Schwalbe Road Cruiser - Initial impressions

Just received a pair of new tires - 26 x 1.75" Schwalbe Road Cruisers from Wizbiker.com. With the ongoing discount the pair cost me Rs 1200, which is about the same as the Btwin slicks I had on earlier. Here are some initial impressions.

26x1.75 Schwalbe Road Cruiser ready for installation. "K-Guard" refers to the kevlar puncture protection belt, and "Active Line" refers to the 50 EPI (ends per inch) casing.

Coffeneuring 2015

I first found out about the Coffeeneuring challenge in Dec 2013, just as the 3rd edition of the challenge had ended. The challenge, in brief, is to ride (bicycle) to seven coffee-shops on seven weekends in October and November.

Hot filter coffee (Ride #4) on Karnataka Rajyothsava

Tour of Kaas and Mahabaleshwar (Part 2)

(Continued from Part 1)

I woke up just before sunrise to find the others already awake, taking photos. The view was breathtaking - the rising sun on one side, the serene lake on the other.

Tour of Kaas and Mahabaleshwar (Part 1)

I did a two day tour of the Kaas plateau, the valley of flowers near Satara in Maharashtra, with Rafi, Vidyasagar and Gautham. Rafi's plan was to take bicycles by Volvo overnight to Satara, then ride up to Kaas and camp somewhere en route to Mahabaleshwar. The second day, we would ride back down to Satara, and catch the returning Volvo to Bangalore.

The climb up from Satara to Kaas plateau

Smartphone as GPS

For quite some time I had wanted to get a GPS to log my rides, plan routes and navigate on recce rides. Although I had briefly considered getting a dedicated GPS unit like a Garmin or Magellan, I found the value of a generic smartphone hard to beat. In Aug 2012 I bought an entry level smartphone - the Karbonn A5, then a newly launched Indian mobile phone. That phone was great value for the price (Rs 5000) at the time - the GPS worked great (especially with AGPS), it had a fast CPU and loads of storage. Based on the experience, here are the reasons I'd prefer a (smart)phone over a GPS.