Decision made

Cars. Not really my favourite subject. For whatever reason I’ve just never really got the bug. I love my gadgets and tech toys and I guess thankfully for my bank account, that love has never transferred to cars. Maybe it’s the fact that it sits in the street devaluing daily and at some point after buying a car some git will hit it with a door, or scratch it lightly as they pass by in a car park. Odd viewpoint I know, but it’s not changed in 14 years of driving and owning cars.

However, I did need to replace my Focus. It was 9 years old, I’d fell out of love with it a while ago and in my head I had to replace it. This wasn’t helped by a few fresh scratches from work recently that I hadn’t bothered fixing and a couple of bad pothole problems this year. Yes I would have got that no matter what car I had, but it still lead me to replacing sooner rather than later. But replace with what?

I set a budget and also decided that I would’t be buying new again. The Focus was my first new car and although it was great to get brand new and it felt like mine from day one, the amount I lost on just driving the car of the forecourt isn’t an experience I’d like to repeat…until the lottery win happens. Which it will. One day. Maybe. Onto the more tricky decision – what car to get? I picked up a few magazines, looked through hundreds of options, toured a few garages, test drove a couple of cars and ended up with…

Civic

A Honda Civic. It’s just over a year old so still has 20 months left on it’s warranty and it’s a 1.8 SI petrol edition. I love the interior – the dash is colourful and clear and there’s lots of nice little features inside that tick the boxes for me. It’s comfortable to drive and has plenty power to keep me happy. I also like the exterior styling – I know it’s not to everyone’s taste which is similar to the Focus in that amongst my friends they either loved it or hated it. Obviously I love it!

Civic

I bought the car from a garage in Edinburgh so the first actual drive back was interesting – torrential rain and the joys of the M8 but it was a pleasure compared to the Focus on the way through, but then it should be given the age difference. The ride is slightly harder than the Focus but the steering is more direct. There’s also some gamifaction on the dashboard – an eco rating to tell you how you are driving and when to change gears to optimise fuel usage.

Overall I’m delighted with it although I have only had it a few days now. Hopefully it lasts as well as the Focus did. One last geeky point that I like – it has a USB port and I can plug in the iPhone, and control navigation of the iPhone from the steering wheel. It’s the small things. Bliss.

Ben Vane

A couple of months since the last walk but the weather was too good to ignore. This time it was to tackle Ben Vane, another one of the local munro’s. Setting off early on a glorious day we were surprised how quiet it was for a mid summers day.

Ben Vane

We were quickly rewarded with some great views back over Loch Lomond. It then turned quite boggy – wish I’d worn my gators as the boots were caked in mud on the way up and down. The boggy ground only lasted for 15-20 mins though and the rest of the way was on ok but steep paths. There’s plenty of false summits and also some scrambling near the top but it was worth it.

Ben Lomond from Ben Vane

For a summers day when temperatures at ground level were nearly 20C, it was a wee bit chilly at the top with temps nearer 5 or 6C. Still, it was nice to cool off, grab lunch and take in the views which were stunning. Usually in summer you get a lot more haze but not today.

Alistair, Danny, Ian and Allan on Ben Vane

A very helpful fellow walker took the above photo. More telling is that while the camera was in her hands it seemed to perform so much better. I need to spend time revisiting many of the 550D’s features!

Ben Vane Runkeeper

Considering the stops and the 30 mins for lunch we made really good time on Saturday. Even on the way back down I was surprised by the lack of fellow walkers. Also surprising is the impact on my thighs this week – it’s 5 days since the walk and they are still a bit tender. I must look into improving strength/recovery as it seems to impact me more than others. As usual, all photo’s can be found on Flickr and also Facebook and Google+. Trying other ways of getting photo’s out to friends as not everyone likes or uses Flickr.

So that’s five out of the six munro’s that make up the Arrochar Alps ticked off, leaving just Beinn Bhuidhe which will hopefully be this weekend as the weather is looking good if not a tad hotter. Early start required.

88.8

88.8. A nice number but why is it blog worthy? For almost 4 years I’ve been trying to lose weight. The first 18 to 20 months saw my weight drop from almost 130kg down to 93kg. In 2010 my weight drifted slightly upwards and by the start of this year I was hovering around 97kg. I made a statement at the start of the year to take 5kg off this year but thanks to the Fitbit, doing a bit more on the bike and having some healthy competition with friends on RunKeeper I’ve shaved off more then 5. This morning I weighed 88.8kg.

So what you might say? Well convert that weight to stones and for the first time in probably 15 years I weigh less than 14 stones. Get in!!!! I’m pretty chuffed at getting to 13 stone something, even if the something is 13.8 pounds.

Still some way to go if I want my BMI to get below 25 and not be overweight. Current BMI is 27.3 and I need to lose another 18 lbs or in modern money a further 8.2kg. I think that will be a big ask although current weight loss would see me hit that weight at year end…but it’s getting harder and tougher to lose.

Small steady steps but overall that’s 6 and 1/2 stones in nearly 4 years. Happy days.

New Toys

It’s 4 years and 8 months since I bought an iMac and moved to Apple. The 24″ model has done me proud over that time but I’ve been wanting to upgrade for a few months now. The latest upgrades saw me finally pushing the button. So what did I order?

The works basically. A 27″ iMac will be winging it’s way to me shortly with an SSD, i7 CPU, fast graphics card and instead of a mouse (Logitech wins over Apple every time) I’ve went for a trackpad as with Lion coming soon I can see gesture support being heavily used throughout the OS and third party app’s over the coming year. I really can’t wait to see just how fast this thing is. The SSD will make a massive difference but that quad core CPU should chew through tasks. The only thing I didn’t upgrade was the RAM. Comes with 4GB, but Apple want £120 for another 4 – I can buy 16GB of Crucial RAM for the same price.

There’s only one snag. Ordered almost two weeks ago but the delivery date is still over 4 weeks away – June 24th. I hate waiting especially as Apple have grabbed the cash already. Grrrr. Still, nice toys on the way so can’t complain. Interestingly when I check on the status today the Apple page say’s come back tomorrow for more functionality – linked to rumours of Apple store updates on May 22nd?

Only downside to new toys is getting rid of the old iMac. Will probably sell on eBay but I never really like the eBay experience for a variety of reasons. It’s still worth a few hundred pounds though so needs must.

Another new toy soon – a car. No idea what I’m buying or when apart from ‘soon’. Need to consult with my friendly car geeks as I’m useless when it comes to cars. Looking forward to it though – the Focus is coming up for 10 years old. Showing it’s age and I’m getting bored with it.

Beinn Ime

In August last year I tried to walk up Beinn Ime via Beinn Luibhean but admitted defeat due to the wind. Roll forward 6 months and it was time to finally climb Ime. We set off early on Friday (cheers to Wills and Kate as we had the day off) and started from Succouth this time which meant walking between The Cobbler and Beinn Narnain before finally getting to Beinn Ime.

Beinn Ime

The weather was glorious although quite breezy at ground level and the forecast higher up was winds touching gales in places and to be a lot colder than the 16-18C at the car park. The first 3 miles was a gradual ascent on a well crafted path that took us to the back of the Cobbler. We then veered right and started climbing Ime. The ground at this point was quite boggy and to be honest there was no well defined path, probably because Ime isn’t as popular as the other two peaks in the vicinity.

After 20-30 mins we picked up on a path as the climb became more strenuous. This took us up the majority of Beinn Ime. At this point the wind really picked up and it was pretty cold. Until now it had been shorts and t-shirt weather but a warmer top was required to get us up the final peaks.

View from Beinn Ime

There were great views from the top but the sun started to hide between clouds and it became pretty hazy in places. At this point it was bloody cold – despite the great ground temp’s we were glad of hat s and gloves and some shelter behind a rock so we could grab some lunch. We didn’t hang around at the summit – just too cold but coming down off the main peak there was a great photo opportunity and the sun had popped out again – still really windy though.

Ian on Beinn Ime

In the background to the photo above you can see the seaplane that takes off from Loch Lomond and the Clyde. I’ll need to try that one day when the weather is good – the views from it will be amazing. After taking some shots we made our way back down – we really covered ground pretty quickly on Friday as can be seen from the RunKeeper stats below.

Beinn Ime Runkeeper

Even better – no midges to report which was a surprise. I just need to remember that my legs need sun tan lotion or they burn. Not clever. Next up is probably Ben Vane which leaves the more isolated Beinn Bhuidhe to complete the five munro’s that make up the Arrochar Alp’s. Hopefully we’ll get them both done by the middle of summer.

As usual, full set of Flickr photo’s can be found here.

Fitbit

I’ve cast envious eye’s on a Fitbit for around a year now. Since it was first announced and got traction amongst many bloggers and podcasters I’ve wanted one. The only snag is that despite saying it would be coming to the UK soon, it never has. In January I decided enough was enough and I’d import one. That quickly turned to three as a couple of friends were also interested. Thanks to another friend, Lewis, he kindly picked three up on a business trip to the states and since the beginning of February I’ve been using one constantly.

So – what is a Fitbit?
At first glance it’s a posh pedometer. It tracks your steps, can track activity during the day and at night will also track your sleep. However the hardware is secondary to the online logging and analytics service. I’ll describe more on that later. First up, lets talk about what you get in the box for $99. The Fitbit device itself is basically a large clip with one button. Clip it onto your belt, trousers or just place it in your pocket (woman are advised to clip it on their bra – doesn’t sound right but there you go). If you click on the button then four different stats are displayed on the OLED screen, which is a rather lovely blue. The stats are number of steps walked, number of calories burned, miles walked and then finally a flower. All the stats run from midnight to midnight.

Also in the box is a USB charge/sync unit for your PC or Mac, a holder to allow you to attached the Fitbit to thicker belts or straps and a wrist band that you attach the Fitbit to while sleeping. First impressions are of a well made piece of kit that is durable and I just adore the screen. The flower mentioned above is a graphical representation of your activity level over the last few hours. Sit at your desk for a morning and you’ll see a a short stem and flower. Do some exercise for an hour and you’ll see a longer stem and some leaves representing your activity. I’ve only ever seen up to 10 leaves but seemingly it can go to 12. Thats a target to aim for.

Sleep tracking is pretty easy. Attached the Fitbit to your wrist strap then hold down the button until you see START. Then sleep. In the morning hold the button down again until you see STOP. Fitbit will know when it syncs that this was a sleep period and will track hours slept and also the number of times you were awake. Thankfully it’s easy to add sleeps manually as I do forget to press the button from time to time.

Fitbit Crack

Now that I’ve had the Fitbit for three months I’m a bit concerned about the durability of the Fitbit tracker. I can’t recall any time that I’ve dropped or put any undue pressure on the Fitbit but during that time it’s developed a crack in the underside plastic. It’s not affected the performance of the Fitbit but I do wonder what condition it will be in a few months from now. It’s also picked up a couple of scratches in the softish rubber that the outside is coated in. If it was only mine cracked I put it down to a clumsy incident but Brian who picked up one at the same time as me also has a crack in the same place. I’ll contact Fitbit support to see if this is a known flaw or just coincidence.

On the other hand, Chris has managed to wash his Fitbit tracker and it survived to live another day. He’s not sure that the screen is as clear as it once was but just pleased that it survived the ordeal.

Syncing
To sync the Fitbit you need to install the tracker software on your Mac or PC, plug in the USB charge/sync unit, create an account on the Fitbit site and then place the tracker on the charger. The tracker is then authenticated to your Fitbit online account and your good to go. Charging doesn’t take too long and a full charge lasts me around a week. The tracker also holds a lot of data – up to 7 full day’s worth of data and in total up to 30 days but not in the same detail as the last 7 days. Handy if your travelling and not able to sync although now that I’ve used it for a few months I’d be making sure that I could sync every few days if I was on holiday. Yes, I’m an addict!

Syncing is quick but I’ve had a couple of problems getting syncing to work and still have to resort to a workaround to get sleep’s sync’d properly. On first getting the Fitbit I plugged it into my main computer, a 4 year old iMac. No matter what I did I couldn’t get the Mac to see the Fitbit when placed on the sync unit. Visited the Forums and help pages and couldn’t get it to work. I was also a bit concerned at some of the advice given to get it working. Opening terminal, typing in unix commands to capture output from the Fitbit. Nasty. This is supposed to be a wear and forget type device. How many people are really comfortable visiting terminal, capturing verbose output and deciphering whats wrong?

Luckily I had a Mac Mini in the house – plugged the sync unit into the Mini and the Fitbit worked first time. Another issue I had was that the firmware version that shipped with my Fitbit has a bug that means if activity is logged before syncing a sleep, then the sleep isn’t captured. As I’ve mentioned already, sleeps can be manually added but that’s a pain that I want to avoid. However the instructions for updating the firmware (on Mac at least) are pretty nasty:

For Mac users:
1. Downgrade the Mac client by going to http://cache.fitbit.com/uploader/Fitbit-Uploader-for-Mac-1.0.2.dmg
2. Install client version 1.0.2
3. Close the Fitbit Tracker Set-up page
4. Update the firmware

a. Open a Finder window.
b. Navigate to Applications > Utilities.
c. Double-click on the Terminal application to open it. A terminal window appears.
d. Now enter: FB_OPEN_MODE=”userFirmwareUpdate” /Applications/Fitbit.app/Contents/MacOS/Fitbit
e. The Fitbit application will launch and upgrade your firmware
f. Do not close the terminal window until after you have quit the Fitbit application.

5. Unplug the base station
6. Upgrade the Mac client by going to http://d290v5wu4xgrh.cloudfront.net/scratch/Install-Fitbit-1.8.2-2011-01-27.dmg
7. Install client version 1.8.2

After the update, reset the Fitbit. Place it on the base station then press the button on the bottom of the base station using a toothpick, pen tip, or paper clip.

Worse – that comes from a user and not the Fitbit staff. I followed the instructions but couldn’t get the firmware to update so my solution is to put the Fitbit on the sync unit when I wake in the morning. Gets the sleeps updated correctly but that 10-15 mins on the sync unit each day keeps the charge topped up. Hopefully at some point there will be a far easier way to reliably update the firmware.

Fitbit Website
The Fitbit website is the real core of this service. The website is free, in fact you can sign up for an account without having a Fitbit tracker. Fitbit will estimate your daily burn based on age, sex, weight etc and you can manually track activities, food and sleep but it’s obviously far more effective if you have the tracker.

Once you login you have four main tabs – Home, Tracker, Community and Analytics. The first three are available for all while the Analytics tab is a $50 a year subscription service. More on that later. First up is the Home tab. This gives you a daily or historical view of your calories consumed vs calories burned, steps and distance you’ve walked, how active you are, your weight and finally your sleeps. Daily will just show you the current day with the ability to pop up a calendar and select an individual day. Historical will show you the previous 30 days from the date selected in the calendar. It’s a great view showing everything you need to see around your statistics.

To the right of the main statistics are two other important panels that highlight the more social aspects of the site – My Stats and Friends. My Stats, shown above, highlights your individual records. Most steps taken, most calories burned etc. It also compares your stats with others using Fitbit and allows you to filter to show how active you are compared to others of the same sex and/or BMI.

Fitbit also allows you to follow friends and there is an area on the Home tab that shows you a leader board so you can see how your doing compared to friends but also allows you to jump quickly to their profile or see how your compared in a specific area – steps, distance or activity. It shouldn’t be underestimated how seeing friends doing well spurs you on. Gamification of weight loss and being healthy has given me a real kick this year.

The Home tab also lets you quickly log Food, Activity and Weight but really these are shortcuts to the second tab – Tracker.

Tracker
This is where the Fitbit website allows you to add real value to your statistics and results. You can track the following attributes using a very intuitive front end that allows you to quickly add values:

  • Food – Fitbit allows you to track your diet. There’s a built in food database but it is very US centric. However you can add your own food’s and manufacturers so despite there being an initial pain it generally takes me 20 mins at the weekend to capture all my foods for the week. Something I’d like to see is for Fitbit to link to something like MyFitnessPal which has a great food database rather than build it’s own.
  • Activities – track your biking, hiking etc using this section. Captures the date and time and also the calories burnt. Fitbit can estimate your calorie burn or if you are using equipment to track calories you can enter them manually.
  • Weight – capture weight and body fat. Fitbit have added Withings integration so for me the weight automatically updates daily. Another nice touch – you can track physical body changes as well – Neck, Bicep, Forearm, Chest, Waist, Hips, Thigh and Calf. Phew. I don’t track body changes and despite the Withings site also displaying my weight it’s great to see weight changes alongside food intake and activity.
  • Sleep – track the amount you sleep and also the amount of times you wake up.
  • Journal – track mood/energy and if you have an allergy how mild or severe it is. Very useful to compare with sleep and food – I’m not updating this section yet but intend to from now on. There is also a journal entry area. I do my journalling elsewhere but it’s very handy to have the entries alongside all your other stats.
  • Heart – capture heart rate
  • Blood Pressure – track your blood pressure blood pressure
  • Glucose – capture levels in the morning, afternoon and evening.

Quite a list but that’s not all. You can add one custom tracker that allows you to define and then measure something close to you. For me that would be migraines so I track when I have one and the severity – has an interesting correlation with sleep patterns. If you pay for Fitbit Premium then you add an unlimited amount of trackers so I also track the migraine drugs I take as well.

Both the Food and Activity sections have favourite and most logged lists so those foods that you have all the time can be saved as favourites and added by clicking on them, setting the amount and picking the time of day that you ate something. Very easy.

One question that you may have – how accurate is the Fitbit tracker? On the whole I’ve found it to be very accurate but it does depend on the activity. If I look at one of my hill walks, Fitbit will estimate a far greater distance than actually walked. A just under 10 mile walk was estimated as around 16 1/2 by Fitbit. I think it’s assuming a greater stride length than I take on a hill walk, hence the difference in distance. Another walk I was on which was more flat was accurate when compared to the actual distance tracked in RunKeeper.

One nice new feature that Fitbit has recently added – a weekly progress e-mail. Simple but very effective, it shows you the main stats from the week and displays a simple green up or red down arrow next to the stat to show if you’ve improved from the previous week. It’s another way of prompting you to keep up your progress or step up and do a bit more.

Community
I think this is the weakest area on Fitbit. These are the Fitbit forums – where users can post their hints and tips, their suggestions for the future and also seek technical help.

Until recently you couldn’t do much more than view the forum topics and search for a topic. An update in the last month now allows you to follow topics so you can keep track of updates. You can also se forum members, click through to their profiles and add them as friends but it all feels a bit clunky.

You can also create and see other public groups. There are groups which have their own leaderboards and discussion topics but you can’t search them…and there are now over 480 public groups. It feels like Fitbit have rolled out half a feature which needs a bit of polish to finish off.

Sharing and Privacy
Fitbit allows you to share your results easily on Twitter, Facebook and WordPress. There’s an option within your settings that allows you to setup a daily or weekly tweet showing just how good…or bad your doing. This can also be sent to Facebook or WordPress. I send my Fitbit tweets to the same account as my Withings scale – howfatisian. Keeps my normal twitter account from being polluted by weight and health tweets.

One area that is maybe worrying you as you read this review is what about your privacy? Many people won’t feel comfortable with sharing stat’s like weight, food eaten or exercise taken and thankfully Fitbit has given you full control on what is visible to others. As you can see from the screenshot above you can chose to share virtually nothing with others or be fully open with just friends. I’m very impressed with this as there are some things I’m happy to share like weight and exercise but I wouldn’t want to share mood and journal.

Fitbit Premium
For $50 a year you can subscribe to Fitbit premium. Although you can get a free trial for a week I waited until I’d built up a month worth of stats before commencing the trial and I’m glad I did as it made the stats more worthwhile and hence better to gauge it’s value.

Benchmarking allows you to dig into your stats and see how you compare with others on Fitbit. The default display can be seen above but you can change from steps to compare around 20 different statistics across different age groups and weight ranges. Another example is below looking at ‘very active minutes’. Looks like I’m doing pretty well.

The Food report highlights the protein, fat and carb content of the food you’ve consumed in a given week and also what you should be aiming for. Looking at mine it’s less fat and more carbs which is something to aim for in the coming months. It also breaks down intake over the day which again is quite interesting.

The Activity report breaks down your burned calories and the activities that you take part in. The Sleep report compares your sleep totals to your peers. I find this report very interesting – it highlights that I’m not getting enough sleep but to be honest no matter how much I try I find it difficult to sleep more.

The Trainer analyses your current Fitbit statistics and creates a 12 weeks plan that encourages you to gradually increase your excercise over the term. Quite effective but after a couple of weeks it suggested that the plan was too easy for me which indicates that the analysis of my statistics wasn’t as thorough as suggested in the advertising material.

A couple of extra’s are also included in the Premium pack. You can export any of your data to CSV or XLS format – shame this isn’t included when I actually buy a Fitbit. Secondly, in the tracker tab you can setup an unlimited amount of custom trackers which is very handy.

API’s and Mobile
Fitbit have recently launched a set of API’s – more detail can be found on their developer website. So if you want to develop an application around Fitbit or use the data from your Fitbit account elsewhere this is the place to visit. In April Fitbit announced that RunKeeper and About.me amongst others will import user data from Fitbit via the API. Fitbit are also developing mobile app’s, firstly for iOS followed by Android. Until then you can make use of the mobile website that Fitbit have developed.

This allows you to add activities and foods on the go. It’s functional, works on any mobile platform but you really miss the speed of an app and the extra features that an app can deliver when compared to the web.

Final Thoughts
This review is a lot longer than expected but that show’s how much I love Fitbit. The physical hardware for me is just 10% of the overall product and despite the doubts on durability and the setup issues I had, the website features and overall statistics that can be pulled from Fitbit are excellent. Highly recommended but please remember that it’s not available in the UK yet which hopefully will be addressed this year.

Even if all you do is place the Fitbit in your pocket everyday the service will deliver lot’s of long term value. To keep up to date on my progress you can visit my public Fitbit profile here.

West Highland Way – Kinlochleven to Bridge of Orchy

A few weeks ago my walking buddy Danny told me about his mate Allan. He wasn’t an experienced walker and was going to tackle the West Highland Way for charity. The charity isn’t a well known one –LMBBS, but is close to home for Allan as his two sons suffer from a very rare and complex condition called Laurence Moon Bardet Biedl Syndrome. Danny was hoping that we could accompany Allan on a stage of the West Highland Way as he was going to be doing the full 96 mile walk on his own over five days. So a plan was hatched and we agreed to join Allan on the Kinlochleven to Bridge of Orchy stage. A mere 22 miles. The longest I’ve walked so far is around 9-10 miles so it would be…interesting to say the least.

Allan, Steve and Danny

The trip to Kinlochleven from Glasgow was long. A 3 and 1/2 hour train journey from Glasgow Queen Street to Fort William followed by a 22 mile taxi ride to Kinlochleven. That train journey was so slow – thats 107 miles covered in 3 and 1/2 hours. Still – we got there and the three of us hit the sack pretty quickly as it had been a long day already and there was a lot of ground to cover tomorrow. One snag – we couldn’t get hold of Allan. No answer when we called or sent a text. The next morning and there was still no reply. We had a not so great breakfast which was pretty cheap although did include local produce – assuming the freezer compartment of the local Iceland counts. Incidentally – no black pudding. It ain’t a full Scottish if there’s no black pudding.

After a 15 min walk we turned up at Allan’s hotel – we all had a bit of the fear – would he be there, had he lost his phone, was he injured? Thankfully he was there but had a nightmare first day which saw him walk 30 miles instead of 14. Ouch. Looking at his photo’s it was also pretty scary. Thankfully he was up for cracking on so just before 09:00 we started on the next stage. The weather was pretty good – a bit cloudy but dry and not too cold. In fact after 20 mins I ditched the jacket. A couple of hours in and the sun was out and it was getting warm. By lunchtime it was t-shirt and shorts weather.

We were doing the West Highland Way in the reverse direction. Most folk do the walk from Milngavie to Fort William which means the wind and rain are usually on your back instead of in your face. So it was a walk up from Kinlochleven to the top of the devils staircase. This gave us some great views but also meant that after the first 5-6 miles the rest was pretty much downhill as the major climbs were out of the way. We soon reached the magnificent Buachaille Etiv Mor and after posing for photo’s cracked on to the Kings House for some welcome lunch.

Ian at Buachaille Etiv Mor

It took just under 4 hours to do the first 10 miles but we still had at least another 12 to do. The afternoon walk was on flatter terrain with most of the paths in petty good condition. It also took us through Rannoch Moor which is pretty featureless to be honest so we upped the pace and stopped less for photo’s. The banter kept us going so the time flew by and before we knew it we had around three miles to do and it was 16:30. At this point my leg’s were starting to hurt in particular my right calf but it’s fine today so no lasting damage done. It was also starting to cool down in the breeze but despite putting on sun cream I had a bit of sunburn. Quite surprised but it was a warm and sunny day in parts.

RunKeeper - West Highland Way

By 17:30 we were at Bridge of Orchy Hotel and ordering a well earned dinner. Food here and at the Kings House was excellent for the price – highly recommended. Top marks to RunKeeper which tracked the whole walk. I thought we kept a really good pace for the day which averaged out at just over 20 minutes a mile which considering we walked the height of a Munro is excellent for us.

A great day all round capped with a slow train journey back to Glasgow although most of it was in daylight and it really is an amazing part of the world. Surprised I’m not more sore today – small blister, a bit burnt and general muscle tiredness. I also must learn to pack lighter as my backpack was stuffed and weighed a lot – really started to dig in at the end of the day.

I’ll end the post with a small request which I never really do. Allan is doing the whole of the West Highland Way for a really good cause. It would be great if you could show him some support so please visit his Just Giving page and give what you can.

Good Service

Inspired by a tweet from Gordon this is a quick post to highlight some good customer service…well I thought it was good. Before I crack on, here’s the tweet – makes me chuckle every time I see it.

Towards the tail end of last year I needed my badminton racket restrung. I decided to try PWP which had opened a branch in Glasgow and was impressed with string options, friendly service and quick turn around. However on it’s first usage the strings broke and the racket developed a crack at the top of the frame. I couldn’t be sure that a crack wasn’t there before and had been worsened by having it restrung or that PWP were to blame. On returning to the store we had a very honest talk about the problem (which was refreshing – no pointing of fingers and trying to get rid of me). Even though I hadn’t bought the racket from them, PWP agreed to send it to Yonex and ask then to investigate for flaws or what was to blame.

Roll forward a couple of months and the feedback from Yonex was that I caused the damage. Bugger. I didn’t really expect the result to be anything else so it was time for a new racket…and a return trip to PWP despite the restring question marks as I really felt they dealt with me honestly. I sized up the rackets on the shelf and was quite taken with a couple of Yonex models, both priced at £139.

I probably should have checked for prices online but I wanted instant gratification. Imagine my surprise when the staff member I was dealing with told me that the 8000 model shown above was reduced to £89.99, they just hadn’t had time to update the labels on the racket. Instant sale. He didn’t have to tell me that as I was already thinking of buying at the higher price. Can you imagine a car dealer or your typical Comet/PC World guy telling you it’s cheaper than the ticket price online. Usually you have to ask, badger and complain until the price comes down.

So not only was I impressed with PWP’s honesty but at all times the staff have been friendly and knowledgable. So if your looking for anything badminton, squash or tennis related in Glasgow I heartily recommend PWP whose shop is in Partick on Dumbarton Road (replacing the suncenter that was there before – like Partick needs more tanning salons). There’s even a 14 day return so if the racket doesn’t suit my style of play I can return it. Fantastic.

Conic Hill

Took advantage of a slight rise in temperatures and the promise of sunshine to climb Conic Hill last Sunday. After a slow and slippy drive to Balmaha it was on with the boots and gaters for the short 400 metre climb. Although the car park had a few cars the hill was pretty deserted and we only saw two other chaps all day who had abandoned their climb up Ben Lomond. At lower levels there was a bit of a thaw on and the snow was quite wet and slippy. After a half hour we had left that behind and were in to the actual climb. Proper snow!

Danny on Conic Hill

It didn’t take long until we got to the top of the first summit – Conic is actual three small summits and as we clambered on the sun came out and gave us some glorious views of Loch Lomond, the Arrochar Alps and Ben Lomond.

Loch Lomond from Conic Hill

Despite the sun and the thaw at lower levels it was f-f-freezing at the top. A pretty brisk wind meant we didn’t hang around for long at the top and we walked down a bit to have some lunch. After a quick soup we decided not to clamber over the hill again but head further down the slope as we’d surely find a path. Wrong. We found a very old wood and a peat bog so not the best decision we’d ever made. Hence the RunKeeper map showing a circular route that doesn’t really exist.

Conic Hill

Speaking of RunKeeper, two little titbits. Runkeeper Pro is currently free for the month of January on both iOS and Android platforms. Highly recommended and is constantly being improved by the development team. Secondly, I forgot I had switched on RunKeeper Live a couple of months. What this means is that at the start of the walk a tweet is sent out and people can watch you walk live online. Updates seem to be every 10 seconds or so and looks to have worked pretty well. Got a few bizarre tweets when I checked twitter after the walk 🙂

Loch Lomond from Conic Hill

The full set of pics from the walk is as usual on Flickr including the panorama above which came out quite well.

2011 Resolutions

Didn’t do these publicly last year so can’t measure success (hint – there wasn’t much), but here is the list for 2011.

  1. Lose another 5kg
  2. Publish my own iPhone app
  3. Climb at least 6 munro’s
  4. Improve the podcast
  5. Drink more water
  6. Cycle > 2000 miles
  7. Reduce migraines
  8. Read at least one book a month
  9. Be shapeless

Some quite easy, others not so. Some might seem trivial but they aren’t for me. Most difficult is the migraine one which I’ve yet to find a trigger for. Mmmm. These at least are the tangible measurable ones whereas the usual ‘be positive’, ‘be happy’ blah blah blah ones are what I really want to do but probably won’t. Good to start the year with a positive frame of mind.

Anyhoo, Happy New Year and all the best for 2011.