Forerunner versus Fenix

You don't have to read my blog for long to know that I'm a gadget freak.  I love electronic gadgets.  When I go hiking or kayaking, I need a nerdy vest with half a dozen pockets to hold the GPS, the phone, the camera, etc.

In the category of GPS, I'm a big fan and a stock-owner in Garmin.  I started off with a Garmin 12XL way back in 1998.  When I got bit by the geocaching bug, I upgraded to the Garmin GPSMap 60CSx, which I still love and use a lot.  It was sorta bulky for carrying with me when I went running outdoors, so a few years later my wonderful wife gave me a Garmin Forerunner 405.  There were things I liked and things I didn't like about the Forerunner.

Forerunner Likes
- Compact / Wrist-worn.  As previously mentioned, it was a little awkward running with the bigger handheld GPSMap 60CSx in my hand.
- Automatic Wireless Data Uplink.  I loved that all I had to do was walk into the same room as my computer, and my Forerunner would automatically start wirelessly transmitting the data from my run / hike / kayak / outdoor adventure-du-jour to my computer.  It would upload automatically to the Garmin Connect website where I could see where my outdoor adventure took me on a Google street map or satellite image, along with plots of my altitude, speed, heartrate, and anything else I could want to analyze.

Forerunner Dislikes

 

- Sort of like Gizmo in the movie Gremlins.  DON'T GET IT WET! 

Yes, yes, it's water resistant and wasn't damaged by getting wet.  However, the Forerunner was minimalist on buttons and instead had a touch-sensitive bezel to operate it.  It was pretty cool, but the first time I went running in the rain, oh my!  I discovered it treated every rain drop as a touch and activated all sorts of different sub modes and features.  I think it was telling me how many calories I burned in Swahili, but it wouldn't let my legitimate touches get it back to the display screen that I actually wanted. 

Okay, no problem.  If you push both buttons at the same time, it locks (or unlocks) the bezel.  I would just lock it before going on a hike in the rain or going kayaking where it might get splashed.  I just couldn't change screens or modes while it was wet.

- Battery life was meh.  I could use it one day for a GPS activity outdoors and then would need to recharge it.  If I hadn't recharged it in the previous couple of days, then the battery was likely to die in the middle of my excursion.

Again, no problem.  It was manageable.  I just made a point to put it on the charger the night before any outside activities.

Overall, I liked the Forerunner and used it A LOT.  I've got 153 entries in my Garmin Connect log dating back to October 2008 to prove it, and you can see the Garmin Connect widget on most of my hiking and kayaking blog posts.

 









Enter the Fenix.


I was pretty excited when I read about the Fenix on the Garmin website, primarily because it's waterproof and the battery life is much better than the Forerunner.  I got the Fenix in the autumn just before leaving on patrol, so I haven't taken it out on any real outdoor adventures kayaking or hiking yet, but I've been messing around with it on my way to and from work and while at sea.

So far, it's living up to my expectations.

Got wet?  No problem!  It's been pouring rain here and with five buttons on the Fenix, I can do any sort of manipulations I want while it's wet.  No touchscreen to go haywire with rain drops.

The battery has been doing GREAT.  With the old Forerunner, my only battery indication was when the Forerunner DIED (typically in the middle of a run or hike).  The Fenix has a handy indication on the screen to tell you the exact percentage charge status of the battery.  I have been able to use it for weeks at a time just as a watch with the GPS turned off.  I have also used it for several hours at a time standing on the bridge of a submarine with the GPS turned on and had PLENTY of battery capacity left over.

I love that it is very adaptable.  You can have as many or as few screens as you want.  You can customize each screen with different data parameters to display.  You can customize the buttons to do just about anything except order a pizza. 

I like that it monitors temperature and includes that in the plot of speed and other parameters on Garmin Connect.  Now, the temperature reading isn't accurate when it's on my wrist and sensing my body heat, but I've been using it in very cold environments, attached to the outside of my cold weather gear.  I also got one of the remote temperature sensors that I will attach to my backpack when I go hiking in the summertime, and it will wirelessly transmit the temperature to the Fenix at some periodic interval. 

My only complaint about the Fenix is: No automatic uploads.  It doesn't transmit wirelessly like the Forerunner did.  I'm okay with that.  I don't mind plugging in a USB cable.  The frustrating part is when I open Garmin Connect, it "sees" the Fenix is there and plugged in, and I click on "upload activities," and it says there are no activities to upload.  In order to get the data from my Fenix into Garmin Connect, I have to manually open the file and import it into Garmin Connect.  So it's a little labor intensive, but I can live with that.  

Overall, I'm ecstatic with the Fenix, and I'm anxious to go try it out hiking and kayaking now that I'm back in port.

Spring Break - Family Vacation Part 1

Friday afternoon, my wonderful wife picked up the boys from school, picked me up from work, and we headed south to spend Spring Break in Orlando.

Having four of us in the car, the HOV-3 lanes on I-395 were nice while they lasted, but we got stuck in some pretty gnarly traffic once the HOV lanes ended. We stopped in Lumberton, NC for the night and then finished the drive to Orlando on Saturday.

On our way, we stopped to visit the Tuskegee Airmen Memorial in South Carolina. Yes, yes, there was a geocache there. This was my first geocache in South Carolina and my 500th geocache find overall.

Self portrait in front of the Tuskegee Airmen Memorial

The boys helped me find the geocache by figuring out the answer to the question on the old Army Air Corps beacon.

I'm always looking for unique local places to eat instead of national chain restaurants. Thanks to Yelp, we found Ronnie's in Savannah, Georgia. It's a small burger, fries, onion rings, and milk shakes kind of place. The lady at the counter asked in a slow Southern drawl if we wanted our burgers "all the way." We said we didn't know what that meant. She said, "Y'all aren't from the south are ya? Are y'all headin' to Disney World?" Wow... how'd you guess?

HUMONGO Onion Rings
(Aside: Why does he have a cow when there are diced onions in any other item of food placed in front of him, but he'll gobble up onion rings like there's no tomorrow???)

My wife said, "this was better than that place you dragged us to in Kansas." I can't say that I agree with that. The food was probably of the same taste and quality, but I think the ambiance was a little more unique at the Crazy R in Kansas, and the menu at the Crazy R certainly had more of a local flavor to it. :-)

Each time we have come here in the past, we have spent most of the week just enjoying the pool at the Marriott Harbour Lake resort, and we devote one day to making our token visit to Disney. We figure as the boys get older, we will eventually branch out and hit other spots like Universal Studios.

Sunday and Monday we spent here at the resort hanging out by the pool.

The pirate ship in the pool.

A fleeting glimpse of YB as he races off to
man the water cannons on the pirate ship.

A sighting of the elusive YB-fish.

Come a little bit closer Daddy.

Cue Admiral Akbar sound bite: IT'S A TRAP!

Tuesday we made our pilgrimage to Disney World.

This is the first time we've attempted
to go during Spring Break. :-$

The monorail was shut-down, so everyone
had to wait in long lines and take the ferry
across the lake to the Magic Kingdom.

Thanks to the wonders of digital photography, I find taking a quick snapshot of my watch with something in the background is a helpful log of our activities for the day. This photo is at the front entrance to the Magic Kingdom. Yeah, we left the resort about 9:15. It only took us about 10 minutes to drive to Disney. The other 80 minutes were spent riding the tram in from where we parked and then waiting for the ferry to cross the lake.

Here's a recap of our day's visit to the Magic Kingdom:

- 10:46 a.m. walked in the Main Entrance

Have fun stormin' the castle!
(This was our first sighting of the castle after entering the park.)

- Walked over to Tomorrow Land

- Picked up fast passes for 3:55 p.m. at Space Mountain

- Rode the Buzz Lightyear ride (40 minute wait)

On the Buzz Lightyear ride you actually get to control
your turret - spinning left or right, and you each get
a laser blaster to shoot at all the things marked with
Z (for Zurg) and rack up a score for everything you hit.

Self portrait with ES in the Buzz Lightyear ride

- Walked over to Fantasy Land

- Scoffed at the 120 minute wait for the Dumbo ride (YB's favorite from our last visit)

- Bought some hot dogs for lunch

- Couldn't find any place to sit down, so we ate our lunches standing by the Dumbo ride

- Walked to Frontier Land

- Time Stamp: 12:26 p.m. getting in line for Haunted Mansion

YB watches the paddle-wheel boat while
waiting in line at the Haunted Mansion.

- Rode the Haunted Mansion ride (35 minute wait). ES wanted to go again, YB was a little creeped out by it, but he later said he wanted to do it again.

- Picked up fast passes for 4:30 p.m. at Thunder Mountain

- Rode the Pirates of the Caribbean ride (45 minute wait). Boys said it was "boring."

- Walk through the Swiss Family Robinson tree house. This was cool for us since we just recently watched the movie for family movie night, but it's probably pretty boring if you aren't familiar with the book or the movie.

- Ate some Dole Pineapple Whip! This was the first time we've had Dole Pineapple Whip since we left Hawaii.

- Walked back over to Tomorrow Land - observed Main Street Parade with Mickey & Minnie Mouse dancing on a float on the way.

- My nephews insisted Space Mountain is the best ride EVER, so I went with them on Space Mountain with them while everyone else went on the People Mover.

- I got off Space Mountain feeling like someone had just pulled me out of the clothes dryer - spinning lights, spinning stomach, happy nephews.

- Walked back over to Frontier Land to ride Thunder Mountain. This was the first time for both of my boys on an honest-to-goodness roller coaster, and I was a little worried they would wig out. I was pleasantly surprised. We came off the ride with YB saying, "AGAIN! AGAIN!" and ES saying, "The only way to survive was by screaming!" Actually, both boys wanted to go again, but there was a 60 minute wait and we said no way.

- About this time, my wife and I were exhausted and the boys were clearly "done", so we agreed it was time to head back.

We got on the train to go back to the main entrance at 5:40 p.m.

We stopped for a Blunoz Family self portrait at the main entrance.

Then we crammed into the monorail like it was
the rush hour on the Metro in DC.

Unfortunately, my Garmin battery
didn't last the entire day in Disney.

Using the Buckeye Outdoors website's route planning feature, I estimate we walked about 3.4 miles. When I got back and recharged the Garmin, I was able to see that we covered 11.85 miles in 7 hours before the battery died. However, I didn't turn it off while we were on the rides, so that wasn't 11.85 miles of walking. As I analyze the data, I expect to see some 2-3 minute spikes in velocity (pace) when we were on Space Mountain and Thunder Mountain.

Using the Garmin Connect website, I found I can share this map of where we went. Yes, yes, I am a nerd / geek / dork / all of the above for sharing this with you, but isn't it COOL???



If you click on "satellite" it will show the track overlaid on top of the overhead imagery of the park. The green bubble with the play symbol at the bottom shows where I started the GPS at the main entrance. There's one odd outlyer of a data point in the lower right when we were on the Buzz Lightyear ride. You can also see two spurious bad data points when we rode Space Mountain. Other than that, it looks like a pretty accurate recording of our visit. At the red bubble with the stop symbol, you can see how the battery died in my watch as we were on the train riding around the perimeter of the park on our way back to the main entrance.

At 6:23 p.m., we were back in our car and headed for dinner.

YB was rather insistent.

Kailee's Run

Sunday morning was Kailee's Run - a 5K fund raiser to benefit Tracy's Kids who have helped Kailee, a member of our church, in a battle with cancer.

It turns out that walking 7 miles around DC sight-seeing yesterday was a pretty good warm up for running in the 5K this morning. I set a new PR at 29:16 - nowhere near the front of the pack, but a darn good time for me.

Segway into related topic... you'll see the connection in a few minutes.

I think maybe I'm just cursed when it comes to electronic gadgets.

You don't have to scroll back very far in my blog to find a couple of common themes - an obsession with high-tech electronic gadgets... and an element of frustration and banging my head against the wall when said high-tech electronic gadgets don't work right.

No, I'm not going to regale you with more stories of my BlackBerry woes. Although I will say that my wife got the same BlackBerry that I did the same day that I did (buy one get one free promo). We use pretty much the same applications on them, too, and she doesn't seem to have the same problems I have with her BlackBerry. Maybe it's just me.

Okay, so yesterday we went to do our sight-seeing trip around DC. I wore my Garmin Forerunner GPS watch to keep track of the mileage we walked. When we got out of the car at the Iwo Jima Memorial, I looked at my watch to see what time it was. The watch said 9:16:50... I said to myself, "Self, I coulda sworn we left the house about 9:15, did we travel back in time?" In the time it took me to ask myself that question, I noted that the seconds didn't budge.

Yep, my super-whamodyne fancy high-tech GPS watch read 9:16:50 the ENTIRE day.

I tried looking for a reset button somewhere but found none. I tried pushing and holding one or both buttons for multiple seconds to see if that did anything. Nope, nada, zip, no response.

When we got home from sight-seeing, I went on the Garmin website and looked up the trouble-shooting guide. In order to do a factory reset, first you have to hold BOTH buttons for 6 seconds then LET GO of the TOP button for 3 seconds. Gosh darnit, why didn't *I* think of that???

That worked.

Then it beeped at me and told me the battery was low.

Nice.

No, it didn't really matter by that point, it just seemed to add insult to injury. No worries, I put it on the charger last night to get it fully charged before the 5K this morning.

Everything started out fine on the 5K, but it was sprinkling rain. Over the course of the run, it grew to a deluge of rain and I was SOPPING wet by the end.

Kailee's Run in the Rain

The Garmin Forerunner uses a cool touch-screen type of display where you touch the corners of the bezel to activate different functions.

Well... it doesn't work so well in the rain.

The water pretty much shorted out all four corners of the bezel. The entire run, the watch was beeping at me as the rain was causing it to go into all sorts of different sub-menus and activating all sorts of obscure work-out programs and options. I had NO control over it. When I actually touched anywhere on the bezel with my finger, it didn't respond at all.

The RAIN was in control.

Normally, my watch tells me how far I've run and what my pace is. This morning, I couldn't get it to go back to the display that told me how far I ran or what pace I was running, so I had no clue for the duration of the race.

So I just ran.

No idea what my pace was. I just ran at what I thought was a comfortable steady pace that I could maintain to the finish line.

It still recorded the data though, and I was able to download it when I got home. When I got home and looked at my pace and my time on the computer screen, my jaw dropped. I routinely jog 3 miles around Ashburn on my own, and I usually finish in about 30-33 minutes or so. Today I hit the 3 mile mark at 28:27 and I finished the 5K at 29:16. That averages out to about a 9 1/2 minute/mile pace, which is pretty darn good for me.

I still think maybe I'm just cursed with (a) an obsession with electronic gadgets and (b) very bad luck with getting them to work right.