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Posts from my other blogs

First Service

| Richard

No, nothing to do with tennis.

The RT had its initial service in late March 2024, so was due another service – its first “full” service – a year later, so I booked it in for 1 April 2025.

In the meantime, it’s been back to Bahnstormer for the SOS button issue to finally be fixed and they also took a look at the oil mist from the damaged rocker cover on the offside.

It was going to be a quickie this time, so I turned up and hung around whilst the service was carried out and I may have accidentally scoffed a bacon and sausage bap whilst I was there!

The rocker cover is still weeping, apparently, despite having had new rocker cover bolts and a gasket fitted, so I’ve bought a litre of oil to keep on the RT just in case and they’ve quoted me for a replacement rocker cover.

Mileage is now up to 4,768 miles.

The next planned ride is with Bahnstormer themselves down to Cornwall, so I’ll be trying out a new dji microphone setup after the last disastrous video shoot, where I went into detail about the powered phone bracket, navigation, and a mini-test of the R1300GS, all of which had no (or hardly any) sound and narration captured…

Jamaica Inn

Jamaica Inn

Herself was supposed to be coming for second unit filming, but is double-booked, so I’ll revert to a two camera setup with one on the Arai and one on the bars instead.

 

Eight Months Later…

| Richard Morris

Later

So we’ve had the ST for a little over 8 months now, in which time it’s carried us 5,500 miles.

Part of that has been to travel down to the myriads of kids and grandkids in the South West as originally intended and as the 11 grandkids (so far) are all of that sort of age, it’s meant loading it to the gunwales with presents at Christmas, for instance:

Cram Packed!

We’ve also bought a Ford load space carpet mat to protect the OEM carpeting in the estate area as I do shove the Brompton into back when I pick up the youngest stepper from work sometimes, and we also want something for when we start putting full-sized MTBs or similar in/on it.

That will be the next move: fitting some roof rails and bike brackets to the roof.

So what have we learned to date?

Well it’s fairly economical but that’s only to be expected when it demands to be driven quickly, and it is fast and it is quick as well.

It’s spacious.

There are some nice design touches, like a separate loadspace below the main flat boot area with its own waterproof tray to stow wet shoes and boots away from coats and clothes; and like the retractable carrier bag holders and bungee bag areas behind the wheels. And of course the remote handles to fold down the 60/40 split  rear seats.

Other features we love? Well there’s the dual zone heating/cooling, the heated seats and best of all the heated steering wheel. The displays are very clear and quick to react, and I can just put my iPhone in the bay and it charges and connects wirelessly, although as it’s pretty much black I forget it’s in there when I get out…

Features we loathe? Obviously as the car is later than July 2024, it comes with the nagging, but fortunately we can turn that off with one long press of the limiter button on the steering wheel. So our normal routine is get in, throw iPhone into storage area, press the ST button, and press and hold the limiter button.

One problem we’ve had so far is that when the temperature drops below zero, the hand sensors in the door handles to lock and unlock the doors don’t work.  And another is that the iPhone can overheat when it’s providing navigation and it’s on the wireless charger, so it turns itself off to prevent overheating.  Not good if you’re relying on it for navigation. Fortunately the built-in navigation seems to work OK.

 

FulGaz Challenges

| Richard

I realised I hadn’t done a proper update on the main challenges I did on FulGaz last year and this year: the Grand Tour 2025 and more importantly, perhaps, the Ironman Pro Sprint Series.

I can’t link to them, sadly, because with FulGaz’ acquisition by ROUVY, the event pages have disappeared.

Happily, though, I managed to screenshot the overall leaderboards/General Classification (“GC”) tables so I would have a permanent record of how I placed overall.

So here’s the GC for the Grand Tour 2025:

FulGaz Grand Tour 2025 GC

FulGaz Grand Tour 2025 GC

And more importantly, here’s the GC for the Ironman Pro Sprint Series:

FulGaz Ironman Pro Sprint Series GC

FulGaz Ironman Pro Sprint Series GC

So, second on the Grand Tour and third on the Ironman Pro Sprint Series; not bad for an old fart like me.

Today my Ironman Pro Sprint Series medal arrived!

March 2025 Stats

| Richard

March started with that work visit to New Delhi for a Hearing.  The hotel had a pool and allegedly a fitness centre; the former I didn’t really get to use because we ended up working well over 70 hours that week, including the weekend, and the latter was better than it looked on their website.  The treadmill also linked properly to my Apple Watch Ultra and launched an Apple Fitness+ run which appeared to show video on the main screen and the photos that were mentioned came up on the Watch.  I only managed to get it to work like this once, though.

Once back, it was off to the Pain Cave for more FulGaz rides, mainly my usual  John Hallas’ Weekly Challenges.

But that was only short term as we were off to Fuerteventura for a combination of remote working and holiday: I’d already booked a villa for a week but still had two days’ holiday to take and had looked at the cost of a city break before deciding that I could move our Business Class flights a week earlier and book another week (albeit in a different villa in the same complex) for less.  So I also amended my bike hire with Easy Riders Bike Centre in Corralejo to ensure I could do some road riding whilst I was there … and that I did: something like 324km on their Specialized Allez Elite.

Here are March’s stats:

March 2025 Statistics

March 2025 Statistics

Activities: 36 Distance: 503.97 km Time: 28:49:39 Calories:  25,850

Turning to my weight, at the end of February I weighed 87.4kg and at the end of March I weighed 86.1kg, which is down by 1.3kg. Body fat percentage was down from 25.0% to 22.6% which I think was a minor blip.

February 2025 Stats

| Richard

February started with some new work coming onto the horizon that was soon confirmed with a week’s visit to New Delhi for a Hearing.  The hotel had a pool and allegedly a fitness centre; the former I didn’t really get to use because we ended up working well over 70 hours that week, including the weekend, and the latter was better than it looked on their website.  The treadmill also linked properly to my Apple Watch Ultra and launched an Apple Fitness+ run which appeared to show video on the main screen and the photos that were mentioned came up on the Watch.  I only managed to get it to work like this once, though.

In the Pain Cave it was a combination of running on the treadmill with JRNY adaptive workouts, and FulGaz, with a continuation and eventual completion of their Grand Tour 2025, as well as my usual  John Hallas’ Weekly Challenges.

And there was the good news that ROUVY had decided to keep FulGaz going as a standalone app, providing they could maintain the user base at its current level.  Fingers crossed!

Here are February’s stats:

February 2025 Statistics

February 2025 Statistics

Activities: 22 Distance: 401.09 km Time: 16:08:36 Calories:  17,545

Turning to my weight, at the end of January I weighed 86.8kg and at the end of February I weighed 87.4kg, which is up by 0.6kg, sadly. Body fat percentage was down from 25.5% to 25.0% though.

January 2025 Stats

| Richard

Back on it in January with my usual spike in weight whilst trying to cope with shorter, darker, drearier days and more work, work, work with deadlines to hit.

So it was back to a combination of running on the treadmill with JRNY adaptive workouts, and FulGaz, where they opened up their Grand Tour 2025 on January 11th, as well as my usual  John Hallas’ Weekly Challenges.

And there was the bad news – that originally I marked as spam – that FulGaz had now been acquired by ROUVY, an inferior app.  This was following FulGaz’s earlier acquisition by the Ironman group who then decided they didn’t want to continue with FulGaz and slashed and burned them; the story of the disposal and sale to ROUVY is appalling, as detailed over on DC Rainmaker’s blog entry:

Ironman Sells FulGaz to Rouvy, and Plenty More

I’ve been too busy with the Grand Tour to give ROUVY a try or even see if the Schwinn will connect to it, but from what I’ve seen so far, it’s not going to be a happy transition from FulGaz to ROUVY when the time comes and they stop supporting the FulGaz app.  ROUVY seems to be the worst of both worlds: some “Augmented Reality” in the way of rider avatars like Zwift coupled with lower resolution real life videos, some of which appear to have been filmed from cars, rather than from an actual bike rider.

We shall see.

Here are January’s stats (obviously assisted with fact that there are well over 90 days in January each year…):

January 2025 Statistics

January 2025 Statistics

Activities: 32 Distance: 485.69 km Time: 22:40:57 Calories:  22,814

Turning to my weight, at the end of December I weighed 88.1kg and at the end of January I weighed 86.8kg, which is down by 1.3kg!  Body fat percentage was up from 25.2% to 25.5% which is weird.

2024 Statistics

| Richard Morris

2024 continued my fitness consolidation with a combination of real-world activities when we were in the UK and in many parts of Europe (but not the Middle East where I didn’t venture outside the hotel to exercise), using the gym equipment for use in Alison’s personal training venture.

Since early November 2023, we’ve been back full time in the UK – other than holidays, of course – so the Pain Cave is visited pretty much every day first thing before work.

This definitely helps with the pain by building support for the affected areas including my knackered (necrosis-riddled) knee and the pelvis and spine from the motorcycle crash. ‘Helps’ but doesn’t get rid of the constant pain that I have had to come to terms with.

Anyway, moan over, here are the stats:

2024 Statistics

2024 Statistics

That one instance of using the gym? Yes just after Christmas when I decided to get some coaching from Alison as a PT to try and do some upper body work for a change, Must. Try. Harder.

Still, I’m impressed with the stats: 4,218.76km on bikes (real and virtual) with that epic 162.89km “Death Ride” back in February; and another 700km on two legs.

Not bad for a 62 year old?

Weight-wise? On the 1st of January 2024 I weighed 86.2kg with a body fat percentage of 24.5% and on 1st January 2025, I weighed 88.0kg with a body fat percentage of 24.6%.  I can live with that, but there’s still room for improvement.

December 2024 Stats

| Richard Morris

December 2024 and my usual spike in weight whilst trying to cope with shorter, darker, drearier days and more work, work, work with deadlines to hit.

And did I mention three Christmas Dinners and a Christmas party?

Over on FulGaz, I completed their Around the World in 80 Days challenge and their Ironman Sprint Series as well as doing some more of John Hallas’ Weekly Challenges as usual.

Plus I continued with yet more (painful) treadmill runs with JRNY as well.

Here are Decmber’s stats:

December 2024 Statistics

December 2024 Statistics

Activities: 32 Distance: 384.40 km Time: 20:06:28 Calories:  18,978

Turning to my weight, at the end of November I weighed 85.9kg and at the end of December I weighed 88.1kg, which is up by 2.2kg!  Way too many Christmas Dinners and Mince Pies!

BMW Motorrad Connected (Cr)App

| Richard

I’m hoping that some of the issues I’ve been seeing with the Connected app may be due to overheating of my iPhone 15 Pro in the charging cubbyhole because of wireless charging couple with the app’s insistence that it has to be unlocked and open on the app for it to work…

I say I’m hoping, because allegedly the iPhone 16 Pro should have better thermal properties.  We’ll see.

More ridiculous behaviour from the BMW Motorrad Connected [sic] app in the meantime, though: I’ve upgraded my iPhone 15 Pro to a 16 Pro last month so I needed to transfer the apps and data over.
To make an informed decision on which capacity I went for, it’s good to check how much storage I’m using and the iPhone told me I’m using a shedload of storage for the BMW app. Not surprising, given I needed UK, Spain, France, German, Switzerland, Netherlands and Belgium maps for my recent trips.
So a quick look at the app and it tells me there were 16 updates available for some 44GB.
And there’s no way to delete the stored maps unless I download the updates and then delete them afterwards!
FFS…