It's not a bad idea once in a while to step outside yourself and your routine and make some attempt to see if what you are doing could be called sane. I went out on a ride yesterday and went snowshoeing with wife and friends today. So I'm sitting here looking at my desk and the pile of gadgets awaiting my attention:
1, no 2 pocket calculators
Garmin 800
SD card reader
USB taillight
USB headlight
Polar 725X
PHD camera - needs a download and a battery charge
2 USB chargers and cords
Pile of MicroSD cards and adapters containing various maps, routes, etc.
What's is all for, really?
USB lights:
to keep myself and my wife safe on our tandem. USB because no batteries to buy and throw away. Hence also USB chargers.
Garmin 800:
It keeps our tandem team engaged, happy, and performing as best we can.
Stoker is navigator and has the 800, so I can concentrate on piloting the bike. The route we're following will have been created with online software and downloaded to a MicroSD card in the 800. Why all this, though? Most frequently to find our way on complicated bike routes with a zillion turns in places we've never been. That's frequently the best. We love to go new places. We also love to make the bike go and fly along, not having to worry about route since we just follow the route we've already plotted. We're so frigging old we couldn't remember three turns ahead, especially not with a serious oxygen deficit and tiredness. I can always tell I'm going good if I can't take 47, subtract 23 and add 4 and come up with a reasonable number.
The 800 is also fun because we can upload our route to Strava and see how our performance was in various parts of the route and overall. It's interesting, I like interesting things, and it's fun to share with others.
The real trick thing on the tandem is that the 800 shows my wife my heart rate. She also has her own Polar HRM which simply shows her heart rate. Thus she matches her HR to mine and we keep our efforts synched up, thus eliminating with gadgetry the most difficult part of being a tandem team: knowing that it's always a team effort.
The camera:
is of course to share photos with fellow riders, always fun and good memories.
The Polar 725X:
recorded our snowshoe. We like to know how much we climbed, how long it took, all that stuff. We upload the data and save it in a database for future planning.
The calculators:
just hang around the desk. Sometimes I use them for various business calculations which are inconvenient to do on the computer.
What else do I have on the bike?
I have a small computer for my use, but all it reliably shows and all I really need is my heart rate. I need heart rate because that's how I titrate the pain. Just a couple beats continuously higher, and we'll blow up or get too tired to keep up the effort. A couple of beats lower and we could have gone faster and come in with the group instead of getting spat out the back. Precision really makes a difference. I'm not about to spring for a power meter because the extra outlay just isn't worth the possible performance improvement to me. For the tandem it would be a couple thousand bucks. I'd rather spend it on touring and travel. The HRMs give me all the information I really need to make pacing decisions. If I were younger and the amortization would be much longer, I might go for it though.
The other gadget we have on the bike is a Shimano Flight Deck. All I use that for is the gearing display and cadence. On a tandem, it's just impossible to see the chainrings or cassette. It's really helpful to always know what cog and ring I'm using.
I never look at speed or distance. Stoker handles distance. She doesn't look at speed either. I do watch cadence closely, though. It's similar to watching HR. I know what cadences are most efficient for us under various conditions and the closer I'm able to hew to those numbers, the better and longer we go. "Feel" isn't the same. Feel can change with time, terrain, and exhaustion. The numbers don't lie. It's like people say when they get tired, they start pedaling squares. But you know that's not efficient, that's letting laziness drag you down into the depths of despair. Cadence is kind of like that. You hold your cadence. You probably won't actually fall off the bike.
Anyway, that's why we do what we do, and I think it makes sense. We are riding well as a team and having fun with our cycling buds. That's our goal and we're there.
OTOH, if I were just a solo guy, didn't ride with others, didn't want to push my limits, didn't really care exactly where I was going, etc., I might not have any of this stuff except for the lights and chargers. I wouldn't even need a camera.