General Cycling Discussion - Have you ever...

Gone on a ride with a route all mapped out in your head, only to take a differnt road, assuming that it would get you to your planned destination?

I did last night. Made two mistakes.
1. I assumed that there was yet another road that would take me to my parallel return road (there was, but it was 5 miles further up).
2. I assumed that a road that Y'd off my main road would recconnect eventually. It did not! Instead, it did a huge (8 mile) circle and ended up about a half mile from where it started.

I did not learn #2 totally the hard way. I had my doubts about the road and finally found somebody outside that told me the truth.

So, my planned 13 mile ride was actually 27.5! What should have been about an hour of riding was two hours.

Lessons learned?
1. bring a map along! No matter how well I know the area.
2. Study the wind patterns! my ride out was South, wind at my back 3 miles from a lake. Nice. My ride back was along the lake, 10-20 mph NE wind in my face.

I have to admit though that today I feel great, minus a little knee pain.

That's adventure!
I love getting a little lost, you never know what you'll find.

Yeah, I do stuff like this. I've turned a 15 miler into a 30 miler by taking wrong turns. I don't have a great internal sense of direction, so I get turned around pretty easily. That's one reason I started riding with a GPS, so I could just GO and not worry too much about how to get back.

I usually have a great sense of direction. The fact that I misjudged the location of a road had me a bit miffed (again, I should bring a map). The Y'd road seemed like it would do what I wanted, but again, unfamiliar with the area, bit me in the @$$.

Still fun!

Was telling my girlfriend that I need to find new places to ride since I have ridden most places in a 15 mile radius of my apartment. Not sure she totally understands.

I have never gotten lost.

Lately, I have been printing out maps from maps.google.com.

I print out google maps such that they tile my expected route, cut out the map squares, then scotch tape them together like a puzzle so the roads match at the edges.

I put them into a zip lock bag in my jersey pocket.

The nice thing about this is that it makes a very functional custom map at the right resolution. You can even do local searches on "restaurant" to get markers for food stops.

I have large map of the 25 miles around my place, but I tend to get tunnel vision and look at only the route I plan to take. Of course, it would help if I take the map with me!!!! I will next time!

:lol: Yea, right Lord Opie.