Bike tunes
Below is a description of what I used until a trip to Death Valley where I stupidly put my ipod in a non-waterproof pocket then rode through the rain for 350 miles. The ipod works fine on battery and from a dock, but will not take a charge from my on-bike charger or, it appears, any charger driven by 12 volts. That makes the ipod useless after 7 hours or so until I can recharge it from AC.
My solution was to retire the ipod to "around the house" use and buy an 8 gig nano (2nd generation) which is better on the bike, anyway. Of course the nano required a new remote. A Monster remote replaced the AirClick. It's still too new (Oct 2007) to know if this will be a successful replacement or not. The few times I've tried it it seemed to work OK. But twice the monster stopped controlling the nano for some reason, then started again. Very annoying.
If nothing else I've learned where not to put my nano when it is raining.
Sometimes, especially when on the super-slab, it's nice to have some tunes the help the miles go by. This is my solution. The earplugs are custom, of course, and are as comfortable as my non-speaker earplugs. They are also just as effective as my normal earplugs when the music is off. I shove the ipod in an inside jacket pocket and keep it on shuffle. The remote lets me turn in on and off, skip tunes, or tweak the volume.
In the past I've tried on-bike radios, in helmet speakers, Autocom systems, etc. This is the best set-up I've had. Keeping the ipod in a pocket also means I'm not tied to the bike by a cord (unless my electric liner is plugged in :-). I'm not interested in two way communications. If you need a microphone this setup is not for you.
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