Gadget

Amazingly this is the first multiple day cycling trip that I have done alone so far. I had the weekend for myself and decided to use it to explore some new roads in Catalonia. After asking my cycling friends for some tips I decided on using Ripoll as a base. It is a two hours and €8 train ride from Barcelona and surrounded by nature parks and nice mountains. I found a reasonably cheap Airbnb, which I booked from Friday evening to Monday. I had been warned by the host that the stairs are steep, many and without much room to move a bicycle. And she was absolutely right. I still managed though and otherwise the flat was really nice, with a washing machine (!) and fully equipped kitchen. I cooked every day and basically lived on pasta. I had picked some routes before, but decided on the day which one to pick. The weather turned for the worse and it was a bit colder than I expected. I am not an early riser anyway, but in this case I waited until 10:00 to start each ride so that it could warm up a bit. In the end I only got into the rain once though. Many thanks have to go to Mauro to helping me with the routes and suggesting the area in the first place. ...

UPDATE: I posted a followup to this, with information about the new software and API and now highly recommend the Bloomsky Station The Bloomsky “Weather Camera” is a weather station with built-in camera. I first saw it on a Kickstarter Campaign, which was pretty successful. I snapped one of the early birds deals and later added a solar panel. Expected delivery was December 2014 (ha!), it turned up in August 2015. But this is already better than some other campaigns. They had some problems to get the CE approval for Europe, so that explained some of the delay. It is advertised as “5-in-1 weather station + HD camera that captures real-time weather data + sky image at your location. Next Generation Weather Network.”. ...