Not long for this world

The height has gone, the rest won't take long. Out in daylight for the shot, instead of the usual darkness, as I'd been asked by someone from one of the local community groups if I could get a shot of the old weather vane on top of the primary school that is also going to be demolished (sadly, it's a pretty building), before it's lost forever.

Discovered tonight that a small-ish hole at the back of the garden now looks like a big burow, the end of which I couldn't see. So it's either a fox bolt hole, or a full-blown den (oh please, think of the kit shots....). Motion cam is set up beside it to try and find out.

Work till slightly late, so missed another park Friends meeting. Getting less able to take part in things, other than taking photos, but also found out today that the bat boxes we got funding for, and which I'd organised, are ready for delivery. Excellent.

Big news for the day was the arrival of a power meter, speed & cadence sensors, and a heart rate strap. Why? Well this was written for my cycling blog:

It has been around two weeks since I met with Davie Lines from Espresso Cycle Coaching, and I’ve not started my training yet. This isn’t down to any lack of desire to do so on my part (though the functional threshold test worries me a touch); but rather the opposite. I want to do this properly. And that means, from the chat with Davie, and some follow-up research, not just relying on the heart rate monitor, but delving deeper and monitoring my power.
The only problem is, I don’t have a spare organ to sell to fund one. Or three.
At the moment I’ve got a couple of bikes I’ll ride regularly, and during May I’ll be building a third to take over commuting duties. Really I need a power meter that I can swap easily between all three, given my commute will be forming a major part of my training, but at weekends either the cross bike, or the roadified old-cross bike, will make its way out of the garage. That means that the hub and crank options don’t cut the mustard. Pedals are more swappable, but even the ‘budget’ end of that market crests half a grand, and they don’t work with my chosen favourite platforms over all my bikes.
But Google is a wonder tool, and it seems there are people out there who want to bring power to the people. Some with more success than others.
At first I was intrigued by a Scottish Kickstart called Limits. They’ve designed a meter that threads in between the crank arm and the pedal, with the traditional strain gauges within. Swapping is therefore the same as swapping over pedals, a bit of a chore, but not the worst. However the more I read the more it seemed a compromised system, with poor accuracy, and some varying results. A brilliant idea, but slightly too flawed at the moment.
Then I struck upon the PowerPod. This moves us into the realms of true gadgetry, and away from the ‘traditional’ power meter methods. Gone are the strain gauges, and instead this unit hangs from under your handlebars, with a small port in the front letting in wind, created by both your motion and mother nature. An accelerometer measures angle of incline or decline, and paired to and ANT+ speed sensor, the electrotrickery calculates your power. Use an ANT+ cadence monitor and the accuracy increases further. All of this information it gathers in, then sends it to your cycle computer (one bright spot recently, I took apart my non-functioning Lezyne Super GPS, and that alone seems to have sparked it back into life).
A gimmick it may turn out to be, but accurate it does appear. DCRainmaker seems to be the go-to source for power meter reviews online, and riding with the power pod, and three other power meters, hooked up to his bike it gave remarkably consistent readings. The graphs matched neatly, for the most part, with the expensive strain gauged models he also had mounted. He seemed rather impressed. A few other reviews backed this up, and so for a little over £200 I thought it was worth the punt (though I’ll be adding on Garmin Speed and Cadence sensors that can also be swapped easily between bikes). All of which I should get my hands on this week. Of course I also found out at the weekend that my Polar HRM strap will only communicate with the watch it came with, nothing else, and being the absolute base model cannot store rides, nor transmit them anywhere else, neither to the cycle computer, nor my laptop. So a new chest strap will also be arriving soon.
But all of that should come together, finally, in time for Saturday. And a threshold test.
Then the work really starts.