In the past I never found a need, but since moving to this bike my first 29er I feel like it is a bit hard to get way back and my butt down on techy stuff. I may try to find a cheap externally routed post to just try out and see if it helps.

I just use my Nexus 6. So far it seems accurate. I just barely started tracking every detail of my ride on Strava so we will see how it works.

Are you very sure it's coming from the headset? The creaks on these carbon bikes are very hard to track down sometimes. I had creaks that I thought where coming from the headset and it ended up being from the seatpost.

In the summer I play a lot of golf. Maybe even more golf than riding. In the winter I Snowboard.

I have the PD-M530's on my bike. Only used them for a few months but so far I like them a lot. They are very solid and feel very bomb proof. I have smashed them against a few rocks and one time hard enough to lift the back wheel off the ground and they didn't release or break. You can adjust them to have a very light release so that is good if you are just learning clipless. Also the cage around the pedal really helps with stability and they are not bad to ride around with regular shoes if you just need to run around the block or something.

View Ranger looks really nice. Thanks for the info

I have always used Crank Bros Candy pedals in the past, for my Chiner I decided to go with some XT pedals and I really like them. The only thing I can say is better about the Candies is they are easier to get into than the Shimano's. The XT's look bombproof though and I can't imagine they are going to break anytime soon, in comparison with the Candies that are fragile as hell and have to be replaced every year.

Merlin has some really good deals on Conti tires if you can afford to wait for their shipping.