Riding to the Rock It!

I have a route I call "The Big Loop". I also have a route I call "The Big Big Loop". Today I did "The Big Big Loop". I take the road from Lacey out to Yelm. From Yelm I get on the Yelm/Tenino Trail and ride to Tenino. For "The Big Loop", I would head back toward home on Hwy. 99 north. For "The Big Big Loop", I continue on Hwy 99 toward I-5 to Grand Mound then on to US 12 to Rochester. At Rochester, I head north on Littlerock Rd. through Littlerock, and up to Tumwater. From there it's about 8 miles to home.

When I had my bike on the trainer earlier this week due to crappy weather, I rigged my Rock It speaker so I could listen to music without headphones. The Rock It 2.0 is a product from Origaudio (featured on the Shark Tank) that turns anything into a speaker. Well, truthfully, it turns anything hollow into a speaker. I took an empty spare tube box and taped it to the top tube near the headset (really high tech here). Then I attached the speaker to the box and ran the cord to the small handlebar bag I have under the aero bars. The cord attaches to the Rock It unit and the unit connects to my iPhone (see the photos below). Today I listened to iPod music, but I can also listen to Pandora. The Rock It unit is powered by two AAA batteries. They crapped out just before Rainier, so I stopped and bought two more. One of the things that is great is the Rock It doesn't seem to drain the phone battery very quickly. This is good because I want to use it when touring this summer. So, I listened to music for the entire 3 hour and 50 minute ride. I think it helped bump up my average speed (that and the fact that the route was not very hilly). Over 63.8 miles, my average was 16.6mph! I'll take it!!!

By the way, if you are thinking, "Hey, I want to get one of those Rock It 2.0 things!" Don't get it from the Origaudio website. Get it from Amazon. They are half the price ($18) on Amazon. It really is a pretty nifty device.