Not too long ago, I picked up a Garmin 1030 cycle computer. This has a larger screen and also displays maps. So I’ve been experimenting with various services for drawing those routes and downloading onto the cycle computer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Garmin unit has an automatic mapping – that works similar to Google Maps and will pick out a route. What I have found however is that those routes tend to “squiggle” a lot as it picks up many small bike paths and similar routes. I like taking a more direct route, particularly if I am cycling at off hours like an early morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are services like Strava, MapMyRide and RideWithGPS that let you plot out a route and adjust it on the PC before transferring the route down to the Garmin unit. These work somewhat better, though in all three cases seems like you need a paid subscription to do this with many routes. So I experimented with free version of RideWithGPS to see how well route planning works – before downloading to the Garmin. Overall, seemed to do what I needed – so may look at a one-year subscription for my cycle trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other part of the equation is the cues and other hints the GPS unit provides when you are on the road. My Garmin Edge unit will beep and show a map when a designated turn comes close. It can then shift back to different screen once past the turn. With an auto-plotted route in the Garmin it can be annoying since you don’t always know how many of these turns are coming up. However, if I have already created the route and downloaded it, I find this to work better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This weekend I put all these pieces together. I created a route using RideWithGPS and adjusted it for fairly direct cycling. I downloaded this route to my Garmin and cycled to Bastrop State Park where I met friends for an evening of campfire and hot dogs and overnight camping before catching a ride back with my bike. The Garmin worked as expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The last part is also using a plugin so I can include activities recorded in Strava onto a blog post such as the one below.<\/p>\n\n\n[activity-id=8703090894]","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Not too long ago, I picked up a Garmin 1030 cycle computer. This has a larger screen and also displays maps. So I’ve been experimenting with various services for drawing those routes and downloading onto the cycle computer. The Garmin …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-planning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":635,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions\/635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}