0 points (view top contributors)
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I rode cages for about 15 yrs and recently went to Crank Bros Eggbeater SL’s and have never looked back. They are easier to deal with than cages and don’t get clogged up. They are easier to get out of than the cages for me and I don’t have any problems clipping out unexpectedly. They are in you’re price range and only weigh about 266g.
AK Dan,
Have you had a chance to try out the 60?
Give us a shake down report!
I have a sony cybershot 4.1 mp that I’ve carried hiking/motorsports/biking. Moisture has finally worked its way inside and occasionally causes problems. For as many places as its been it doesn’t owe me anything.
I rode cages for over 15yrs up until a couple of weeks ago. Fell over a few times and recently fell out of the cages a couple of times on xc stuff. No dh/freeride here.
I broke my cages and decided to go with a set of Crank Bros eggbeater SL’s and Lake shoes. I feel attached to the bike but when it’s time to unhook it’s almost automatic to step out and unhook. I’m sure a situation will come up where I fall over because I can’t get unhooked but even if you ride platforms eventually you fall over.
A buddy who just started riding is resisting any type of hook up to the bike. When we ride he is constantly getting his feet knocked off the peddles from the bumps.
I prefer the eggbeaters but wouldn’t hesitate to ride cages again. I doubt if I would ride any single track with out some type of hook to the bike. It just wouldn’t feel safe to me.
Try several setups and go with what works best for you.
Rider up!
I agree with the above that most here are focused on riding > posting.
I started here looking for mtb trail gps data so I could find and stay on the trails. Being in Oklahoma there wasn’t much gps data here and several of the trail sets we tried weren’t marked very well.
I stop in here now to submit gps data for the Oklahoma trails. Maybe it will help get someone out on the trails that wouldn’t otherwise give it a try!
Rider up!
Here’s the report from the weekend ride with the 60csx. I started the unit up with a new set of alkaline batteries when it arrived Wednesday night and played with it some everyday until our rides. I had the screen brightness on max the whole time.
Saturday morning my son and I hit both East side trails at Lake McMurtry. I had the 60 mounted up on the bars with Garmin’s mount. It mounts up tight and solid. Due to the thick bars on the Trance X2 I mounted it just inboard of my right shifter. At first I didn’t think I was going to like so far out but after using it, I like it there. Even on rough trails I can reach in with my thumb and work the buttons without letting go of the bar.
I did loop the carrying strap around the bars "just in case". Glad I did. 20′ into the ride it popped off. I clipped it back in and it rode there the rest of the weekend. We rode 50 miles over the three days and it never came out again. I feel confident that I didn’t have it clipped in correctly the first time.
With the 60 mounted up close to the right grip I was able to work all the buttons and access the menus even while riding. Even though it was sunny out and I was wearing pretty dark sunglasses I could still see the screen fairly well on the move.
Both trails have trees and ravines through out. In some places the trees are thick enough and ravines deep enough to block most of the sky. The 60 never missed a beat.
On Sunday we rode the SW trail at McMurtry; again with thick trees and deep ravines it worked and tracked perfect.
I uploaded the gpx files to singletracks. There’s been many trail revisions due to erosion from the version posted in 2005. I will ride and upload the NW trail soon as possible. It was changed some about 1 month ago as well.
After the Lake McMurtry ride the 1st set batteries showed about 1/3 power left so I changed them out for new ones. Overall I was impressed with the battery life since I messed with the unit quite a bit.
Monday morning we met up at the Tulsa Riverparks south end. We rode the paved trail which has mostly open sky. Again the 60 hummed along plotting our course with no complaints.
Due to an unusual incident I did noticed something pretty cool about the sensitivity of the altimeter. On the way back about 5 miles from the vehicles one of the guys hit a stick that some how sheared his rear detailer off. Remember, we are on a manicured path in town.
We started walking out and talking about how we could push him back to the cars when we lucked across an old tie down laying next to the curb. We grabbed it up and quickly hooked it onto my pack strap. The strap was about 10′ long. After a slow start we were chuggin’ along at 8 or 10 miles an hour and getting lots of funny looks. While towing another biker you become acutely aware of even small elevation changes. After a while I noticed I could predict subtle elevation changes coming up just before the extra mass of towed my buddy hit it. When the 60 showed the elevation move up I would lean into the peddles a little harder just before he hit the change. It was something to focus on while keeping the peddles moving.
I have tracked with my HTC-8925 phone with some success. (see Robbers Cave and Roman Nose on this site). Loss of signal in ravines and under a canopy plus short battery life sent me in search of a real GPS unit.
This 60 has it all covered plus its waterproof and has a great mount system!
What would I change? Well, I would have liked a choice of blingy colors! Barring that, as I stated before, the catch with Garmin is the added cost of maps since they are proprietary. I was able to find a third party street map that works ok but I’m going to ante up on the topo maps since I bought the 60 for bikin’!!
AK Dan,
I just got my 60csx last night. I did the online research for about 1 month and decided on the csx. I wanted it primarily for mtb tracks, but I also wanted something I could use in the car on vacations or to find the next mtb trail head.
For now I’m just using the very, very spartan base maps. In a month or so I plan on buying the TOPO USA.
After one whole day of familiarization I can say I made the right choice. The chip set is very sensitive and locks on quick even with a canopy, bridge or in a building. It’s fairly straight forward and easy to work. I also got the handle bar mount (lots of xc fun miles here) and car power cord.
A couple of pointers. The catch with the garmin is that their mapping software is proprietary. Only maps in their format will work which means you need to buy their pricey maps. I hear there are programs to do convert maps to use but I haven’t spent much time on it.
The second is to get the larger storage card. Garmin’s site and other stated it will only accept a 2gb card. I have a 4gb scandisk microSD running in mine. I have transferred tracks to and from the unit and displayed the track on the unit so at least my 60csx with software version 3.70 will work with at least a 4gb card. Garmin’s whole topo USA is about 1.6gb according to other posters.
Dig pretty hard on the online prices, I found huge differences in prices for these units. Even big online seller’s prices fluxuated as much as $50 on any given day.
We have a three day weekend of riding coming up so I will report back!
I’ve used the 8925 several times to track. It works about 80% of the time. It seems to lose signal under the trees then it has a hard time getting signal back while were moving.
It works find just to play around with but if you want to count on it I don’t thinks its reliable enough.
From my experience’s I’m getting a dedicated GPS and mounting it on the handle bar so it will do a better track.
My son and I just ran our first GPS track with a program called GPS Tuner.
It worked pretty well with an HTC 8925 PPC.
Here’s an online photo album that includes a jpeg of the track.
[url:6a3l1ln3]http://picasaweb.google.com/itzoomz/2008RobbersCaveBikin#[/url:6a3l1ln3]
The only trouble I’ve had is finding detalied maps of the remote areas around here to put the tracks on.
