Bikes - Justin Foell

I got to ride bikes twice in Italy. The first time I almost died. But I chose to ride again because it was still wonderful in a chaotic way.

E-Bikes – a game changer

I rented a bike in Rome and also in Florence. Both were electric pedal assist. Riding them is so incredibly easy – you could blast around without ever breaking a sweat. E-bikes are a “no excuses” type of transportation.

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The annoying thing? Every city or municipality has partners with a different bike share company. In Rome I downloaded the app for Lime, signed up for an account, added my credit card, and found a nearby bike. Then in Florence I had to do the same thing on Ridemovi. A first world problem for sure, but still annoying.

I almost died ☠️

I set out from my hotel in Rome for the gluten free grocery store: Celiachiamo Lab. I fired up google maps with bicycling directions and set off. But there was trouble at one very complex intersection:

I was on the one-way road, on the right side (opposite the green arrow above) getting ready to turn right. What I didn’t realize is that when the light turned green the signal with the red arrow also turned green to merge together.

To give you an idea, I turned where the small black car is in the next photo. Not realizing more traffic was also going to be going to be merging – where the box truck is:

Luckily the front of traffic was a swarm of motor-scooters starting from a stop. They were able to quickly stop, honk at me, and let me clear the area 😰

In retrospect, the proper right turn probably should have followed this bikeway on the right:

See that sign with the bike and the arrow? ⬆️🚲 Well that means bikes ahead only. I missed that. (Barely) Live and Learn!

Once I cleared that intersection I was on a separated bikeway that was divine 🤩

Run whatchu Brung

I also observed what the local riders did… 🕵️

Before I left the US, I had a picture in my mind of Italians riding bikes. It’s the home of the the Giro d’Italia. Surely everyone would be riding Bianchi, Pinorello, or Colnago bikes – all with Campagnolo components.

Some folks were riding Bianchis and Pinorello bikes, but they were people that looked like they were serious about riding – going on bike-packing tours, or putting out some serious watts.

The bike I spotted that most closely resembled the picture in my mind was owned by a college-aged kid at the train station. He had a 1970s Motobecane. Sure, it’s French, not Italian, but it was vintage and it was cherry 😍

Everyone else just seemed to ride whatever they had.

Nothing really stood out amongst the regular bikes, but a couple brands seemed to be popular.

B’Twin

B’Twin is a store-brand of a sporting goods retailer called Decathlon. As the largest sporting goods retailer in Europe, I imagine it’s a bit like Dick’s Sporting Goods. Decathlon also has a Rockrider brand of mountain bikes and I also saw several of those.

Imperial

Imperial was the other brand that showed up a lot. You can see another in the background of the B’Twin photo. This one I really liked the color scheme on – especially the matching basket, grips, seat, and spoke-guard.

Strangely I couldn’t find any information about this brand on the internet. <Insert Jackie Chan “What?!?” Meme Here>. Seriously, internet dead-end. It’s not this Imperial Bicycles – they make components and exactly one model.

But these bikes were everywhere, both vintage and clearly brand new as the above photo would suggest. Maybe it’s a model or a style and not a brand?

Dangerous but Delightful

Riding in Italy was a bit harrowing at times. Their roads are very narrow, the intersections complex. Then you’ll find yourself on a delightful bikeway. It’s all part of the charm. Just own it. If you’re on an e-bike, riding near traffic doesn’t matter anyway because you’re going to be zooming upwards of 30km/h in seconds 🚲💨

If you have any leads on the mystery “Imperial” bike, let me know in the comments!

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Last year I officially gave up on my Fitbit Charge 4. It was great until it wasn’t. Since I’m a glutton for punishment, I got yet another fitness watch. This time, the Amazfit GTR-3 on a recommendation from a co-worker.

The pros and cons? Pros: great battery life, customizable color screen, built-in GPS. My only real complaint is around the face automatically turning on/off. When I look at the face it won’t always automatically turn on, so I’ll go to press the button on the side and a split second before I press the button, the face will self-activate.

What happens is similar to “Layout Shift” on websites. Your finger or cursor is over a button, then bam! Something else loads and moves something (that you didn’t intent to tap) right where you were.

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What happens with the watch is it displays the face for a split second, then goes into the menu system because I technically pressed the button while the screen was active 😖

The workaround for me has been to enable the always-on screen functionality, which lessens the battery life from 21-days to 7, but I’m OK with that because it beats charging every day.

GPS

What I really got it for was the GPS. I’ve only used for fitness tracking twice, but I can already tell it’s going to be a better experience. My first ride was on a company retreat in Mexico. There was a resort “Bike Tour” which I use in quotes because we rode bikes from the resort up the road to the adjacent marina town, and then went to the grocery store 🏪

Elapsed Time	Moving Time	Distance	Average Speed	Max Speed	Elevation Gain	Calories Burned
01:04:42 hours	00:19:50 hours	2.32 mi.	7.01 mph	11.24 mph	7.55 ft.	145 kcal

While I was in the grocery store, after a certain amount of time, it warned me about turning the GPS off to save battery while my activity was paused. Then when I unpaused it there were no issues 💪 (unlike my Fitbit). The only real issue was I forgot to press start until halfway to Puerto Morelos 😓

Take 2

Now that I’m home and winter seems to have actually gone away, I tried it with a bike ride here and everything went as planned.

Elapsed Time	Moving Time	Distance	Average Speed	Max Speed	Elevation Gain	Calories Burned
00:30:31 hours	00:23:56 hours	3.40 mi.	8.51 mph	18.82 mph	121.39 ft.	171 kcal

I’m looking forward to seeing how it does out on the water. That was the death-blow for my fitbit. When I’m in the water I don’t want to be fiddling with my phone. So far, so good 🤞

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Technology is great and technology sucks. It’s true that it’s the best of times and the worst of times. Technology is great when it works, but it’s terrible (and often unfixable) when it doesn’t.

This may be a farewell to my Fitbit Charge 4, and a warning to fitness tracker developers out there. Rigorously ensure sure it works or people will not just abandon your product, they’ll abandon your platform.

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Fibit

I thought the Fitbit Charge 4 was my answer to getting rid of my old Garmin. My handheld Garmin eTrex started turning off randomly. But when it worked, it worked – probably because it had one job: record GPS tracks.

I had some issues with my Fitbit losing GPS signal, but I thought they were fixed. But they’re not…

I brought my new kayak to Lake Minnetonka and planned to paddle around Big Island. I’ve tried both GPS settings on the Fitbit Charge 4: Built-in GPS and Dynamic. Dynamic will use your phone if it’s nearby, then fallback to built-in. That day, I had the watch set to “built-in GPS.” I went down to the dock and hit start on my Fitbit. It was still trying to get GPS signal by the time I had my boat ready.

I went out on the water thinking the clear view of the sky would help it quickly lock on to GPS signal. I sat there for several minutes, then decided to switch to Dynamic since I did have my phone in the boat. After several more minutes of no GPS signal, I got my phone out. Opening the Fitbit app on my phone immediately established GPS signal. So I got underway.

Then as I rounded the first corner of the island, the watch vibrated. The screen displayed “Cannot establish a GPS Connection. Turning GPS off” 😡

You can see how far I had gone when the Fitbit gave up, it’s the untracked distance between the start and finish point.

Elapsed Time	Moving Time	Distance	Average Speed	Max Speed	Elevation Gain
01:19:17 hours	00:52:12 hours	2.27 mi.	2.61 mph	4.87 mph	0.00 ft.

The Strava app proved to also have (different) problems than my Fitbit

Strava App

I already had my phone out of my dry bag, which I didn’t want to do, because I’m in the water 🌊 But here I was, so I fired up the Strava app and hit record. Before got into the channel I got out my fish finder just to see if there were any lively spots that we should hit later on the pontoon. 🎣

But while getting out the fish finder, the Strava app decided to engage “auto-pause.” Auto pause seems like a good idea until it doesn’t auto un-pause. I was on the other side of the island before I noticed it was paused. While on the water I had to figure out how to unpause. I went into the settings and turned off auto-pause. Auto Pause settings are accessible by using the gear icon from the record activity screen. Not the main screen gear icon. ⚙️

But it was still paused! The only way to forcibly un-pause the activity was to click “Finish” which brought me to a confirmation screen, then I was able to choose “Resume” which un-paused the activity. It’s not clear that there will be a confirmation after clicking finish, so I’m showing an example here:

Strava Finish Confirmation (use to un-pause)

You can see the line that goes through the island on my activity. Clearly I didn’t do that, but that’s how it will be recorded “because technology.” Now imagine if this was your first experience with either of these devices and services. I wanted to throw both my watch and phone in the lake! 💦

But since I’m a glutton for punishment, I’ll be trying something else to replace these failed experiments. Currently looking at the Amazfit GTR series watches because battery life looks good. Recommendations welcome – please comment with your suggestions!

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In 2019 I sold our old Alumacraft canoe to get two kayaks instead. It was sort of sad to see that old friend go. But it was purchased by a woman who worked for the Three Rivers Park District. I knew it was going to get way more use from her, so that made me happy.

In my shed I still had my canoe trailer for my bike, what should I do with that? An email to Wike revealed all I needed to carry a kayak with it instead was a different width crossbar. I made some measurements and ordered a new crossbar so I could keep the trailer for the ‘yak. Here’s how I tow my new Perception Joyride kayak:

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This kayak uses perception solo mounts for ram accessories like fishing rod holders. They’re two large screw-in ball mounts. There’s an interesting side-effect of using these mounts – the ball serves as a rigging point for the Wike trailer straps.

The best rigging setup I found is illustrated below. The wike towing tee has a strap that would normally hook up to a canoe seat, but instead I run it around the solo mounts (shown in red). Then the straps from the cart go over and in front of the solo mounts, securing the tee strap in place (shown in green).

One of the most important pieces of this setup is a third strap that is not provided by Wike, from their site:

A third line (you must provide) from the bow ties to the post of the ‘T’ to keep the front of the ~~canoe~~ kayak from tilting up or down.

I used a small bungee to go around the beefy perception handle at the front and secure the Wike tee to the front of the boat. It seems to be at the perfect angle where the back of the boat doesn’t touch the ground, and the tee is at an angle where it doesn’t interfere with my bike rack.

Death wobble ☠️

One issue I have yet to solve is a fish-tail that seems to happen when I’m going very slowly uphill. It seems the cadence of my pedaling while standing, and perhaps the sway of the bike combined with the short length of the boat create a feedback loop. What happens is the nose of the kayak starts to turn left and right. Then the feedback begins and it starts turning more and more, as my pedaling seems to amplify the effect 😲

Death wobble is a misnomer – nobody died. It only happens when I’m going up a hill at 4-5MPH. I only describe it as death wobble because the sensation can be a bit unnerving.

The solution might be to stay seated as long as possible and adjust my cadence. Maybe I could load the kayak to put a little more weight on one end? If you have any ideas, comment below and I’ll try ’em.

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I was really getting to love my Fitbit Charge 4. It ticked all the boxes I needed:

Built-in GPS
Integration with Strava
Great Battery Life

All seemed great, until it wasn’t. I did a ride with a friend in April and it inexplicably dropped GPS signal after 5 miles.

Elapsed Time	Moving Time	Distance	Average Speed	Max Speed	Elevation Gain	Calories Burned
02:53:01 hours	00:29:05 hours	4.90 mi.	10.10 mph	21.03 mph	73.16 ft.	1,304 kcal

My Fitbit stopped recording for some reason (said it lost GPS signal 😖). Actually went 16 miles, see https://www.strava.com/activities/5186103344 We went down Chicago to 38th. Continued south on Chicago then east on 46th to Sift. Then took the creek trail back to the river, then back the way we came.

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Then it happened again, and again, and again. I found myself having to use my phone to record the remainder of the ride. That is, if I even noticed that my fitbit had conked out.

I could be riding outside in perfectly clear weather and then BAM, I’d get the dreaded “Cannot establish a GPS Connection. Turning GPS off” message 😡 WTF? No option to retry or anything. My fitbit would say “we’re done here” and give up. Very frustrating.

I opened a support chat with Fitbit to see what’s up. They had me go through the usual paces of making sure it had a full charge, disabling/removing unnecessary apps, make sure the firmware was updated, double-checking the GPS settings. Then they put a “watch” on my account to see what the tracker was logging.

Charge 4 RMA

They saw the same problems I was having, and then they told me to send my unit in for a replacement. Curiously they didn’t tell me what they were doing – presumably they knew what the problem was and they had a newer hardware version of the Charge 4 that would remedy the problem. But I can’t tell what has changed since there’s no indication of hardware version without opening it up to look at the circuit board.

I did some testing and noticed a new behavior when doing activities that use GPS. When you go into a building, or tunnel, or someplace where GPS signal is lost, it doesn’t turn the GPS off, it starts looking for a signal – indicated by a dim arrow icon in the upper left.

To confirm that it’s truly fixed, I went to my piano lesson (which is in a basement) and left the GPS running the whole time – 30 minutes indoors. It never turned the GPS off and I was able to record my full ride home.

Elapsed Time	Moving Time	Distance	Average Speed	Max Speed	Elevation Gain	Calories Burned
01:27:29 hours	00:59:04 hours	8.98 mi.	9.12 mph	20.36 mph	208.66 ft.	514 kcal

More Fitbit Charge 4 GPS testing

I wouldn’t recommend doing this normally – searching for GPS signal is likely a very power hungry operation. If you’re stopping somewhere, best to hit the pause button and then resume when you leave.

Get it replaced

I’m not the only one having this issue, as indicated by this thread in the Fitbit community forum. If you have one of these, you should contact support to get it replaced. With the issue fixed, it’s great and I no longer worry about losing my riding log.

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Justin Foell

Technology, Bicycling, Hobbies, Kids, Life.

Category Archives: Bikes

Biking in Italy

E-Bikes – a game changer

I almost died ☠️

Run whatchu Brung

B’Twin

Imperial

Dangerous but Delightful

Fitness Watch Take 2: Amazfit GTR-3

GPS

Take 2

The State of Fitness Trackers

Fibit

Strava App

Carrying stuff by bike: kayak

Death wobble ☠️

Fitbit Charge 4 GPS woes

Charge 4 RMA

Get it replaced