Where Else Can I put my Garmin and my HRM where they will work but I can't see them.

[OakLeaf]

Pocket is fine.

But, it sounds like you really need some work on visual skills. If you're that easily distracted by your computer, you're likely going to be just as easily distracted by other things. Things that you do need to be aware of while riding, like other vehicles, animals, potholes, etc. The number of crashes you've had both on and off bike really suggest that. Distraction, target fixation, tunnel vision, are all aspects of the same thing.

It's an issue for me that I have to work on constantly, so I don't really have any good suggestions other than to keep checking yourself for whether you're seeing everything in your fields of vision, like very often, like once a minute or even more, as often as you'd check your mirrors in a motor vehicle. That's what I do on wheels, any kind of wheels, and just typing this makes me realize I need to do it on foot, too. Take a bike skills course, since a whole lot of bike handling is visual. Maybe page Wahine who mentioned in another thread that she had some drills.


ETA: I have a friend who says some of the best advice he ever got on a moto is to pick his eyes up 10 degrees. To me, that's part of it, a big part, since most people spend way too much time looking down and not enough time looking at the way forward - and if your computer isn't on the very periphery of your vision while riding, you're there - but to me there's more to it than that. The diffuse center of your focus is really, really important, but just as important is keeping it extremely diffuse. You know when you go to the optometrist and do the visual fields test? That's how "turned on" your brain has to be any time you're moving through space. If you're not used to it, it will be very tiring at first, since it takes a LOT of brain processing power. That's okay, just know to limit the length of your rides so you won't be overcome by fatigue, and you will build mental endurance the same way you build physical endurance.