KD5NRH

Geez, the plastic bikes are even water soluble?

caloso

Dark Sky

Abe_Froman

FBinNY 

Jeepers, sorry.

I check emails daily while having my AM coffee, so the WU forecast is a zero effort deal. I salute you for your freedom in not having to do a daily email check, but these days that's a rarity.

RubeRad

Well I am on top of my email all day every day, just not first thing in the morning. Coffee is free at work, and I'm not much of a breakfast person, so I'm out the door asap in the mornings, shower at work, then coffee.

canklecat

I was in the "Whadda I need a tablet/smartphone for?" camp for a long time.

Then I got a cheap tablet and a friend gave me his old iPhone.

Now I know what I was missing.

This is Texas so it wouldn't do much good to check weather 48 hours in advance. I check before every ride. Takes a few seconds. Apps on a tablet or smartphone are really fast, much quicker and more efficient than checking my desktop or laptop PCs.

And the weather apps automagically push alerts for my region. I don't need to configure anything, other than a toggle switch to push alerts or not.

You can buy a really good Amazon Kindle Fire for about $40 right now. It's just an Android tablet with Amazon's skin to favor their walled garden approach (a good thing for many folks who aren't tech savvy, like my mom). Runs many useful Amazon-approved apps quickly, and the tablets can run pretty much any Android app with a fairly easy workaround.

Regarding the smartphone, I don't even have a data plan for my older iPhone. I just use it to run cycling apps, maps, snap pix and videos when I don't want to carry my full camera kit or a separate P&S camera.

But I didn't realize how useful these silly things were until I tried 'em.

Jim from Boston

Rain Alerts?Well of course not, but the kicked up road grease and oil might dissolve them.

In any case, I save time on cleaning...I don't need to clean the pristine CF, and I'm not meticulous about the aluminum beater.

RubeRad

This is SoCal, so for 99% of rides, it's a waste of time to check before every ride.

I don't want alerts, that's only for severe weather problems like flash flood warnings etc, they don't make alerts for 'just rain'.

I have a Kindle Fire, got it from my parents xmas 2014. It came with a $25 gift card for apps from the kindle store, we still have about half of that left. It gets used plenty, mostly the kids playing free games, but most of the time when I pick it up it needs charging or is turned off, and getting to the point where I could check the weather is slower than booting up the desktop which has an SSD. And the kindle would be no help out on a ride, even if I could bring it, which I never would.

No thanks. I have a flip phone I barely ever use. I have a camera I barely ever use. Once in a blue moon I think 'wouldn't it be nice to have a gps-enabled map right now', but not often enough to be worth the drain on my life that it would be to live inside a smartphone all the time. I know me, and I would be playing games and browsing the internet constantly.

EDIT: how do you run a cycling app without a data plan?

RubeRad

I have a friend who has a CF Scattante which is his beater bike, and a CF Focus which is his good bike.

Jim from Boston

Rain Alerts?I'm not familiar with the brands, but sounds like the horns of a dilemma.

flangehead

I'm in Texas where normally rain comes in squall lines. I use Minutecast on Accuweather. Put in a street address and it will give you a 2 hour forecast. Has worked well for me to pick holes in storms go my 30 minute commute.

canklecat

Yup, I bicycle commuted around SoCal for a few years while I was in the Navy at Balboa and Pendleton. Hardly ever rained, except in January. I tucked a cheap yellow poncho in a jersey pocket most of the winter, mostly to avoid hypothermia if I did get caught in the rain. Outside of January I'd just get wet if it rained. Merino wool stayed warm enough even in cool temps when wet. Nowadays I tote an ultrathin Pearl Izumi Select Barrier windbreaker in a pocket. Rain resistant, comfortable in a wide range of temps, and I've loaned it to friends a couple of times this winter when they were underdressed for rapidly cooling conditions.

The newer Kindle Fire and Fire HD tablets are quad cores, much faster than the 2014 model unless you happened to get the first 7" Fire HD that was a quad core -- it came out in October 2014 (I got that one for Christmas 2014). And the newer Kindle Fires are a fraction of the price and faster, with a better OS. The specs can be misleading, because the current quad cores are listed as 1.3GHz, but in actual usage they're faster, run cooler and longer.

Also, many Kindle Fire compatible apps are free. Every weather app I use (three or four of 'em) is free, with minimal advertising that isn't intrusive. And with the 2016-2017 Fire tablets it's finally completely compatible with Google Maps and Street View, so you can access the 360 panoramic and scrolling features. Everything works better and faster than the 2014 Fire tablets.

They're so cheap now you could stash one away just for yourself so it's always ready when you are. Set a PIN so the kids can't use your tablet.

But if your PC is really fast, sure, the tablet might not offer any advantage over the tablet. I use so much security stuff on my PCs it always takes longer to fire up than the tablets. But I don't use the tablets for anything that requires security so I don't even use PINs on a couple of them. Everything that might be a security risk is disabled and does require a PIN or password to access, such as making purchases from Amazon.

I still use a flip phone for voice. And I have a box full of older 3G and earlier phones that can't even access the web anymore because the interfaces are so outdated. My favorite is one of the early Nokias, a classic that's making a comeback. I may start using it again, it was a better phone than my current T-Mobile flip phone.

The cycling apps are all GPS enabled. I use Cyclemeter (for iPhone only), Strava (free version), Wahoo Fitness (best display while riding -- I can see the screen easily when it's tucked into the map pocket of my handlebar bag), Osm and Maps with the maps for my region downloaded to the phone. All run fine offline. When I get home I sync to WiFi to upload my ride data to Cyclemeter and Strava.

I don't always share my ride info to social media, including Strava (which is its own social media community). Some stuff I record only for my own reference, such as short repeat routes on hilly segments just to build strength and stamina.

But I enjoy sharing routes with real-life local friends. Helps to explore new rides with feedback about road and traffic conditions from folks who are at my fitness level and speed, around 12-15 mph average. And I know to avoid some routes that I'm not fast enough or fit enough to tackle safely.

canklecat

Cool, I'm gonna try that.

I'm on the west side of Fort Worth. We're in a peculiar geographic mini-region where most of the worst weather goes around us. One of the quirks of Texas is the wind pattern sweeping down from the north or up from the south that follows the terrain closely. After awhile you can pretty well predict which incoming storms are likely to hit us and which are likely to go around or break up around us, then regroup again toward Dallas.

dedhed

There are services you can subscribe to that will do anything you are willing to pay for. Many companies use these for their specific weather issues. Our municipality uses it for determining snow plow call outs and times.

Moe Zhoost

Whoa, this is causing you way to much stress. There is only one solution: embrace whatever the weather offers. Take a deep breath and just accept all conditions as a gift to be savored. I recall unexpected rain during rides that surrounded me with wonderful new sensations. The smell of geosmin, the tingle of the drops hitting my face, the glistening of the foliage ...

Nature is not your enemy. Abandon your need for surveillance and accept what's offered.

ItsJustMe

Weather Underground's app will pop up a lock screen alert if there is rain in the next few hours.

If you can't press the power button on your phone and look at the alerts, then there's no help for you.

It is kind of amazing that someone could be willing to check their emails but not the weather forecast, but I guess I've never lived somewhere with weather that god-awful boring.

wphamilton

It seems to me that you could set up an email filter that would trashcan every daily alert that didn't mention rain. You'd be left with the few that did - isn't that what you're after?

Leebo

Ummm, well then. Try the weather brick. Get a small one and tie it onto a string hanging from a tree or such near your front door. If it is moving, it is windy. If it is wet, its raining. Snow on it, well, dress warm. So Cal? Do you even need rain coat for warm rain. Get a thin wind shell, start there. Morning new has the weather every 10-15 minutes, A smart phone app will do wonders. Or you could just get some thing that will work with your fax, beta max or telegram. Yikes.

corrado33

"Siri, what's the weather look like today?"

Takes 10 seconds as I walk downstairs to get my breakfast in the morning.

OP: "I'm too lazy to check the weather every day."

Well then we can't help you.

(I just wanted to get in on the flaming, I think the OP is being a bit of a drama queen and think it is hilarious.)

kickstart

We don't need to in Seattle either......For the opposite reason.

RubeRad

Now that's also a great idea. I might try that out since it might be months until I can know if my IFTTT solution works!

noglider 

A new friend is from Stockholm, Sweden. He said weather forecasts are strange to him because, he says, the weather in Stockholm changes very slowly. It's a safe bet that today's weather will be very similar to yesterday's weather. That surprised me, as I'm used to drastic changes from day to day, especially now that our climate has changed.

RubeRad

LOL my security system is to avoid the virus honeypot called Microsft Windoze. Linux FTW!

RubeRad

LOL, don't worry about me, I'm having fun. But really it's like if I posted "Hey, I'm getting kind of tired driving my car everywhere, I've been thinking maybe I can get rid of it and get by on a bike" and everybody responds "Yeah, I get around everywhere in my car, it works great? You should get a car. Cars work for everybody. MURICA"

And you are wrong, getting wet is not the only solution. ITFFF gives me exactly what I was looking for. Daily weather emails filtered for mentions of rain is another likely candidate.

KD5NRH

Same thing here in Stephenville; it's sort of neat to watch the whole process of splitting around certain areas on radar.