Some software and hardware that proved helpful during the year.
VPN software
If you live somewhere where it’s become expensive to subscribe that’s frustrating but at least you have an option to pay. Here, a Virtual Private Network has been essential at times to watch the racing. But it’s not for everyone given watching races via the local channels means the language barriers. If you can clear that it’s enjoyable, and even educational if you like to learn a language by listening.
Yes there are questions of legality as every channel has terms and conditions but up to you to check the small-print for each channel and proceed or not.
Postcarry Transfer case
Travel by bike is great, but travelling with your bike can be fraught. I’ve rate the Fairman Rinko bag in a past piece because it is light and it compresses to less than the size of a bidon so you can haul your bike onto trains and into hotel rooms with no fee or fuss, but it’s so thin it offers little protection. There are plenty of travel bike cases on the market but some are so big they make travel awkward and take up space at home.
This case protects your bike for air travel but it’s gone in the back of small cars. You can carry it onto crowded trains and buses without bother. It’s also easier to wheel through streets and haul up stairs because it’s not so big. Once back home it can be rolled up to roughly the size of two yoga mats laid lengthways.
So far so good, but the price is is having to dismantle and rebuild each time for packing. You don’t just remove wheels, the seatpost and pedals, you also lift the bars off the steerer tube, remove the forks and undo rear mech too (their photo above). So you need to be comfortable doing this away from home and stay several days at a time in one place. Invariably what feels like a ten minute job takes way longer when outdoors with just a multi-tool. But it worked well for travel and you can stash clothes, helmet and shoes inside too. Also it depends on the airline but the reduced height+width+length size may count as normal hold luggage item and so save you fees.
Muc-Off Inflator
What could be more simple than a bike pump? A piston with two valves, a well-built one should last a lifetime. The trouble is either you get a big one and it is not obvious to fit on your bike, or you get a small one that’s still too big to fit in a jersey pocket but needs several hundred strokes to inflate a tire.
This Muc-Off Air Mach Pro came from a bike shop. It looks so similar to the Cyclplus models that they probably come from the same company so the review here is more generic. The battery will inflate five road 28mm tires. Not that you’d need it five times in a day but you get this from the same weight as two 16g CO2 cartridges with an inflator chuck, or a regular mini-pump.
Where the inflator delivered was on travels as it did the job of a floor pump while doubling inside a jersey pocket as a mini-pump. Deflate tires at the request of airlines, fit a new tire when away, or just adjust the pressure when wet or dry and the job gets done quickly and the displayed pressure seems accurate.
There are some downsides. It’s vacuum-cleaner loud. It’s not waterproof and if it comes with a ziplock pouch that’s proved flimsy. Above all, any device you rely on with a battery and moving parts means it goes on an unwritten pre-ride checklist where you ought to test from time to time as you don’t want to discover it’s bricked when away from home.
ccWay
There’s a French cycling club called the “100 Cols” where members must climb a hundred mountain passes to become a member. But in order to work out if an applicant has climbed 100 passes it seems they needed to create a database of mountain passes. Of every single one in France, paved or not. And Italy. And Spain and seemingly everywhere, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. It’s certainly comprehensive for most of Europe and rigorous too, a high road is not necessarily a pass. The database is open to all via the ccWay web page and it’s a powerful tool. Select the area you want, whether you want road only or off-road and you can download the results to open in Google Earth.
So far so good, but non-members are limited to 100 cols at a time so don’t select a country or an entire mountain range. Plus you’ll only get the location and height, not the name…but the map routing app Openrunner is partnered with them and uses their database and you can cross-check for the names of locations (screengrab pictured). You can buy catalogues from the 100 Cols too which gives you the names and supports their work at the same time.
All this is useful here for previews as races in the mountains often rename places – the Tour de France has the Col de Toses for the Collada de Toses on Stage 3 – or put the KoM point at a different point to the pass. It’s useful if you want to know where you’ve climbed on a trip. Google seems to be ubiquitous for maps today but it’s often missing labels for mountain passes.
Peakfinder app
If you’ve done the pass, what about the peaks above? Having tipped the rival PeakVisor app before, it became hard to use without a pricey subscription. Peakfinder feels better because you buy it for a one-off fee and they promise updates will always be free, refreshing for an app. When in the mountains just point your camera at the horizon and it’ll identify the mountains for you and you can label photographs. In case you’re wondering, that’s the city of Genoa and to the right, below Monte Reixa, sits Passo Turchino famous in cycling as part of the Milan-Sanremo route.