\u201cLost your little friend, have you?\u201d he said. \u201cHow are you going to cope now? You won\u2019t know what watts you\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Multiple national road champion on the bike and award-winning author Michael Hutchinson writes for Cycling Weekly every week.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s quite hostile to a lot of modern technology. Basically he objects to anything that needs a battery, because cycling is about honest physical work. There\u2019s an element of hypocrisy \u2013 he\u2019ll use a TV remote control, and if you tried to interest him in the authenticity of our parents\u2019 generation, where everyone either got up to change the channel or organised their family so that there was an eternal supply of seven-year-olds to do it for them, he\u2019d think you were an idiot.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll admit that I almost agree with him. There are days when I get in from a ride and have to carry out a sort of charging audit. Things I use regularly that need charging include a computer<\/a>, a power meter<\/a>, a heart rate monitor<\/a>, front and rear lights<\/a>, gears, phone, and (bone conduction) headphones<\/a>.<\/p>\n Their charging demands slip in and out of phase so that some days I need charge nothing, some days I need to find eight charging cables, in types covering the last fifteen years of standards from USB micro to USB-C, plus the weird charger for the gears. I know an engineer who\u2019s created a hydra-headed wiring loom so he can do everything at once while it\u2019s still on the bike. It makes his bike look like it\u2019s in intensive care.<\/p>\n It’s a dirty trick that the charging periods are so varied. My computer needs charging almost every day if I use the backlight. The front and rear lights are a matching set, but one needs to be charged 25% more often than the other. The Di2<\/a> gears need to be done maybe once or twice a season \u2013 honestly, it\u2019s so rare that it\u2019s more like a service issue. It\u2019s designed to make you forget about it till it goes flat abruptly at the most amusing point of a ride, like halfway up Hardknott Pass.<\/p>\n I could never have made a success of a secret motor, because it would never have been charged. On the final climb of the Tour of Flanders I\u2019d have hit the secret trigger and just got that bloop-bloop-bloop noise a pair of dying headphones makes.<\/p>\n I can understand where Bernard is coming from. I remember when the only thing on my bike that needed a battery was a little Cateye<\/a> computer that took an LR44 button battery. It needed changed about every two years. And it didn\u2019t matter if you forgot because the computer didn\u2019t really work anyway. The most interesting thing you could do with it was wind the wire connecting the wheel sensor very carefully and artistically around the front brake cable, thus demonstrating your attention to detail.<\/p>\n Cycling then was no different from cycling now. I don\u2019t think it was better or worse. The main downside was there was less data to obsess over. The main upside was there was less data to obsess over. And those cancel each other out.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n But we are where we are, and I\u2019m not luddite enough to go back on principle. Although I\u2019m not quite ready to buy a rechargeable electric mini-pump. And when I finally get there (and let\u2019s face it, I will) I won\u2019t tell Bernard.<\/p>\n
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