Whimsical Friday: Bicycle Computers

[Whimsical Friday is a light-hearted note on any technology that impacts our lives in some form or fashion.]

The past few weeks I've been looking to upgrade my bike game, trying to find a fun activity to stay active, healthier, and have a better quality of life (well, that's what the cycling brochure said). In the past when I needed, and/or wanted, a new bike I would go to the nearest Walmart and purchase whatever bike that was on sale. Since I really wanted to do more than cruise the neighborhood I decided I would get a bike from my LBS (local bike shop).

Sticker shock aside, I was amazed at all the gadgets that were available for such a simplistic activity, gone are the days when you just buy a bike and a box of patches to repair the inner tube that would eventually blowout. The LBS had CO2, wedge packs, skinny seats, wide seats, platform pedals, clip pedals, front suspension, rear suspension, seatpost suspension, computers, yes computers and not to mention a whole line of clothing apparel. So much for my cutoff jeans and vintage University of Florida Gator tee shirt from 1984.

Since I’m a computer kind of guy, I decided to pushed the salesperson on the computer gadget to find out exactly what it did. "Does it calculate the wind resistance and the friction between the road and tires to adjust the tension in the crankset automatically? Or is it constantly monitoring the pressure in my tires to let me know when one of the tires is below the required PSI levels?" The salesperson replied, "No. It tells you your current speed, trip distance, and second-trip distance. And it’s all touch-screen." "What? A speedometer?" "Yes." "Why didn’t you just say that? Geez!"

I’m all for technology advancement, but just because a few LED’s, IC's, and a digital display were put into a speedometer, it’s still a speedometer. I suspect the name change was driven by dollars and cents, you can probably charge more by calling it a "computer" versus a speedometer. By the way, there’s an app for that!

So I jumped in my computer, I meant my car, and drove home without buying the bike. I’ll checkout Walmart this weekend to see what they have on sale.