Hey everyone, It wasn't long ago I made my last cycling post in this community but there are a couple of things I like doing... cycling (more and more), playing Splinterlands and making posts, and I'm already making a lot of Splinterlands related content so let's offset it a bit by creating more CYCLING content! 😃

It's now over four months ago I've bought my mountain bike, and I've been using it pretty much as a road bike until now 😅 it was even up to a point where I asked myself if I haven't been too stubborn and just made the wrong choice to start with... I of course first needed to get fit to be able to reach MTB routes in my area because we don't have any hills or mountains in my country and the way I prepared for my rides before was checking the wind direction the evening before and make a route using Google Maps, writing a piece of paper with some key pointers on it, to then come to the conclusion multiple times parts of my route wasn't allowed for bikes or I just lost the piece of paper... which already happened to me twice. 😏

So, this was one of my last Google planned routes, in which I was lost again and couldn't find my way back to the bridge crossing a large river, a change was needed but damn, these cycling computers are expensive!

Are they really necessary!? My phone's battery drains too quickly while navigating for two or more hours so the answer was yes, I don't want to be far from home with a flat tyre or unable to call for help when something happens, so for me, the answer was yes.. and then the search started for which brand and how much I would be willing to pay for it.

Doing some Cycling Computer research...

I first looked at brands like iGPSport and Bryton, because they were relatively affordable with prices going from €100 to €150 but when I read some reviews there were problems with navigation like errors when taking the same road back and forth on the same route or with re-routing when a road has been closed for whatever reason, we have a saying in my country 'goedkoop is duurkoop' which means something like 'buying cheap is expensive' because many times you need to buy a better quality product after a while when you find out it's not what you expected it would be.

I also had a good week at work, I got €75 in tips from customers, which is a pretty rare thing in my profession but very welcome so a more expensive A-Brand wouldn't hurt my wallet so much...

Without making this a too long story, when I decided I would be better off choosing for a 'real' brand, Wahoo and Garmin both were good options, but I chose the Garmin Edge Explore 2 over the Wahoo Elemnt Bolt V2 because it looks better and had great reviews.

First Impressions

There are many good tutorial videos on YouTube, walking me trough the set-up process so I didn't had to find out every little setting myself, the Dutch YouTuber WayPoint helped me a lot with his video, setting it up was really easy and so was connecting it to the Garmin Connect app, I had never used Garmin products OR cycling computers before, so I can't compare it with anything but the little computer looks nice.

There are three profiles to select, Road - Indoor - Offroad all to be configured at will, I will only be using Road and Offroad and I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it us to let the Garmin make cool new routes for me, I now only had to see what the wind direction would be and choose that as the starting direction the route would take me, the 'Explore' in the devices name is really true - I already explored new paths I've never been to before only 6 kilometers from my house, and I live here for over 40 years. 😆

This Monday, the Garmin got delivered and I had an extra day off from work on Tuesday - perfect timing to do an extra ride to test out my new toy!

The wind was blowing from the North, so I told my Garmin to make a route to the North in the 'Offroad' profile, and because I didn't knew how my offroad I could expect, I took things easy with selecting a 30 kilometer estimated route, 94% of my ride was road and only a small part was offroad, but it was still really fun to discover new roads and I didn't even knew there was a offroad path where the Garmin send me, although I cycled past it many times.

Test succeeded 😊

Discovering MTB trails!

In my last cycling post I already talked about buying a yearly permit for the MTB trail at about 10 kilometer distance, but yesterday on my second ride, Garmin decided I didn't need a permit and sent me over a part of it already 😇 sorry - I'll behave next time, in a week the new season starts and I'll buy the permit and at least now I'm sure I want it because it was awesome!

Cyclists with actual mountains and hills in their country will probably laugh at this but this is a close as I'm going to get with offroad cycling without going abroad, I found out I have to practice small jumps a bit because my first jump (with a gap behind it to clear I didn't know of until I saw it) almost sent me in to the grass and bushes but I was able to stay on my bike. 😁

At this point I'm fit enough to cycle 50 to 60 kilometers without problems but geez, offroad is something else!

Especially the alternating surface to cycle on makes it so much fun, since it's not just two hours eating up kilometers, these nice flat tarmac roads are great to pick up some speed.

29 km/h while reaching for my camera isn't that bad 🙂

A nice ride with 42 kilometers with a lot stronger winds than on two days before, the top right '22' means the wind speed and the arrow displays where the wind is blowing from.

So, the first impression is awesome, it's worth it every cent and it will also be great when I go on a short holiday around new year, cycling in unknown forests have now become easy.

Well, thanks for stopping by and I'm sure this won't be the last cycling post from me! 😄