As far as I can tell, the i-Ride Pro is no longer available. Based on the number of complaints I’ve received and from my own experience, I have to withdraw my endorsement of the product. The Active Tunes website is down, so they may be out of business.
I’ll leave all the other info in place for historical purposes. I still LIKE the i-Ride Pro, I just can’t recommend that you try to buy one. Too bad.
After researching much about loudest portable speakers, I finally found an MP3 speaker that works well on my bike.
No, it’s not the one Son Matt saw on the way to work a few years back. Even I’M not prepared to carry a boom box so big it has to have its own trailer.
The Active Tunes i-RIDE Pro is a winner
I’m going to award the It Really Works Trophy to the i-RIDE Pro from Active Tunes.
I’ll detail the als0-rans tomorrow and the next day.
I’m going to have to set expectations here. I’m not an audiophile. Most of my life has been spent with multiple police scanners blaring stuff like, “One Adam 12, see the woman…” into my ears.
That means the speaker has to be just good enough for me to recognize the song over wind and traffic sounds.
Why Do I like the i-RIDE Pro?
It’s small, 4″ x 1.75″.
It’s lightweight.
It produces acceptable quality sound with 4 watts output.
The built-in rechargeable Lithium Ion battery has long life and recharges from a USB port. If you don’t have a computer with you, you could use a USB adapter (not included) to charge it from AC. Active Tunes says it’ll play for eight hours on a charge. I went for a four-hour ride on a Sunday and forgot to turn it off. On the next Wednesday, I noticed the LED was lit and turned the MP3 player on. Much to my surprise, the speakers still worked.
Mick from Active Tunes says the battery should last for about 3,500 hours. If it fails within the first two years, Active Tunes will replace it free. If you play it while riding four hours a day, 365 days a year, then it should last 2.57 years. I think something better will come along before I need to replace the battery.
It comes with a carrying case that uses Velcro straps for multiple mounting possibilities. The case has a built-in MP3 player holder with a transparent front so you can manipulate the controls.
What nits can I pick about the i-RIDE Pro?
It’s a little expensive at $59.99. (Although it’s cheaper than the junk box full of others I’ve bought one at a time.)
It uses a Lithium Ion battery that’s not removable. If it dies while you’re out on the road, then you’re out of luck until you can charge it again.
It’s not waterproof. (Mick says they’ve had reports from riders who were caught in the rain and didn’t encounter any failures. The neoprene pouch is water resistant, but neither it nor the speaker should be considered waterproof, he warns.)
The case’s MP3 player holder is designed for the newer, smaller players. My Classic is too big to fit it, so I cut it off.
How do I mount my i-RIDE Pro?
My Surly Long Haul Trucker’s cockpit is a bit busy, so I attach the speaker to my Camelbak MULE strap and put the iPod in a special pocket made for it. I use the iPod’s remote control to skip tracks, pause and adjust the volume.
Since the speaker is right under my ear, I don’t have to turn the volume up very high, which probably gives me longer battery life on both the player and the speaker.
The flap-looking thing at the left of the holder is for the smaller version of MP3 players. I cut it off after the first ride.
[Disclaimer: Mick at Active Tunes sent me a free speaker to review. I’ve been a satisfied customer and a past winner of an i-Ride Classic in the company’s monthly giveaway contest.]
Tomorrow I’ll review my second and third-place speakers choices, the Byco WRX1 and the Active Tunes i-RIDE Classic.
After covering hardware, I’ll share some of my playlists that make the miles go by. I know there are some purists that think you should be “one with nature,” but there are some days when the hills are too steep, the wind is too strong or you don’t have anyone to talk with. Tunes help me get in a groove.
Do you know the origin of Bad Moon Rising?
My former riding partner, Mary, was an innocent who would believe anything. One day we were riding along Ghost Road 27 when John Fogarty’s Bad Moon Rising cued up.
When the chorus started – “Don’t go ’round tonight, it’s bound to take your life, there’s a bad moon on the rise,” – I asked, “Do you know the origin of that song?”
The Creedence bus was highballing with a broken bathroom
“One night, the Creedence Clearwater Revival bus was highballing through the swamps of Louisiana trying to make it to the next gig when the bathroom broke,” I explained.
“One of the band had to answer nature’s call, so he convinced the bus driver to pull off on the side of the road. He was in mid-stream when a highway patrol car pulled up with blue lights flashing and started to arrest the long-haired singer for indecent exposure and anything else he could come up with.
“They finally managed to convince the cop to let them go, but the experience has been immortalized in these lines forever, listen: Bathroom on the right. [It takes a c0uple seconds to load, so be patient.]
“Can’t you hear them singing, ‘Don’t go ’round tonight, it’s bound to take your life, there’s a bathroom on the right.‘”
In fairness to Mary, I’ve told that story to a number of people. The most common response is, “Really?”
[Disclaimer: I told my friends at Aussies on Bicycles Network Australia that, for the record, I do not use botox. I can keep a straight face while spinning these tales without the aid of chemicals. (Is alcohol a chemical? I may need to amend that last statement.)]
(By the way, I’ve made the commenting process easier. You no longer have to register and remember a password to be able to post a comment. We’ll try it this way until and unless the spammers become a problem.)
I’ve had my Garmin nüvi 760 GPS about a year. I love it. My wife accepts it. My kid borrows it. My brother bought one like it.
Read my Garmin nuvi 760 GPS review for my initial impression of the Garmin GPS that’s designed for use in an automobile.
Even a Garmin Nuvi 760 is only as good as its maps
I bought my Nuvi 760 just as the City Navigator North America mapset had come out, so I qualified for a download of the latest and greatest maps as soon as the unit came out of the box.
New GPS maps come out several times a year
That’s why I was interested when I saw a posting in a GPS forum about a new lifetime subscription program from Garmin.
Garmin Mapsource maps usually cost about $75.
Yearly upgrades for Mapsource maps run about $75. Since I have two GPS units (and the maps can’t be used on more than one GPS), that can get expensive.
The Garmin nuMaps Lifetime subscription costs about $100
Garmin nuMaps Lifetime service just a card?
What comes in the mail for your money? A nifty thing that looks like a credit card with incredibly small type on the back telling you how to use it.
At first, I was confused. What am I supposed to do with this thing, hold it up to my computer monitor?
Down at the bottom of the card, on the back of the card, was a small section that looked like it was covered in hieroglyphics (that or funky algebra equations, they both always made about as much sense to me).
Feeling brave – or foolish – I reached for a sharp object
I started scratching at the symbols like you’d do with a scratch-off lottery card.
Suddenly numbers and letters appeared. Numbers and letters that looked suspiciously like stuff that Miss Wright tried to teach me, mostly unsuccessfully, in high school algebra class.
Bing0! My first winning scratch-off
So, what did I win for my $100 entry?
Actually, I won some frustration. The new program had gotten mixed reviews.
Some folks complained about how long it took to download the maps.
Some folks complained about how long it took to upload the maps to the GPS.
Some folks complained about having problems reaching the download site at Garmin.
I have a fast internet connection and I’ve had enough experience with loading GPS units that items one and two weren’t an issue for me.
Connecting with Garmin WAS a problem
When I tried my download, I got a 404 message “The requested resource (/activatenumaps) is not available.”
After trying several times, I sent a message to tech support.
Garmin tech support replied
Thank you for contacting Garmin International. I checked the link today and it is working, I have seen this error when using AOL internet browser. Make sure you are using Internet Explorer.
It WASN’T the browser
When I tried my download, I wasn’t using AOL’s internet browser (what an insult). I had tried Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome. It wasn’t my browser.
Tech support nailed it when they said, “I checked the link today and it is working.” It WAS working today. It just wasn’t working the day I tried it the first time.
How does Garmin nuMap Lifetime work?
To quote Garmin, “Program entitles you to receive up to four map updates per year during the useful life of one compatible Garmin product or as long as Garmin receives map data from its current third party map supplier, whichever is shorter. Not transferable to another person or Garmin Product.”
When I signed up for the subscription, I was gambling that
My Nuvi 760 isn’t going to break, get lost or stolen. The subsciption is tied to a single device.
I will do more than two upgrades before the bad stuff listed above happens.
I won’t get tempted to run out and buy a newer, spiffier GPS in the next few years.
nuMap Lifetime isn’t THAT big a gamble for me
Garmin stuff is pretty rugged and this unit is used in a car, not clamped to my handlebar like my Garmin GPSMap 60CS, which has been jolted for thousands of miles in heat and pouring rain.
In less than two years I’ll have downloaded enough new maps and points of interest to come out ahead financially.
If I do find another GPS that I just can’t live without, one of my boys (or Wife Lila) will get this one. There ain’t gonna be much in the will, so they better take what they can get when they can get it.
Where can I buy it?
I’ve had good luck buying GPS units, software and mounts from gpscity.com. They’re not always the cheapest (their shipping costs add to the price), but their support is good and they have lots of products.
You can also find it on Amazon, probably a little cheaper.
I’ve been thinking about racks – bike racks – lately. I was cleaning out my storage unit and came upon one of those strap-on kinds in good shape. It went to Reader in the Wild Mathilde. It was better than taking the front wheel off her bike and wrestling it into her car when she needed to transport it.
I don’t trust strap-on racks
I never trust them for good reason. They come loose and drop your bike on the ground.
Foodie Jan Norris and I decided to ride the northeast side of Lake Okeechobee before the dike was paved. Since we weren’t sure how it was going to work out, we left my car at one end and put our bikes on her cheesy strap-rack to go to the start. I added a couple of wraps of bungee cord “just in case.”
Jan doesn’t poke along
We were tooling down U.S. 441 at something that felt just shy of the speed of light.
After about 10 miles, I looked in the passenger side rearview mirror.
I didn’t see my bike
She did a bootlegger and headed back up the road to see if we could spot a twisted bike carcass on the side of the road. I could only wonder how many cane trucks had already ground it to dust. I was already planning in my mind what the replacement would be.
Major Digression Alert
See bottom of the post for an old memory that just popped into my head. It is only barely connected to this topic, so I’ll bury it at the end.
Now, back to our normally scheduled program
After we had gone several miles, I told her to pull off on the shoulder. I walked around behind the car to see that my bike had slipped off the rack – which put it below the line of sight – but the bungee cord had sort of held it on. Every so often it would bounce off the pavement, resulting in a tacoed wheel and a sanded-down pedal.
Son Matt dropped my bike, too
Not long after that, Son Matt and I were coming back from riding the West Orange Trail near Orlando, FL. When we stopped to make the turn into his housing development, my bike fell off his strap-on rack. If it had happened five minutes earlier at Warp Speed, it would have caused havoc on the highway.
I was ready for something safe and strong
My first hitch-mounted rack was made by Swagman. It was similar to the one pictured at the top of this posting.
What I liked was that the bike was held on to the rack by a bar across the top that screwed down. Unfortunately, I grew to hate how long it took to screw and unscrew that top, particularly in the dark at mosquito o’clock.
The bikes were supported by two arms about a foot apart.
They rested on rubber cradles that could be adjusted to give more or less spacing between bikes.
The bikes were secured by heavy rubber straps that were quick to put on and faster to remove.
One of the pair of cradles for each bike has an anti-sway arm that keeps the bikes from rocking into each other.
Pull a pin and the rack swings down to give access to the back of the vehicle. (It’s not recommended, but I have done that with bikes on the rack.)
Pull a pin and the bike arms fold down. (I used to leave my 4-bike rack arms extended all the time. The 5-bike rack sticks out just a little bit too far to do that.)
Bikes were held higher than on the Swagman. I never had to worry that the bikes would drag the ground.
Instead of a simple locking pin, the rack bolted to the hitch receiver to eliminate sway. The bikes don’t get whipped around like a dog wagging its tail.
I was concerned that being exposed to the sun all the time would cause the rubber straps to break down, but I haven’t seen any evidence of it in the last three years.
How about the Yakima SlickROC 4?
www.chainlove.com has put this model on sale twice recently. I bought one for Son Matt for his birthday and one for Son Adam to reward him for completing his first triathlon.
The SlickROC is similar to the KingPin 4, except that it comes with a Deadlock cable locking mechanism to keep your bike safe from honest people and it has a more convenient way to swing down the arms without pulling a pin.
In the long run, it may not hold up as well as a simple pin, but it’s more convenient to use.
What’s not to like?
A five-bike rack holds five bikes about as well as a two-man tent holds two men. They’ve got to be either very small or very friendly.
The pins that came on my KingPin 4 had safety straps made of plastic to keep you from losing them. They arrived cut. Instead of sending the rack back, I went to a local sporting good stores and bought a stainless steel fishing leader with snaps and swivels on the ends and used it instead. When I upgraded to the KingPin5, I cut off the plastic junk and started off with stainless steel.
The spare tire mounted under Adam’s SUV kept his hitch from going back far enough in the receiver to install the bolt. I considered cutting off about an inch of the rack, but it might have interfered with the piece that keeps the rack from swaying. We walked into Rayside Truck and Trailer and described our problem. “You’ve got a Toyota 4-Runner, don’t you?” the guy said. “Every time somebody runs into this it’s with that model.”
He sold us a hitch receiver extension (and even trimmed off 3/4″ inch and painted it). Problem solved.
Where have I bought my Yakima Racks?
I’ve had good luck with ORS Racks Direct. They’ve been good at competitive price matching.
However, I did send them a crankygram with my first order:
When I ordered this item on March 29, I took advantage of the 10% in-store discount, but I specifically asked if there were any sales coming up. The answer was no.
I should be happy with the 10%, but it torques me off a bit to get an email from you two days later – before the rack has arrived – telling me that I could buy it for 20%. off now.
You might want to look at your mailing campaigns and not send stuff out like that if an order is en route.
Ignorance, sometimes, is bliss.
Less than two hours later came this reply:
Great point and thanks for contacting us. I’ve refunded your Visa card an
additional $20 which will give you the effective sale price of $180 on your
KingPin.
You can’t fault that for customer service
You have to catch chainlove at the right time
The SlickROC4s were ordered from chainlove.com. (Their ad is at right.) The only catch is that they put up specials all day long for specific times or until the product is sold out. You have to watch for their alerts to snag stuff; you can’t just order from a catalog. Still, their prices are good.
Here’s the major digression I promised
When I was about 10 years old, dad was building a road down in the Southeast Missouri Bootheel. Gravel for the project was delivered in hopper cars to a railroad siding, where it was unloaded into an underground hopper, lifted by a conveyor belt, dropped into a dump truck and hauled to the cement plant at the job site.
Dad would let me crawl under the hopper car with sledge hammer and knock out the pin that held the chutes in place. The big chute doors would burst open and tons of gravel would come flying out. The best part would come with the car was empty. Dad would give the car a couple of bangs with a dragline bucket to get the last of the load out and then, while I was stretched out on my back under the car, a guy in a tractor would push the line of hoppers up one space so I could repeat the process.
Obviously, I was told not to crawl out while the train car was moving.
It was perfectly safe
Of course, looking at it from today’s perspective, I guess I could have mashed my finger with the hammer, been knocked unconscious by the chute door opening suddenly, been buried in a dark pit under 50 tons of gravel until I rode – probably in pieces – up the conveyor belt to be dropped into a dump truck, where I would be mixed up into a load of concrete and become part of a state highway.
But, since none of that stuff happened, it was a heckuva summer for a 10-year-old.
How did cane trucks make me think of trains?
One weekend before we left to go home, I put a whole line of pennies on the main train tracks that were feet away from our siding. I envisioned coming back on Monday and finding them all squished paper-thin as souvenirs I could share with my buddies.
Much to my disappointment, the pennies not only weren’t flat. They weren’t there.
Dad explained that the high-balling freights would mash the copper pennies as flat as tin foil and they would be effectively welded to the train’s drive wheels. (Putting them under the hopper cars worked great, by the way. I bet I still have some of those pennies somewhere back home.)
That’s what I thought had happened to my Trek; it had been mashed to Trekfoil and was stuck to the bottom of some cane truck headed to the sugar mill.
Bike content
Folks ask me, “Aren’t you afraid to ride on the road?”
I think kids who grew up in the 50s and 60s and weren’t taught that the world is a dangerous place are less afraid than their more-protected children and grandchildren. Kids today aren’t allowed to do the kinds of things we did and, mostly, survived every afternoon.
Of course, our generation was taught that we could survive a nuclear explosion just by ducking and covering under our school desks.
Have you ever heard of something that was too good to be true, but decided to give it a shot anyway and got pleasantly surprised?
That’s what happened with Harbor Freight’s Cycle Tree
I mentioned last month that I was rebuilding my storage shed to hold 40 years worth of film, clips and prints until I could digitize them. Unfortunately, that’s also where I store my bikes. I wasn’t sure how I was going to be able to get to stuff on the shelves with bikes hanging from the ceiling and taking up floor space.
Serendipity steps in
S0meone on the Bicycle Lifestyle Google Group was asking about creative bicycle storage in a small space. There were several suggestions, but I liked the one for the Harbor Freight Tools Cycle Tree.
It was only $49.99 plus $8.99 shipping for a total of $59.98.
It claimed to hold up to six bicycles in about four square feet of floor space.
It was on wheels, so I could move it around to access my shelves.
It was only $49.99 (or did I mention that already?).
How do I mount my i-RIDE Pro?
