Back to the Future — the Omata Way
A little bike speedomata that points forward while leading us back to basics
We live in tumultuous and fast moving times. I am frequently reminded of the quote attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, “change is the only constant in life”. And while much of the change I experience every day may net to positive over time, it also makes me reflect wistfully for a past that I remember as simpler and less fast paced, a past when it was easier to “get lost” and to wander and meander without always having a GPS in my pocket, a past where vinyl albums crackled when they’d finished playing, where watches ticked on your wrist, where books were not read to you by computers, where social networks meant people you talked to and where you had to wait until you got your printed pictures back in the mail until you could see what you had captured. There was a pace and an organic, analog order to things that seemed a bit more aligned with our natural and biological clock speed.
I went for a bike ride today and caught a whiff of that feeling. It was my first ride with a (pre-release) Omata analog speedometer on my bike. When Rhys Newman, the co-founder and CEO of Omata and good friend first told me about his idea of creating an analogy bike speedometer almost four years ago it sounded kind of interesting, but I admit, I hadn’t quite understood it; after today’s ride I realize that I actually hadn’t felt it. Omata is a beautifully simple idea, and like so many innovations, simple is often the key to unlocking magic and the special sauce that the rest of us cannot see until we feel it.
Last September I wrote a piece about how I thought the then new Suunto Spartan Ultra sports watch missed the mark. I’ve been a Suunto fan for a long time, but the Spartan was trying to be one part Apple Watch and one part sports watch. Instead of improving and doubling down in the area they were known for and building a killer next generation outdoor adventure watch they lost their focus on a fools errand trying to chase Apple Watch and Android Wear. Omata is the exact opposite. It knows what it is and knows it well. Nothing schizophrenic about it.
The beautiful simplicity of Omata is in its design and the uncompromising adherence to its core premise; when you’re out riding your bike you should, well, be out riding your bike. Anything that takes away from that, anything that causes you to engage your left brain, anything that causes you to furrow you brow for reasons other than physical exhaustion or wonder at the world around you gets in the way of your experience of riding. Let me be clear. I am not one of those crazy bike nuts. (Arguably Rhys is, the really nice and enthusiastic kind.) I have a beautiful bike and I’ve found that riding country roads and trails to be a nice complement to running and hiking in preparation for my alpine touring addiction in the winter. (There I’m the nut!)
I digress. Omata is about focus and radical prioritization of the basics. It’s about not distracting you and taking you away from your ride, but putting you in the ride. It’s about back to basics and as Ian Bogost wrote in The Atlantic last week, hiding the computer. The speedometer has four physical dials: speed, distance, time and elevation. All you have to do is glance and it immediately shows you the information you need to know. How fast are you going? Big red arm. How far have you gone? Big gray arm. How much have you climbed? Small dial on the left. How long have you been riding? Small dial on the right. No buttons and no menus, just an outer dial that you turn clockwise to ride and counterclockwise to connect to the Omata phone app (via ANT+) so you can get the data off the device after your ride, stick it on Strava or just keep track of your rides.
Another delightful discovery was how elegantly the Omata gives you information about what it’s doing when you’re not riding, by simply using the dials. When you first turn it on, the dials go to a position to indicate that they’re acquiring GPS signals. If you stop your bike, say to grab a coffee, after a short time the dials (except for speed) will all point up/forward. This means you’re paused, but haven’t finished your ride yet so the device goes into power saving mode. As soon as you touch the bike and the Omata detects movement it wakes up and the dials spin back, showing you where you’re at on your ride. This “aliveness” is one of the many wonderful touches that just work and a great reminder how much information can be communicated with clever and intentional design.
What I didn’t fully grok when Rhys first told me about his dream to build a modern bike speedometer was just how different it would be to ride with it. On my ride today I found myself occasionally just glancing down at my handlebar to see how fast I was going and how far I’d ridden much like I’ll glance at the speedometer in my car. There was nothing distracting about it. My attention was on the road and trail. I also surprised myself to find that I kept pushing just a little bit harder to try to make the big red arrow to point straight ahead, meaning I was riding 30kmh (18mph) This, according to Rhys, is the place where speed, calmness and observation all live together and hence the “ideal pace for seeing and absorbing the world”. Omata is a beautifully designed and proportioned speedometer, not a digital screen with a myriad of numbers. At a glance you get an instant sense of how you are moving through the landscape. No mental math required. Subtly different in that way that makes you feel good in a subtly different kind of way.
If you occasionally wear an analog watch on your wrist? If you care what the speedometer in your car looks like? If the words “retro” or “analog” speak to you? If you have a vinyl record collection or sometimes wish you did? If think cameras should be manual focus? If any of these things are true for you, oh, and if you like to ride bikes, you should seriously think about parting with some of your hard earned dollars and get in line for an Omata. I suspect you might find what I found, that it quiets the mind and gets your head up and into the ride just a little bit more than before all while putting more fun in the ride and an extra grin or two on your face.
[Full disclosure. I am a tiny angel investor in Omata. Everything I write above is from the heart (and head). Still I’m biased. While I had not seen a working Omata bike speedometer before last Thursday, I do consider myself, as mentioned above, a friend of Rhys and his co-founder Julian.]
