Dorothy

It’s not for everyone, and that’s okay. It's hard not to sound like a crank when talking about my ideal smartwatch given the prevailing trends. Apple, Samsung, Google and its partners have achieved the miracle of shrinking a general-purpose computing platform into a device that can sit on a wrist. The fancier models even have LTE radios, freeing them from the yoke of needing a smartphone at all. But, what if all you really want is a watch that operates as a companion to your phone, rather than a poor substitute? It was this line of thinking that defined the early smartwatch era, and I think things got a lot worse when we lost that sense of restraint.

Both the Fenix 9 and 9 Pro support new stamina-tracking features that can show how a wearer’s endurance changes over the course of their training history, better indoor rowing tracking, and improvements to how Fenix watches measure rucking workouts. The standout is Garmin Epic, though, a free feature that combines multiple workouts and activities into an “epic” covering a specific trip, training period, or other outdoor adventure. Garmin says Epic can combine 92 days of different activities and incorporate things like photos and text entries alongside your stats. The summaries are built as much for personal insights as they are for sharing with other people.

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I’ve maintained a regular “dumb” nest box for years, the birthplace of generations of black-capped chickadees. I’ve seen them going in and out, but I always wondered what was happening in there, especially the year I opened up the box in the fall and found five deceased fledglings at the bottom. How could this have happened? I wondered.