A friend of mine insisted on bringing a GPS for our bicycle trip through Europe.
From the beginning, the GPS took center stage.
At every fork in the road, instead of broadly riding in the right direction, we had to stop so he could determine which was the correct path on the tiny black-and-white display.
And half the time, he was wrong. The punch line came when a bike path he found on his device turned out to be a stair going up a 200m high hill. Took us 2 hours to get up there cause we first had to carry our bikes up, then our luggage.
The first half of the trip he spent hours trouble-shooting the connector he had built himself to keep the GPS batteries charged off the hub dynamo.
The second half of the trip we had to book camp-sites or hostels most of the time, instead of just sleeping under the stars, because the charger still didn’t work, but THE DEVICE NEEDS POWER.
tl/dr: it sucked a lot of fun out of the trip. And it made me avoid all electronics on bicycle trips ever since.
Now when I ride, my phone stays in my pocket (for emergencies). I navigate by the sun when it’s shining and a compass otherwise.
At the end of the day, I’ll look at a paper map to see if I’m broadly in the right place and to plan the next day.
The only time I’ll use my phone to navigate is when the bike breaks down or I run out of water, to find the quickest way to get help.
A friend of mine insisted on bringing a GPS for our bicycle trip through Europe.
From the beginning, the GPS took center stage.
At every fork in the road, instead of broadly riding in the right direction, we had to stop so he could determine which was the correct path on the tiny black-and-white display.
And half the time, he was wrong. The punch line came when a bike path he found on his device turned out to be a stair going up a 200m high hill. Took us 2 hours to get up there cause we first had to carry our bikes up, then our luggage.
The first half of the trip he spent hours trouble-shooting the connector he had built himself to keep the GPS batteries charged off the hub dynamo.
The second half of the trip we had to book camp-sites or hostels most of the time, instead of just sleeping under the stars, because the charger still didn’t work, but THE DEVICE NEEDS POWER.
tl/dr: it sucked a lot of fun out of the trip. And it made me avoid all electronics on bicycle trips ever since.
Now when I ride, my phone stays in my pocket (for emergencies). I navigate by the sun when it’s shining and a compass otherwise.
At the end of the day, I’ll look at a paper map to see if I’m broadly in the right place and to plan the next day.
The only time I’ll use my phone to navigate is when the bike breaks down or I run out of water, to find the quickest way to get help.