Matt's Bike Thoughts

EDIT HISTORY: This post was initially published in February 2019, and updated in the summer when some firmware updates landed. Those firmware updates fixed a number of problems, but not all of them. It was updated again in October 2019 to try out the new firmware, which caused many of the old problems to resurface, effectively ruining the device. I've owned the Wahoo Elemnt Bolt for a while, and I like it. It has poor in-app route creation, and the battery life could be better. ( see my whole review here ) The Lezyne Mega XL GPS came out recently and seems like a better fit for bikepacking. Lezyne advertises a 48 hour battery life and much improved offline navigation and maps. It's also $50 cheaper. If the Lezyne delivers on it's promise, then it would be a compelling choice. I got it to test out and see how it works in real life scenarios. Side by side comparison tl;dr: The Lezyne has dramatically better route creation from the phone app. The Lezyne has bett...

I'm trying to do a bikepacking trip or tour every month this year. January's tour was a brief trip in the Southeast. My brother, my friend Robby, and I planned a three day excursion starting in Cedartown GA, going through the Talladega National Forest, and looping back around to Atlanta. There would be bike paths, forest roads, gravel, dirt, Alabama drivers, Georgia country roads, and finally Atlanta traffic. And rain. There would be a lot of rain. The forecast predicted that Saturday would be raining. The entire time. It would be a light rain, fortunately, so we departed with high spirits, rain jackets, and waterproof socks. The first bit of the tour took us on the Silver Comet bike path to the Alabama border, at which point it became remarkably less maintained. The Silver Comet became the Chief Ladiga Trail. The rain did not let up. Eventually, we reached the sublimely beautiful Talladega National Forest. The trees were mostly barren. We climbed to the top of the r...

I posted this review of the Wahoo Elemnt Bolt as a reddit comment a while back: I have a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt, and it's OK. I got it for recording my road rides and training more than for bikepacking, but I've used it for touring and bikepacking.  The "route me anywhere" feature is garbage -- it says it uses Google, but it consistently uses a worse route than any that the Google Maps app suggests. It only offers you one choice of route, and no ability to edit or reroute around obstacles. It only works online, so if you're in the boonies, you're fucked. You can only send directions from the app, so MTBProject app or Google Maps aren't useful. It doesn't take your location into account when searching, so I'll get a full page of search results for Idaho, New York, California, etc when I'm trying to find some generically named restaurant in Colorado.  Battery life is advertised at 15 hours. This is a "best case scenario" -- you need ...