A GPS powered on, at the wrong part of the flight profile, recording your track, yes.

I do not have a computer on any of my bikes, vintage or (gasp) modern carbon fibre that gets raced. I just find them totally unnecessary, and ugly on any vintage. I've never counted mileage, as hours are easily kept track of. Fitness can be judged by if you are feeling like crap or speedy.

Cycling allows you to leave all that Orwellian electronic gizmodo satellite tracking micro techno nuclear radioactive cyber-droid stuff behind.

BTW- I don't have a computer on any of my bikes either.

I love my Cateye, and don't think it looks bad at all. I guess I do have a 9 speed group though so I'm not exactly retro grouch. My only regret is not getting the double wireless.

Yes! On my '83 Paramount last June. Up until that point I'd never achieved much over 45mph

No. I believe I rode to the ride!

But notice the "OVER'L SPEED." I crawled back up at about 3-4 mph. My riding buddy and I refer to it as "the hill of death" (as in cardiac events). There are sections I should measure, but my guess is they are at least 15% grade. I believe the average grade for the 1.5 mile drop is something like 8%.

...with an overall speed of 10mph.

Had a Multito just like that on my PH10S in 1982-3 except it had a light grey casing with black top face. Worked and looked great but it was a bit far to read in hard efforts like on long climbs. Eventually replaced it with an Avocet 20 computer, bumping the Multito as one of the first and early resident of the component "mothball" drawer as the mods started on my first "real" bike. Avocet was eventually transferred over to my next bike, the PSV, It's still on it and working flawlesslly.
I have a VDO on my Vitus and I like the wireless feature for the cadence and speed, but I wish they could make the sensors on the frame smaller.

Chombi

I may have a Multito in case anyone wants it.

I have a Garmin 705 & about 4-5 mounts that I change from bike to bike. It's nice since it doesn't required anything too intrusive or obtrusive to mount. I like to track mileage, stats, elevation changes and routes, so it's a great geek-toy. I enjoy vintage bikes for the quality of workmanship, feel of the ride, history, etc., not to show off how authentic I can be. I'm not a big fan of museum pieces, so I'll put the Garmin on anything for a ride and take it off when I'm done. No big deal. I rode 20+ years without a computer of any sort. The only time I ever knew how fast I was going was if someone in a car yelled "hey, buddy, do you know you were going XXX?"...which, actually was kinda helpful or at least interesting...

I too am willing to use "new tech" items on my classic bikes, but I still would like to minimize the aesthetic impact on a classic of vintage bike as much as possible. With the latest cycle computers, the issue I have is the size and shape of the wireless sensors that you have to mount on the frame and/or fork. The dang things are either the size of charcoal briquettes or almost as big as CO2 cartridges, depending on the brand you get and bacly breaks the clean lines of a bike, specially at the fork. I don't know why they cannot shape it to semi-wrap around the tube it's mounted on to get a cleaner look that will also less likely to get hooked or hit something and get damaged, but I think it has a bit to do with the big, quarter (or is it 50 cent piece?) sized batteries these sensors require. A snap-on mount would also be so much nicer as you can transfer the system from one bike to the other real easy and give you the option to run the bikes "clean" without sensors or heads if you want to. Zip ties just look add-on junky, no mater what you do with them.
I suspect that better wireless solutions are eventually going to come as better technology emerges in the coming years.
JMOs

Chombi

The aesthetic solution is pretty simple - if you want a computer but don't want to spoil the retro look of the bike, buy a Garmin Edge 205/305 and stick it in your jersey pocket or seat wedge. Works great, and out of sight. They're getting really cheap, now.

That makes senss, cycle computer tech could be mostly based on GPS sattlelite systems. Performance monitoring will be downloaded to a PC base and transmitted back to the computer head real time. micro Inertial and stress/pressure sensor systems built into pedals and cranks or even bike shoes can monitor cadence functions. This could all just be an integration of existing systems away from happening if it hasn't already ( I don't keep up with the lates bike tech as much as before)/ It will free us for good from having sensors, magnets and wires on our classic bikes.

Chombi

I use a magnetic pickup type on my bikes. A cheapie "Schwinn" on my Schwinn.

as mentioned earlier, the forerunner 305 is actually a watch so it doesn't even go on the bike.

Get one of those Garmin, Suunto or Polar GPS wristwatch models. Absolutely no hardware on bike, unless you want cadence. Keeping track of individual bike mileage may be a bit tricky though.

--J

I really don't care about speed, distance, or where I am, in general.
I'm easily distracted, too. I've tried cyclo's and get tired of looking at them.

If the pitch changes on the spoke hum, I know the speed changed.
If I'm tired, I went my usual. If I'm really tired, I went longer. Maybe then I'll ask someone.

If I'm thirsty or hungry, I stop, doesn't matter where or when or how far I've been or have to go.

I don't ride pace lines, so no one really cares if I can go steady or streaky.

In triathlons, I pedal very hard for as long as I can, and this generally beats at least half the guys who know how fast they were riding.

My best 100 miler was between 4 and 5 hours, and that included stops. It was strenuous and not pleasant after the 60-mile rest stop. My body felt it was time to end that madness.

I have stripped many a cyclo off of bikes, put them in a bag, and gave them to Amani576. Someone just gave me another, a Cateye, and I don't like the idea of another wire I can neither clean up, polish, or route in a spartan manner.

That being said, it would be pretty cool to have some husky female voice tell me "don't stop..." so maybe a GPS is in my future...

I showed my wife the data graph from my 705 the other day and pointed out the section where I'd hit 75mph and sustained it for several miles. She was quite horrified until I pointed out that I'd thrown the bike in the back of the car after the ride and forgotten to turn off the GPS :-D

More on topic I used to own an 83 vintage Iku Cyclometer. One of the most advanced computers of it's time and still looked good (and worked) 27 years later. I only sold it in the end because I share the Edge unit between both bikes now. If you want to stay period correct but still have something that's useful (showed speed, average speed, distance, trip time and odometer) then that's always an option. It was self powered too, large ring magnet attached to the front wheel which provided both speed data and power to charge the unit.

That's hilarious!

I was riding to work in the rain a few months ago and apparently my speedo (cheapie magnet/sensor type) got some water inside the works... I was sitting at a stop sign and looked down to see 89.4 MPH on the 'puter. I wish I'd saved it and taken a pic.

^ that happens at every light with a sensor in the ground on those pos wireless computers.

It has NEVER happened with mine and I come across the ground sensors several times during every ride I do.

I had one of those, the Mavic POS. Wireless everything.
What made it great was that there were no wires connecting the various parts that didn't work.

It wasn't wireless. It was just a cheap POS wired computer that got wet.

I like leaving my computer on kph. Instant bump in speed.

Some hills are more fun than others, depending upon which side you're on...