Sunday research & same day service

08:00 out the door to hit the trails for our first ride since the COVID lockdown beganI was up and out the door this morning for a much needed ‘research trip’ to ‘collect critical data’. In other words, a loop on some easy riding mountain bike trails at Brown County State Park. Not exactly an early start, but I left the driveway at 08:00 to head out with Ben, a long-time WayZada friend.

Virtually empty at the park, we only saw a few riders on the trails all day. After too many months of quarantine, it was great to be out on the trails, if not a bit humbling to realize how long it had been. 

After a steep climb on Aynes Loop that had us feeling our age, a rest was in order. We stopped at the intersection and came across a laminated trail map placed by a local nonprofit who maintains the trails.

It was at this point when my riding partner threw down a challenge. He has been helping out here at WayZada and asked if he could get same-day service for our morning ride. Challenge accepted, and a friendly wager was made (photo evidence of friendliness below). Per our custom, loser buys the winner a beer, and the winner would show their honor by returning the favor. Best kind of bet to make!

 

 

 


On the drive home I remembered Garmin is currently down due to a ransomware attack, which would make the job more difficult. I connected to my watch as a storage device and grabbed the day’s *.fit file, which I converted into a more traditional (and useful!) *.gpx. From there, our WayZada software mapped the profile and I did a bit of QA/QC to clean up our tracks. Normally Garmin does that for me, but with their services down and a beer-bet to win, I couldn’t wait.

I knew the victory would be within reach, so I figured I might as well create something nice for a friend. I imported the profile into AutoCad, added the trail names to the front, and a profile of a bike at about 50% thickness to give some depth to the print. While you can’t see it in the image below, I also created hollow pockets inside the print for a pair of magnets, so this is functional as a refrigerator magnet. I ultimately decided upon a pair of neodymium magnets, which means this will end up sticking to his bumper on the highway without issues. Also added a ‘WayZada.com’ inset to the back, just in case someone plucks this off his beer fridge and wants to print one of their own. A little bit of self promotion can’t hurt, right?

Next stop was Slic3R to prep this for printing. I split the print into a two-tone for the profile, using white as the back layer to help make this pop against Ben’s black fridge. Orange layered on top of that, then back to white font to tie this together and list the trails we had ridden this morning.

Checked the code, sent to the printer, and it was off to the races.


Left for the trip at 8am, wager made around 10am, print done by 4pm. The super-strong neodymium magnets do their job - this worked great as a car magnet and looks right at home on Ben’s fridge.

The bike profile was a new addition to our portfolio, and one that we’ll likely expand on - we’ve already been discussing offering a runner, hiker, campsite, and other silhouettes to enhance our profiles.

 

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