Technology May Be Our Friends, but Engineers Are Not

So, I'm too fat and only like the water aerobics class as offered twice a week. That is not enough exercise, so I have to do something else to increase the amount of time I'm burning calories rather than eating.

I have an old-fashioned, one-speed, old lady seat, fat tires bike. It's not an old bike, but I didn't want to have 10,15, or 30 speeds to contend with because then I would have to figure out how and when to use them. I just want to ride my bike. And burn some calories.

I know that I spend so many minutes on the bike and that's a nice thing. I can see what time it is when I pedal out of the driveway and then see what time it is again when I return. What I would like to know is how far I'm riding in the time that I am gone.

On my last bike I had a little odometer that just scrolled along the edge of the tire and would slowly click to the next number after so many revolutions. It worked as long as the wheel from the odometer was resting against the edge of the tire. They don't make these anymore. At least not where I can find them.

Today they have odometers that work in both metric and stand miles. They will keep track of your time for you. And tell you how fast you are going as you pedal here and there. They will also keep track of these things across time, telling you what your total time, distance, and average speed for the week were. They will tell you all of this if you can get them to work.

I don't know what happened to the dumb thing over the winter. It worked last year. I can get it to turn on and off and if I hold buttons in certain configurations, I can maybe get it to show me something else. It shows me 3.4 a lot. I have no idea what that is or why it shows it to me as it has no bearing on anything that I can see. I have been able to switch it to kilometers rather than miles, but it won't track kilometers for me after that, it just shows me 3.4 again.

I got the thing to work one day this week and so I carefully turned it off and hoped it would start at the same screen next time I started it up. Nope. 3.4 was there.

This has features that probably would tell me that I'm too slow, need to take a drink, and have a heart rate that is outside the normal limits. What it won't tell me is how far I've gone. The only thing I want to know is how far I've gone.

Thanks to all the engineers who made this possible. You have successfully created an expensive and useless gadget. I applaud your efforts and wish you continued success.

Perhaps I should just get in my car and drive the car where I've pedaled the bike and figure out how far I've gone for the day. Seems a rather pointless exercise, though.