Inaugural ride on the Chameleon today. I rolled out to school for a talk @11am, then changed clothes and continued on to Tucson Mountain Park with Odin the great. We hit tech pass, JK trail and hedgehog before returning back through the university. In the end we had 30 miles and 2000 feet of climbing.
The new bike was a pleasure to ride. But I think I enjoy riding just about every bike I’ve ever owned. I didn’t fare too well on the technical climbs, but once I junk the riser bars for flats I should be in business. Odin wasn’t climbing so well either. The “ECC5” low-lockout on the Marathon was interesting, but Starr Pass isn’t the best place to test it out since all the climbs are very rocky and not all that steep.
I took both my eTrex Vista and the Magellan Sportrak Map in my camelbak. The multi-track playback is very interesting to watch. The differences in the algorithms used to collect data points become very apparent. The Magellan not only uses less points (it lost some detail), it also doesn’t drop points when there are changes in speed. The result is that the Vista produces tracks that are much better for playing back. The comparison of accuracy and overall position is also interesting, but it was not a fair test. They were on opposite sides (left and right) of me while I rode.
I hope to do a controlled test of 4 or 5 units before I lend them all out. The playback should be very interesting. I am a getting fair number of volunteers for my project, at last. So, the units should be disappearing soon.
The talk today was by Jim Gray–the main guy behind Terraserver. It was a good talk, but it was quite high level. He made a few interesting comments about the project which lead me to believe the future of Terraserver looks good.
Leave a Reply