ColinJ
Puzzle game procrastinator!
- Location
- Todmorden - Yorks/Lancs border
It was nice to meet you too, Spuddy. 
I think you did well on the hills, all things considered. Once you get some more weight off and a few months more cycling done, your natural youthful fitness will emerge and then you would have to wait for me at the summits!
I think we were very lucky with the weather, avoiding the rain that we could see in the distance from the 2nd and 3rd summits.
I got back in daylight, with a total of 117 km (73 miles) ridden. I was very happy with that.
As I mentioned on the ride, I will be organising my annual ride from Whalley to the coast near Glasson Dock on either the last weekend in March or the first one in April. I'll check what else is planned and try not to clash with any other local rides/events.
I found out why I was slightly unsure which way to go at a few junctions today ... I forgot that the GPX file I uploaded to my GPS was one that I plotted before I found out about my Etrex's limit of 500 trackpoints per track. The file had 514 trackpoints. In such a case, the GPS handles this by throwing away every other trackpoint, so the device ended up with a simplified 257 trackpoint track. It doesn't sound like much of a problem, but it can be ...
It is a more sensible alternative to truncating the tracks, but the GPS doesn't tell the user that it has done it. The problem is that it can be quite misleading. For example if I had plotted a right turn off a first road onto a second road followed by a left turn onto a third road by placing a point on the first and second junctions and one extra point in between (which is how I would often do it), the GPS might mess that up and replace my informative double-doglegged track with a confusing diagonal line on the screen. I noticed that kind of thing several times on today's ride and wondered why I had been so careless when plotting the route. I hadn't been - I just made the mistake of not checking how many points were in the file. I could easily have cut 14 non-critical trackpoints from the file, rather than letting the GPS software throw away 257 potentially critical ones. I have edited the file now so it won't happen if I try to use it again in years to come!
I think you did well on the hills, all things considered. Once you get some more weight off and a few months more cycling done, your natural youthful fitness will emerge and then you would have to wait for me at the summits!
I think we were very lucky with the weather, avoiding the rain that we could see in the distance from the 2nd and 3rd summits.
I got back in daylight, with a total of 117 km (73 miles) ridden. I was very happy with that.
As I mentioned on the ride, I will be organising my annual ride from Whalley to the coast near Glasson Dock on either the last weekend in March or the first one in April. I'll check what else is planned and try not to clash with any other local rides/events.
I found out why I was slightly unsure which way to go at a few junctions today ... I forgot that the GPX file I uploaded to my GPS was one that I plotted before I found out about my Etrex's limit of 500 trackpoints per track. The file had 514 trackpoints. In such a case, the GPS handles this by throwing away every other trackpoint, so the device ended up with a simplified 257 trackpoint track. It doesn't sound like much of a problem, but it can be ...
It is a more sensible alternative to truncating the tracks, but the GPS doesn't tell the user that it has done it. The problem is that it can be quite misleading. For example if I had plotted a right turn off a first road onto a second road followed by a left turn onto a third road by placing a point on the first and second junctions and one extra point in between (which is how I would often do it), the GPS might mess that up and replace my informative double-doglegged track with a confusing diagonal line on the screen. I noticed that kind of thing several times on today's ride and wondered why I had been so careless when plotting the route. I hadn't been - I just made the mistake of not checking how many points were in the file. I could easily have cut 14 non-critical trackpoints from the file, rather than letting the GPS software throw away 257 potentially critical ones. I have edited the file now so it won't happen if I try to use it again in years to come!