that point, you've been riding on tires much too long.

New cycling gloves were not a big deal, but the cycling shorts I've been riding on for the past 10 years, I can tell you 10 years is beyond their lifetime. Extended rides were getting reasonably painful and my new padded shorts have been . . . just fine.

And my new shoes are no joke. I can't believe I've been suffering my old cycling shoes for over 10 years. They'd gotten to the point of being painful on extended rides (not unlike the shorts), and with the new shoes extended distances put no further strain on my feet.

I really appreciated the local Giant bike shop from which I got my new shoes when they told me the clips on my old shoes were fine and could be transferred onto the new shoes and I didn't need to replace my pedals.

But the point of this post is the Garmin Edge 800 bike GPS I bought. All of the things I've purchased as a result of this recent windfall has been replacement stuff or enhancement of perishable stuffs. That's important. If I'm spending money to acquire stuff, there needs to be a point.

I justify the Edge 800 purchase because it is something I wanted all along. It sucks that this technology comes so late in my life. It is exactly what I would have wanted 10 years ago when I was doing rides around the Bay Area.

I'm not riding like I was 10 years ago, nor am I the rider that I was 10 years ago. 10 years ago I was tackling hills of any size with gusto to test myself. Now, I'm struggling with hills, wondering if I can do the easiest of them. Buying this Edge 800 GPS unit is basically just an overdue gift to myself.

I would have loved to have a device that recorded my rides 10 years ago in the Bay Area; climbs, altitudes, pace, routes, etc. I was just happy with my basic Cateye bike computer that told me distance and speeds.

In the same way I would have loved to have grown up with an iPod, being able to put all the music I found in one location. Keeping all the music I found despite technology advancements from LPs to cassettes to CDs to MP3s.

But without the technology lag, I wonder if artists would have found the freedom to create the music they did before technology became such a dominant factor in consumers' lives.

I was into 70s progressive rock and 90s indie rock. Could either of those genres have survived in the digital era? I honestly don't know. But they did survive in people appreciating them like me in spite of the digital era.

I can only wonder if future generations can appreciate that kind of music. If they can, it's their gain. If they can't, it's not their loss, I shouldn't wonder. If they don't appreciate it, you can't fault them. It's just not for them.

Time has passed me by through technology. I didn't need to buy this Garmin Edge 800, I don't need my iPod(s). They enhance my appreciation of my general being here, but I'm not attaching to them.

As a product review, the Edge 800 is everything a cyclist could want in a bike mounted GPS unit, I shouldn't wonder. Certainly future models might improve on it, but until that happens, you need to have a pretty specific workout routine to be unhappy with this product.