The Tour of the Roses and a new technology discovery
Sometimes I think I was born to drive around in a white van in a T-shirt and jeans. Of course I probably wouldn’t think that if I had to do it all day, every day, but for the occasional weekend, it’s pretty sweet.
The weekend just gone was the Tour of the Roses, finally. It was small in the end, but perfectly formed. We had just the right number of people to rider as one group and test the whole concept out, start to finish. A prototype of sorts, if I was going to get all wanky.
Honestly, I didn’t have a second to think about Race.Radio while I was grinding up the heinous hills of the Lakes, Dales and Trough. However, there’s no doubting it would have been invaluable for co-ordinating with my brother-in-law CJ, in the support van and with my Mum and friend Simeon, who’d been assigned catering duties for the lunches. Just to let them know where we were, ETAs at the pitstops and feedstations etc.
It would also have helped within our little peloton. As you might expect with a mixed ability group, we split on almost every climb and several of the downhills. There were times when I felt I’d lost control, not knowing precisely where people were and if they were safe, never mind heading in the right direciton.
One thing that was apparent was the issues that would be presented in an area of patchy network reception. This is something that’s been nagging at me and unfortunately it’s an unavoidable risk. But serendipitously, I read a BBC article about the Hong Kong protestors using an app called Bridgefy, which uses Bluetooth to create instantaneous mesh networks to relay messages from one user to another. Users need to have the app installed and be within a 100 metre range of each other, but don’t necessarily have to be in the same group.
It turns out Bridgefy have an SDK enabling third-party developers to build this capability into their product, at a reasonable fee. This could be a really useful fallback when riders are reasonably close to each other, but also prove useful at big events like Ride London when networks becomes overloaded. It’s not a priority right now, but I’ve added it to a backlog of features to explore at some point.
Not much progress made besides this, so best I crack on right now.
Over and out.
