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Four Seasons Beaumont Breeze December 2022

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28 FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | DECEMBER 2022 Let me tell you about my new favorite app. OK, I see three opportunities for qualifiers in this sentence. Putting aside the fact that I've started this column with "Let me tell you about…" several times, that phrase doesn't make a lot of sense. You don't have the choice the phrase infers. You can read it or not, but I'm going to tell you no matter what. Second, by the time you read this, this app won't be new. I'm writing this in June of 2022. Lastly, I'm not sure an app can be a favorite if it doesn't get used that often. Nevertheless, I'm going to tell you about the SRAM AXS app. I got a new bike. It's a bright red Trek Checkpoint SL6 eTap. when I took up riding in the 1990s, my first bike was what was then called a hybrid. Have I told you how I got into riding in my early 50s? Our son David got my wife Martha into bike riding after he became enthusiastic about it in his late teens. (He's even more enthusiastic about it now. He rides almost every day on one of his many bikes.) Martha started riding every weekend; she even joined the LA Wheelmen, a well-known bike club that welcomed new riders. She told me if I wanted to see her on the weekends, I should take up biking. That's what led me to the hybrid bike. At the time, hybrid referred to a bike positioned between a road bike and a mountain bike. I put many happy miles on that bike before I bought a road bike – the first of many, including a time when I had one bike in Beaumont and one in LA. We also had a tandem bike we rode all over California. You know that bikes have gears, and all of my past bikes had gears made by a Japanese company called Shimano. The gearing on these bikes included eight to 11 gears in back and two, or in a few cases, three gears in front. The shifting amongst these gears was handled by Shimano derailleurs controlled by levers on the brake handles (hoods). Cables running from the levers to the derailleurs effectuated the shifting. Well, my new bike came with gears from a Chicago outfit called SRAM founded in 1987. (By the way, the third big gear company is Italian Campagnolo.) Hybrid bikes have evolved to what are now called gravel bikes but are still meant to bridge the gap between road and mountain bikes. My Trek Checkpoint is a gravel bike. The eTap in its name refers to a wireless system made by SRAM to control the shifting of the gears. In my case, there are only multiple gears in back, 12 of them. My bike is a one drive; there is only one chain ring in front. There is a lever on each of the brake hoods that shift the gears wirelessly. Before I rode my new bike, I envisioned that when I pushed the left lever from left to right, the gears would switch from left to right. And the right lever would move the gears from right to left. Alas, that's not how my bike was configured. The gears moved opposite to what I hoped they would do. But it turns out that SRAM has an app. I downloaded it. Connecting the app to my bike involved shaking my bike to wake up the electronic parts, pressing buttons on the derailleur and each brake/shifter, and several other steps that weren't completely intuitive. First shot out of the box when the process was completed was a notification that there was a firmware update for the system. This update was sent to each of the three electronic parts through the app which connects via Bluetooth to my bike. Once that was completed, I had access to a fair amount of information about my SRAM system including the state-of-charge of the rechargeable rear battery and even the two non-rechargeable CR2032 front batteries. But most importantly, the app gave me the means to change how the shift levers worked. Using the app, I was able to reverse the action of these levers to the way I wanted. When you've ridden bikes regularly for 30 years, you come to accept that certain things are just the way they are. Of course, this applies to far more than bikes as any Apple user knows. But in the case of my new bike, an app has given me the power to change things to the way I want them. If you use an app you'd like to share with others, let me know at steve.benoff@verizon.net. ~ Steve Benoff THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT! I want to ride my bicycle, bicycle, bicycle Our Savior's Lutheran — ELCA Sunday Worship 9 am also on Facebook Live Sunday & Weekly Bible Studies 1320 W. Williams, Banning (951) 849-3343 oursaviorsbanningca.com

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