There is a huge variation of what people use for a reason. A few years ago I finally asked a roadie what Strava is. He said it is like a social media system for cyclists. I said I do a lot of bike touring, why do I not hear of that from others. He said, "I said it is for cyclists". So, apparently it has nothing to offer to someone like me. By doing two to five week long bike tours with my camping gear, I apparently am not a real "cyclist." Please do not try to explain why I need it. Since am not a roadie I do not care to learn about the social media that I am missing out on.

I carry a phone for emergency use on bike rides where I am not on a bike tour, but it is turned off unless I need it. It is a spare phone I have with a $10 a month sim card. I turned it on a couple months ago to update the software and check the battery status, but otherwise it is turned off waiting for an emergency. On bike tours, I bring my regular phone instead. They are not high end phones, last year I finally retired my seven year old phones, bought new ones for about $200 each.

Every bike tour I have done for the past eight years, I was self sufficient for electrical needs using my dynohub. If I had my phone on all the time, I am reasonably confident that I would need so much electrical power that I would have to rent motel rooms a couple times a week for access to an outlet. Last summer that was 16 consecutive days without plugging into an outlet. I had my phone on twice a day for several minutes to check e-mail, get weather forecasts and occasional phone calls to let family know that I was still alive. With my GPS, on my last tour I had several basemaps for the parts of two countries that I was in. GPS was turned on while rolling, otherwise turned off. About a third to half of the power I produced from my dynohub went into my GPS batteries. Rest of the power was used for lighting and charging other batteries.

Last summer on a brevet that I rode, there was a new rider trying to use her phone for navigation and her phone bracket to mount it on her handlebar was not working well, her phone landed on the pavement a couple times. Fortunately, did not break. She finished the brevet by using a hair elastic holding her phone to the bracket. It was fortunate for her that I use the extra thick hair elastics as a parking brake to hold my front brake lever to my handlebar, thus had what she needed to make her phone stay on the bike to finish the ride.