I had an unfortunate mishap with my pedometer on Saturday. Actually, I’m not sure mishap is the right word; nobody was injured and there were no explosions. What I had was more of a malfunction. It seems my whiz bang fantastic pedometer doesn’t work all the time.
It’s supposed to work when walking, counting each and every step. On Saturday, my family went to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. We spent almost the entire day there, arriving at 9am sharp, as soon as the park opened so we could get on the super popular Toy Story 3D shooting gallery ride; which still had a 50 minute wait despite getting there at opening. (Totally worth the wait though.) We stayed until 5:00pm, and most of the time in-between was spent walking or waiting in lines.
Towards the end of the day, exhausted from walking, standing, waiting in lines, all in 90 degree heat, I looked down at my pedometer expecting to see high numbers. It showed about 12,000 steps. I looked at it while I was slowly walking and pushing the stroller. THE NUMBERS WEREN’T MOVING! Every once in a while the pedometer would click up a step, but during the slow meandering, and especially when pushing a stroller, the pedometer wasn’t registering my steps. Apparently while pushing a stroller, the movement of a step is a much smoother motion. Smooth enough for it to NOT register on the pedometer.
So it turns out my fancy new pedometer is flawed in this manner. I’m not sure anything can be done to fix that, short of taking more pronounced steps. I might just dig my old inferior pedometer out of the drawer for the next trip to Disney, just to see if it does any better.
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Hi Eric, Great article I am now on my 5th pedometer, it has taken me that many to find a decent one that is reliable and accurate. I have found that the really cheap ones are not worth bothering with. I decided on the Silva ex1 Plus Pedometer You can wear it anywhere and it never lets you down. I would really recommend it. Good luck in finding a new pedometer
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Eric Watermolen
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July 6th, 2010 at 8:22 pm
Thanks for sharing. I never would have expected those little devices to be so complex, but some do seem to work better than others. You have a nice looking pedometer store, thanks for the recommendation.
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