Technology – bikesbabesbytes

InReach Mini 2 First Impressions

If you’re not sure, the Garmin Inreach is a Satellite communicator. Basically it’s a global SOS button. Like an EPIRB, but with a few extra tricks up its sleeve. It can also text message from anywhere in the world, and has some limited navigation functions. I have seen a few of the global motovloggers wearing one, and at least one has actually used it. I had been thinking about getting something like this as I ride alone most of the time, and am occasionally out of normal mobile phone coverage. They were reasonably pricey though.

One popped up for sale, second hand but new in the box. About 40% of full retail. It did seem to be a little too good to be true, but I still got in touch with the seller, who lives about an hour and a half away. I organised to pick it up and pay in person, that way, if it was a scam I would be able to see that before any money changed hands. If it was a scam, at least I got a half day ride on a nice day.

It wasn’t a scam, so I got a nice, half day ride and a brand new Mini 2 for cheap.

I had already downloaded the Garmin Messenger and Explore apps and had set up a Garmin account. So when I got the Mini 2, I simply had to pair it with each of the apps, yes both separately. I did have to get into settings and change everything to metric. I don’t have the InReach (this is the satellite subscription part) set up yet, and I probably won’t until the October holidays, so I can just sign up for the month I’m actually using it.

I started Tracking and got on my way.

I stopped about half an hour later and looked at my track. It jumped all over the place, but I realised that with Tracking set to standard, being on a bike I was covering a lot of distance between the points that it was measuring (it looked to about every 10 minutes or so). So the “track” had simply joined each point together with a straight line, which looked ridiculous on the map.

I switched it to “Detailed” and acknowledged the warning about battery life. In my usage situation, I would expect to be able to charge it every night, or worst case, I can change it from a battery pack. Someone who’s a bit more remote might have an issue.

Upon my arrival at home, I looked again at the track. This time, apart from the period in a tunnel, the track from the Mini perfectly matched my route. Even when I was on a back road that paralleled a main highway, it had me on the road. I could see it on the Garmin Explore app (which I think also uses your phone’s location services as well).

The Mapshare. You can see the first part is just straight lines, but then it goes all wiggly as it follows my track on the back roads (after the settings change).

I also activated my MapShare. This means that when I record an activity on the Mini, my phone will upload it to the MapShare. I’m not sure if this occurs at the end of the ride, or during, or if this is different with the satellite subscription. I’m guessing that without the subscription, if I open the Garmin Explore app and the phone has data service that it will sync. I’ll need to look at that.

I shared the MapShare with my folks and they were able to see where I had been that day.

What I expect to happen, is that in October, I’ll set up the satellite subscription, then go on a couple of sample rides, before the MotoGP trip, just to make sure I know how it works. Then I will set it up so that its tracking is set to detail, but upload maybe every half hour or so? That will my family and a few friends see where I am.

The hardest part of understanding the InReach system was the Tracking and the Tracking Interval. There are settings for the Tracking, which is the GPS side of the Mini 2 recording my location at a set interval, and then there are settings for Tracking Intervals, which is how often the InReach satellite side of the Mini 2 will upload your Tracking. If you have a subscription. Both are set on the device, but you need the subscription for the Tracking Intervals. YOU DON’T need the subscription just to have detailed Tracking and having it sync with your Garmin Explore app on your phone.

The SOS part would be primarily as a safety for when I’m out of phone coverage, mostly as I’m crossing the Snowy’s and maybe the Victorian Alps or the backside of the Blue Mountains. Most of the rest of the way it will be a backup to the phone.

An extra layer of security for me, and, as several YouTube videos highlight, anyone I might come across that needs help too.

2022 – a year in review

If you say that right, it even rhymes!

2022, things change, things get back to normal.

About Bikes

MOTOGP! Finally. And the ride there and back was great, and the racing was excellent. I stayed in budget (very important this year). I camped, I had adventures… yup, read the two stories here and here. Was worth the wait. The only thing that didn’t work out was Jack Miller getting taken out by Alec Marquez at the new “Miller Corner”. I do think I will stick to my two year cycle and aim for 2024 for my next ride down. It’s at an awkward time of the year, work wise.

I hit most of the roads I had planned, changed a few over, mostly due to the bad weather.

Otherwise the bike was a garage queen at least by comparison to how it (and my other bikes) have lived. It was lucky if it got a ride to the shops once a week. As the year finishes off, I think I’m in the market for a new battery. Even commuting is off the menu at the moment, as work is only 10mins away and I drop my two kids at school on the way.

I got a new bike… sort of. It was fun to build at any rate.

No bicycle riding to speak of really. Some fitness rides on the commuter.

Enjoying the sunshine and open space…. in the middle of the suburbs?

About Babes

Two girls in high school. Both doing well. One won a State Championship for her gymnastics so really well done there. Next year will be interesting as the other one can start learning to drive!

About Bytes

Nothing hugely dramatic here. My Surface is finally getting used a lot, I use as my school device and it’s been great. Except for a dead TypeCover. Replaced, but I am suspicious of the durability of this part.

I upgraded my iPad Pro 9.7 (v1) to the Pro M1 11”. It has been excellent, really nice jump in performance from my last one. They did eventually release an M2 version as I suspected, but it didn’t get the mini-LED display, so I don’t feel like I missed anything. Its keyboard cover has also deteriorated (common theme this year), there are some places where the soft covering material has worn through. It is still working, but has been put away and hasn’t been replaced.

The new PC has been working fabulously, though I really should step up the graphics card. Otherwise it’s been fast and reliable. I’ve since spent many hours using it for gaming, completing the last 3 Tomb Raiders and spending over 100hours in the Baldur’s Gate 3 pre release.

The iMac also has been going well. It has also recently received a new keyboard, a Logitech MX Keys (not the specific Mac one). I’m really happy with this keyboard too.

Having all these devices has meant all my work is available everywhere. The school mostly uses Google’s environment so that was something to get used to. But with it all in the cloud (along with my OneNote) it’s easy to work anywhere. I also switched over to iCloud Photos and this has been working well too.

D&D has been fun all year. Wild Beyond the Witchlight finished up just a few weeks ago. That was a fun campaign for all. It’s been replaced by a journey in the Dungeon of the Mad Mage, which I am not DM, so currently I am a player in 3 campaigns (Dungeon, Strahd and a face to face home-brew) and not a DM anywhere. It’s so relaxed! Strahd is likely to finish up soon and the DM wants to put us in Spelljammer (D&D in space). I have never played in that environment, so I’m a little unsure. I’m writing my own home-brew adventure for when I get a DM slot again.

About Me.

My offical career change occurred in mid-April (not Christmas as planned), I stayed in order to finalise a couple of medical issues with work. Even though that was the offical date, I was on holidays from that work from Christmas until April and actually working as a teacher full time.

I am enjoying my teaching. My school has a really nice community working environment. There are some challenges, partly due to the children and partly due to my limited experience. However, the school has always been supportive.

The pay is a significant cut from my old pay, at least in these first couple of years. Once I complete my proficiency after two years it will jump up and be a lot closer. I don’t think it will ever surpass it.

To help make up for this, I have secured some part time work in my old career for the school holidays and that will be a nice bonus for me. It’s also a way to stay relevant and connected to that old career in case I am needed.

Next year will see me having my own class, and it looks like it will be a Year 5/6 one. Equally excited and nervous, but everyone at work assures me I will do a great job. That makes me feel very supported, but then also nervous that I don’t want to let them down!

My class, as it was handed to me… a blank slate.

2023, here goes…….

MotoGP Trip – Sorted out my data problem

I had planned to to get a new action camera and had been looking at one of the Insta 360 cameras, but I simply can’t afford it. So I’ll stick to my Sessions that I’ve been using for recording my trip to the MotoGP.

The problem I was trying to understand was how all these vloggers were going on trips, recording lots of video data and how they were storing it, or getting it from their cameras and clearing their memory cards etc? But some of these folks have about 3 cameras and a drone and what not else…

Obviously, one option is just have stacks of micro SD cards. Alternatively they could back it to a cloud drive (but how do they do that when out bush?)? I know some vloggers also carry laptops, which is an obvious solution. And I am planning to bring my iPad.

I have pondered this on and off over the past. This morning I was digging around in my cupboard for another reason while waiting for some data to copy off one of my SD cards when I happened to pick up my NvME disk. Now I bought this by mistake when I was rebuilding the PC as I didn’t realise that there were two formats for these new M2 drives. I reordered the correct one for the PC and put the (used and opened) NvME one in my drawer.

Some time later, but still a while ago, I bought an external case for the NvME thinking it could make a great USB expansion for my iPad Pro (with USB-C). But with everything in the cloud…. it’s not used so much.

Anyway, I picked this up and an idea struck me.

Maybe I could copy from the SD card to the NvME drive. I already also bought a USB-C micro SD card reader. I could copy the videos to the iPad and then unplug and copy to the M2. The M2 is 500GB after all.

Ahh, rubbish, the iPad is a bit full, and likely to get more full when I load movies and shows for my trip.

Wait, I also have a USB-C port hub, with an SD reader and a USB-C port. I could plug them all into the iPad and just copy across.

It would probably be slow….

So I tested it.

Copied a 2GB video in well less than a minute (more like 30secs).

There does seem to be a bit of a lag when you select Copy before you can switch drive and Paste.

It does look a little ungainly, but the USB hub can also accept power, so I can charge the iPad (if needed) at the same time.

But nevertheless I consider that one solved.

Hmm, looking the iPad has 135GB free… maybe I’ll just copy it there and off again….

The Purge

Nope, not the series of movies/TV Show about a solution that only America could come up with…. No I’m talking about MacOS and the purging of deleted files.

Having finished Tomb Raider, I decided that with my current bent on D&D that I might try a D&D computer game. The most current (it’s still in pre-release) is Baldur’s Gate 3. I’ve not played any of the others but it’s based on 5th Edition, that I play regularly. So I handed over my money and as TR was finishing, I started a download.

INSERT SPONGEBOB “A FEW HOURS LATER”

I started it in the afternoon – 75GB. It took a long time, and having 3 people in the house streaming video probably didn’t help much. By morning it was downloaded, but Steam spent 90 minutes verifying the download.

It was a couple more days before I actually sat down to play. I had gone off on a couple of side missions in TR before I played through the last act and finished it off.

Clicked play.

(Oh I should add, that I had been playing TR on the PC and had downloaded BG3 onto the Mac).

And an hour later MacOS Security was still “verifying”. This is something it does for any newly installed program. But over an hour later it wasn’t working. I messed about with a few settings and in the end, decided to download it again.

But now there was no space on my HDD. Fair enough… it’s only 1TB, and you need 100GB. Sure there is only about 140GB spare. So I deleted the old copy of BG3, and while I was at it, took off WoW, Battletech and a few other bits and pieces that I wasn’t using. This freed up almost 300GB. (YIKES). In the end it was reporting over 500GB free – over half the drive was free. Awesome.

Nope, not enough space according to Steam. It was reporting about 25GB free. This was not making much sense and was obviously frustrating.

At this point I actually tried downloading it on the PC as well. Again, many hours of downloading and verifying it (twice) before I got the game to boot, but it crashed. Haven’t investigated further at this stage. I really want it on the Mac as the PC is often in use by the family.

MacOS runs things a little differently and basically keeps the stuff until someone needs it and then releases the purgeable space. So Free Space is reported as 535GB (515GB purgeable). Disk space used was 1.3TB (interesting, it’s only a 1.03TB drive).

Ok Mac, go and purge.

It turns out that there isn’t a way to easily do this. In fact I’m not even sure there is actually a way to manually do this at all. A bunch of research suggested several third party programs (ranging in levels of trust and price). Clearing out caches, running a Time Machine backup, and some reboots weren’t getting anywhere.

It was time for something drastic. Something that was probably overdue anyway. I mean it’s been three full OS upgrades and I’ve not done it.

I started backing things up. I always have Time Machine running, and it’s awesome, but I spent several hours ensuring that photos, pictures, documents etc were stashed on an additional disk.

And then into Recovery Mode – Erase the entire volume. Reinstall MacOS (Monterey in this case). Got that going and did some gardening for about 90 minutes as it installed.

And before too long, maybe 90 mins, I’m back to a fresh Mac.

I installed a few things first…. MS Office, Chrome, Edge (I have reasons), then I downloaded BG3 again.

A lot of time later and the download had finished. Then Steam did its verify thing for another hour.

Of course when I started it, MacOS security had to do its verify thing. For another hour.

Nothing. Reboot, tried starting again.

Verifying for another hour. I wandered off to feed dinner to the family and stuff.

Came back to this screen…

So SUCCESS.

I’ll put another post up with my initial thoughts of the game etc. I’ve played for about 6 hours so far.

M1 iPad Pro 11”

Partly as a treat to myself for Christmas and for changing career, as well as spending some money my wife gave me and finally as my original iPad Pro 9.7 was starting to have battery troubles, I upgraded. I admit, I probably could have gotten away with a current Air, which is still a pretty sweet spot between price and capability, I wanted to go all out again.

So just before the back to school sales finished up, I bought the iPad Pro 11″, and the new Pencil. I already had the keyboard case (not the fancy one with a trackpad, you can’t fold that one right back to tablet format) as we had one that wasn’t being used in the house. Scored a free set of AirPods as well. Put them in the cupboard for when the battery dies in my current set.

Anyway, so I could have waited to see if Apple dropped an upgraded one this year, and I expect they will. But two things (apart from just plain impatience) were motivating me. One, I would want it when school started, and Two, if they did change the shape it would be another couple of hundred to pick up the keyboard case too.

That was then. It’s now Week 6 at school and the iPad Pro is proving a very useful device. Now I’ll admit, there probably isn’t much that I am doing that my 9.7 could not do. OneNote, Edge, Outlook, Google Slides and Docs. This M1 iPad is very smooth and battery life is wonderful. I rarely get below 80% a day. My 9.7 would have managed this back when I first got it (and it was second hand when I did) but now, about 6 years later, nope.

I do love that it uses a normal USB-C connector. I have a USB-C to HDMI cable which I just plug straight into the class displays to run my lessons. It saves problems with logging in and out as I move about the school. (I don’t have my own class, I teach the same subject across 8 classes). Again, the 9.7 with the adapter could do this alright too. But I can also connect memory sticks easily, which is new.

But I’ve found my Surface Pro has been cast aside by the iPad. Chiefly weight is the issue. The iPad, is close to half the Surface. Smaller too, but the screen is fine for me. So overall the iPad is less bulky. Add the protective case on the Surface and it is even more skewed to the iPad.

Compared to a MacBook, that I’ve never had, I think the touchscreen, pencil and tablet form are much more useful than the MacBook’s traditional laptop form factor. This is still where the MacBook falls down (and where the multitude of Windows based 2 in 1 ought gain something back).

By using cross platform software (OneNote, Outlook, Edge, Google Docs/Slides) I’m not tied to OS. So working at home on my iMac, at work on my iPad, upstairs with the Surface or (for reasons I can’t think of) on the gaming PC, I have access to all of my work, synced across the lot. Even if I do log into the Windows PC at work I can access everything. But I find myself using the iPad as my preference. I like it’s pencil the most.

One thing I haven’t tried is one of those paper-like screen protectors that a couple of folks at work use. I might see if there is one for the Surface, experiment with that. Or what about the Surface without the Type Cover and with the paper-like protector… hmmm

The couple of people at work (one has the 12.9” iPad) use Goodnotes instead of OneNote. For me, that means my Surface, my PC and my work computers can’t link to my work.

Oh, non work related – I did connect an xbox controller and the iPad Pro easily coped with a couple of games (Pathless & Genshin Impact). This is definitely something that the old iPad Pro 9.7 (and to be honest, the Surface Pro) struggles with.

Overall, super happy with the iPad Pro

Time to build a PC – update 1

The NVME M2 SSD arrived and was quickly installed. Then I reinstalled Windows 10 and the PC was up and running again. It works very well.

Miss 14 is happy as Genshin Impact runs fine. I realised this is a chance to get through some of my backlog in Steam, so installed Rise of the Tomb Raider. That plays well as well.

It also asked to upgrade to Windows 11, so I’ve done that as well.

It runs very hot when playing, well, the fans are blowing a lot of hot air. I don’t know how normal that is as I have no experience with newer PCs.

Lastly, I’ve not attempted to install the AIO cooler yet. I’ll look at that soon.

I guess..

2021 – Another big year

Well 2021 turned out to be even more of a strange and significant year than 2020. Again, with my wife and I both in “essential services” we weathered the COVID lockdown storm better than a lot. We did have a couple of near misses, mostly me, with being close contacts and having to test or isolate. But so far we’ve dodged it. We are both fully vaxxed and so are our kids. Mrs and I both have had the booster too.

About Bikes

The Ninja didn’t see as much riding as expected. The lockdown had me at home about 3 days a week so it didn’t commute as often. Worse, the MotoGP, for which I had been planning and organising for most of the year, was cancelled at about 100 days out. Still, we did get in a ride to Canberra and to Newcastle, both of which went well. So it’s not all bad. It’s approaching 42,000km now with almost 40,000km of that being my own after 3 years of ownership. Possibly the lowest tally of any bike I’ve owned?

On the way back from Canberra via Kangaroo Valley

I am planning for the MotoGP this coming year. With Jack Miller and Remy Gardener both in the main game it will be exciting from an Australian perspective. Otherwise, the bike might see only a little riding as I don’t think I’ll be commuting as much on it.

I bought a tent and some other stuff that I will plan to use in 2022

As for the other two wheels, I’ve spent a little time in lockdown getting used to cycling again. I did plan a whole bunch of mountain bike rides as the lockdown finished and work wound down, but weather and life found a way to block it. I’m hoping January will be different.

Actual dust on my MTB for the first time in 6 years?

About Babes

Mrs and the eldest both carry on fine. The younger one starts high school in 2022. Not much else happening there. One plays Genshin Impact whenever she gets the chance. The other swaps between Switch games and Roblox. Again, with enough devices and steady internet, they completed their own schooling from home without any drama during our lockdown.

About Bytes

Of course, the biggest news there is the final gasping death of the PC. My 1st gen i7 has finally gone dark (and I mean this literally, no post screen even). I suspect the actual culprit is the 9800GT. Sorry, Mrs, looks like I’ll have to buy a whole new PC, this one is dead….

Yes, that’s a 11(?) year old video card. Probably 11 years of dust too.

So I did. I’ve ordered an 11th Gen i5. I did want to get a 12th gen, but my budget won’t stretch that far. It’s also going to be a mini-ITX case, so much smaller than the mid-tower it replaces. I’ll post a full description in a week or two when the parts have arrived and I’ve built it.

Not really a lot else in this category. I’ve saved up enough that even on top of the emergency PC purchase I am still intending to upgrade my 9.7 iPad Pro to a new one. I may hold off long enough to see if they do add the M2 chip or the mini-LED screen makes its way to the 11″ Pro before I do. The Surface has had much more use this year, so the iPad is less urgent.

Dungeons & Dragons continued well also. I’m running two groups at the moment and playing in two games. I think it will be a little much in 2021, so I plan to wind up one of the games I’m running (the Ghosts of Saltmarsh) and move the Wild beyond the Witchlight game to Friday (as a replacement). I also plan to leave one of the other games, probably the Sunday crawl. It’s more of a home-brew than a straight crawl, and a lot of fun, but I’m more interested in the story from CoS. Though perhaps if my character dies, I’ll pull the character from the home-brew as my Dwarven wild magic sorcerer is proving a bit of fun too. I also messed about a little with Battletech again, which I have enjoyed. I wonder what it would be like against a real person… (I imagine I will lose terribly).

About Me.

Well last, and by no means least is the decision to finally make the official career switch that has been building for about the last 5 years. Next year will see me as a full-time primary school teacher. While I won’t have my own class, I will have a set schedule so I will be able to work on finalising my proficiency, ready for my own class the following year (fingers crossed).

It is a big life change and certainly at the beginning when I am at the bottom of the salary pile, I think things will be a lot tighter at home than they have been for some time. Thankfully we have ourselves pretty nicely set up and things like upgrading the PC and the iPad are already budgeted.

Mouse Troubles – Update

I gave up on the G604… it’s just super flakey on the iMac. I’ve been using the Naga, plugged into the USB. There’s probably no reason I can’t use it BT. I just haven’t got around to it. The 12 keys are mapped to the SHIFT-Number row. Seems to work alright.

The G604 is now on the Surface, though I’ve hardly used it, as I don’t normally pack it in the bag. The Arc Mouse is in the bag all the time and gets used instead.

Even more… the Logitech M555 that I thought was dead, wasn’t. Even though I thought I was resetting the BT to use it, I must have been doing it wrong. Turns out it is paired with the iPad. So I will keep that set up.

My other mice… Well I have my old Magic Mouse. I’ve paired that with my work laptop (a boring, clunky, overly large Dell – doesn’t even have a touch screen). That leaves the Magic Mouse 2 sitting here next to the iMac…. in case of, I dunno, … something??

Mouse Trouble

For a long time I have used the Razer Naga Molten as my mouse. It’s been excellent. Recently though it’s had a little trouble moving about on the desk. It turns out that the slick plastic sliders on the bottom of the mouse have worn right down to the hard plastic shell. It was becoming awkward to use. And I can’t seem to find a way to just replace those parts.

I started investigating replacements and of course the first place to look was Razer. Here, the Naga was now in several versions, with the fanciest being the Naga Pro. This had the three swappable side plates (so normal configuration, 6 buttons and the 12 button like my Naga). It added wireless, including Bluetooth.

But the Razer software no longer supports OSX. Though I’ve never used the Razer software on my existing Naga. With my birthday coming up, I put in my request.

Success! Birthday came along and so did the Naga. It connected fairly simply to the iMac. Obviously the software wasn’t working but I didn’t think much of that until I tried to play WoW.

Here I came across the problem I didn’t face with the older one. The Naga Molten has a switch on the bottom. This manually selects the 12 side buttons as either the top number row on the keyboard or the number pad. Now I had always had it as the number pad. This worked great as I used the number row on the keyboard for my attack rotation, then the Numpad on the Naga as my interrupts and other more situational actions.

Well, that’s what the software does in the newer ones. That software that doesn’t work on OSX. Mapping the keys in WoW didn’t help because the mouse thinks its the number row. I did manage a work around as I made them all bound to SHIFT-number.

I was kind of disappointed, so I handed the Naga over to the Surface to work with. I do like that I can actually use it for multiple computers. I have the USB cable connected to the iMac, which works. And when I switch the BT on, the Surface connects to it.

Anyway, after some more research, I picked up a Logitech G604 for the iMac.

This is also a Bluetooth mouse (that was one of the criteria for my choice) and it has 6 side buttons. The Logitech software also works on OSX.

So this arrived and connected. It was really slow to move across my desktop (I have the 27” iMac and another 27” screen slaved to it). Then I got into the software and messed about with the settings. This helped.

I’ve also set up the keys when outside WoW as a bunch of short cuts.. cut, copy, paste, screenshot. Works well for that.

I have struggled a little with it in WoW, but I’ve also not played much so I reserve judgement on that side of things. I can’t quite seem to get the Logitech software to automatically switch profile as I thought it did. Again, I haven’t played with it much to be sure.

However, I have been having trouble with it even working. It will often lose the BT connection and simply stop. I’ve had to go through the reconnection steps several times. Switching it off, clearing it from the iMac’s BT list etc have eventually got it up and running.

The other trouble is that, well as I said, without the G-Suite application running, it’s really slow across the screen. At the OSX login screen (there are profiles for each family member on my iMac) its slow. And it remains slow even after login (or wake up from sleep) until the G-Suite kicks in. This can be several seconds. Or it isn’t until I actually open it. Or it just doesn’t.

This has all been quite frustrating. Sometimes it all gets back together, or I have to switch on the Apple Magic Mouse that I have, or I’ve resorted to plugging the Naga in (via its USB) cable. On one recent afternoon I had to dig out an old Apple Trackpad to get some response from the cursor on screen.

So in summary. Naga Pro isn’t great for OSX (well it’s not supposed to be). G604 seems really flakey. Apple Magic Mouse is good for general stuff, but not games, make sure you keep a trackpad around…

Anyone got an older working Naga they want to let go?

Oh and my old reliable Logitech M555 that I kept for travel seems to have died.

Short Ride – Watch Drama!

After messing about most of the Easter weekend with chores and other unexpected things, I headed out Sunday morning. I planned to head up to Colo and have a look through Windsor and other areas affected by the floods.

As I headed west, it was clear that there was fog about. Having spent a couple of hours on Good Friday giving the bike a thorough clean and polish, I just didn’t want it to get wet and dirty straight away. So I turned around and headed for the coast and the Old Pac.

It turned into my first chance in the new tunnel that links the M7/M2 with the freeway going north. For the first time, travellers can cut around Sydney and stay on freeway the whole way. Can’t believe it has taken so long.

The tunnel was nothing special, though long at about 7:30mins (at 80kmph). So soon I was up to the Berowa exit and the Old Pac.

I’m not sure when I last headed up this way during what might be a busy period. And it was busy (well I thought so, regulars might not). Dozens of cyclists were the main thing I hadn’t dealt with.

So I cruised down, took some photos across the Mooney Mooney bridge and dawdled up the hill. Busy, cyclists and double demerits, it wasn’t the weekend for time attacks!

I had a pie at the top, coming finally to the conclusion that their pies aren’t actually that great. Robinson Pie shop is a lot better, and I suspect there are other better ones nearby as well. But its handy and bike friendly.

I headed home, but as I rode through the tunnel I was surprised when a voice spoke over my Scala headset….

“Police, Fire or Ambulance?”

Wait, what…..? I was very confused and stammered out “Sorry, my phone has dialled this by accident, I’m fine.” They thanked me and hung up.

Shortly after my wife rang.

“Are you ok?”

“Yes, why?” I was getting more confused. My phone seemed to have launched into I’m in an emergency mode for some reason.

“Because I just got a message saying you had called emergency and your location.”

Again… “I’m fine, my phone is doing something weird. I’ll be home in about 20 minutes anyway.”

Once I was home I took a look at my devices. My watch had an alert that I had initiated Call Emergency mode. It was providing updates to my wife at about 15 minute intervals with my location, as she was my Emergency Contact. I cancelled the alert mode.

I poked about in the settings for the iPhone and the Apple Watch. Seems the watch had the option “Call Emergnecy Services if the crown (the rotating button) is held down”. So that explained why the watch had called emergency, but not what started it….

I realised that just before the Emergency people had started speaking I had felt a couple of alerts from my wrist. I had assumed that they were messages, and had tapped my phone (on its QuadLock holder) to see. But there was nothing there.

I think that my watch, my jacket cuff combined with a very still position (cruising through the tunnel) had held the crown down long enough to kick it into panic mode. I disabled that option.

I did enable fall detection though….

But a little gotcha for Apple Watch riders..