Clydesdales/Athenas (200+ lb / 91+ kg) - Where did you bike this year?

A few months back I began getting bored of cycling on the same roads, and decided I wanted to start biking places I've never biked before. It was hard to visualize this however, so I started a map using ridewithgps.com, recording every route I went on. Using this map I was able to glance at it and pick a new place to go to that I haven't been before.

So today, I've hit my yearly goal of 3000 miles, by far the most active year I've ever had (2nd best is 1250 miles in 2004), and I present to you my map of everywhere I've been on my bike this year:

226723

The red X's represent my starting points. The inset at the right is in Washington DC and Northern Virginia, when I took a business trip there in August (I took my bike!). It is unlikely that I'll be adding new routes to this map as the season winds down now, so I consider this the final version.


So where have you been this year?

Indiana: Indianapolis, Carmel, Noblesville, Cicero, Bakers Corners, Lamong, Zionsville, Whitestown, Westfield, Sheridan, Jolietville, Ellettsville, Speedway, Hindustan (really), Brownsburg, Tilden, Danville, Shelbyville, Flat Rock, maybe others.

Illinois: Arthur, Chesterville.

....So where have you been this year?

Mostly just riding around New York City,
but was able to ride around Holland, wanted to
ride some other countries I visited. But either
didn't have time or couldn't get my hands on a bike.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHn_wenhNHA


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPHI-JWj3Rw

PA: Phoenixville, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Lebanon, Hamburg, Reading, Pottstown, Conshohocken, Oaks, Plymouth Meeting, Kimberton, Waterville, Jersey Shore (not the TV show), Meadville, Conneaut Lake, Linesville - thanks to my friend Troy for hosting me in New Richmond and helping me ride in the last three towns. Thanks for Bautieri joining me in Harrisburg and Lebanon, and Guybierhaus, Jeneralist, and her husband for riding with me in Lebanon.

OH: Cleveland, Franklin, Peninsula, Akron, Massilon, Holmes County, Stow, Cortland, Port Clinton, Canal Fulton - none of which I could have done without help from my Buckeye friends Mr. DanW, thestoutdog, iforgetmename, and above all Peter_C.

NJ: Medford

DE: Middletown

Jersey Shore (not the TV show)

Hehe... I drove down Rt 15 on my way to DC in August and saw a sign for Jersey Shore and thought "what on earth?!"

I rode in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Florida this year.

Hehe... I drove down Rt 15 on my way to DC in August and saw a sign for Jersey Shore and thought "what on earth?!"

Jersey Shore is the southern terminus of the 63 mile Pine Creek Rail Trail. It's also the location of the alleged 'other' declaration of independence signed July 4, 1776.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Play_Men

I once said Jersey Shore was the most boring town in Pennsylvania. Cambridge Springs knocked it out of the top spot. :-)

Hey, Mith, how do you get multiple routes to show up on a map? I'd love to do one for the years I've been riding, but I don't know how to get multiple routes to show up.

Other than regularly taking the W&OD Trail from Sterling to DC, I rode on portions of the C&O canal this year and swam in the Potomac River alongside it, took WVA roads from Harpers Ferry to Shepherstown, and toured Gettysburg. 1800 miles so far since May 1.

Yah, I want to put all my routes on a map.

This year:

First started trying to ride two or three miles in one shot in Port Aransas, Texas, on Mustang Island. Then worked at a few more miles in the Rio Grande valley at Bentsen Rio Grande State park. I would take my bike and spend the entire day at the park, but I rarely rode more than 2 miles in one shot and often left my extremely uncomfortable bike at various stops and would continue on foot.

Maybe I did 50 to 75 miles from January to April, when I headed up north.

I then got a better bike and rode around in southeast Iowa: Mostly, rural roads between Keosauqua, Cantril, Fairfield, Ottumwa (home of Radar O'Reilly and Tom Arnold ;))

And Minnesota: Duluth and rural northeast Minnesota which is my home base

And Wisconsin: Superior, Bayfield and Ashland.

And Michigan UP: Mostly, Ironwood, Ontonagon, the Porcupine Mountains, Marquette.

I am headed back to the Rio Grande valley in maybe two, three weeks. I can't wait to really ride down there, rather than putz.

1278 miles so far for the year, give or take 30 miles

Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales, British Columbia, Alberta... too many places to list here and most would mean little to the people who post here.

But we get around a bit with a combination of hub-and-spoke tours, international travel, and randonneuring.

It's mostly a good life.

2011

PA: Harrisburg, Wormleysburg, Middletown, Elizabethtown, Hummelstown, Hershey, Palmyra, Campbelltown, Annville, Cleona, Lebanon, Myerstown, Womelsdorf, Robesonia, Wernersville, Reading, Laureldale, Hamburg, Temple, Blandon, Fleetwood, Kutztown, Leesport, Shoemakersville, Birdsboro, Pottstown, Phoenixville, Wyomissing, Oaks, Valley Forge, Norristown, Conshohocken, Manayunk, Philadelphia

FL: New Smyrna Beach, Eustis, Tavares, Leesburg, Pembroke Pines, Mable, Polk City

Hey, Mith, how do you get multiple routes to show up on a map? I'd love to do one for the years I've been riding, but I don't know how to get multiple routes to show up.

It's an optical illusion. I simply drew the first route from start to finish, then immediately drew the second one, etc, saved the route, and re-edited it every time I had a new one:

http://ridewithgps.com/routes/733506

For the Washington insert, I drew each map separately:

http://ridewithgps.com/routes/817547
http://ridewithgps.com/routes/817554

And then zoomed them out to the same level, used FireBug to remove the start/stop pins (they're too large), took a screenshot, then lined up the map landmarks in Paint.net (free image editor) to make it look like they're on the same map; and finally, put a border around the insert and pasted it into the main image.

It's super easy if you have a relatively low number of starting positions (luckily I only had 3 this year), but will probably be an immense amount of work if there are many.

I looked into programming a web app that would allow you to put multiple routes on the same map, but I just didn't have enough time to go anywhere with it.

I've had an off year. All of my rides have been around Beaufort and Hilton Head Island, with one venture out in North Charleston at Wannamaker County Park. In years past I've ridden in Darlington, Lee, and Chesterfeild Counties around my parents home, but work, school, and finances have kept me close to home.

I do plan for more in 2012.

I need to find an app I can feed all my GPS data into, and get a single map of all my rides. I do something like that with paper maps and highlighters.

Anyway, all over town and the surrounding suburbs, but also Snoqualmie Pass, Stevens Pass, and on the North Cascades Highway, toward Rainy and Washington Passes. I didn't bring my purifier on that ride, and had to turn back early. :o

All my miles were accumulated on FL trails...

Upper Tampa
Pinellas
Suncoast
Withlacoochee


Pretty boring compared to most people here.

Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Montana and Idaho. Not a whole lot of different states, but some new territory within the usual states, including some in northwest New Jersey and northeast Pennsylvania, and some spectacular scenery:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7-k2ZMFL_I

AIDS/Lifecycle ride. 545 Miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles. This was taken somewhere between Salinas and King City.

http://i.imgur.com/QC6QX.jpg

Florida, Georgia, England, France.

Lake County Florida including the mountains of Clermont, Ft. Mill, SC area, MS150 from near Charlotte, SC, to Myrtle Beach area. Hopefully some short duration tours are on the near horizon.

We bought a tandem this year, and it means we can now ride hills. We've done numerous event rides, and have had a much better season than ever before. We used to ride the same two routes all year long...now we're all over. Yay!

Neat idea! I did some riding around Tonawanda last fall when my stepfather was in ECMC for 2 months; it's a nice area.

This year I rode in western Massachusetts, the Netherlands, Oxfordshire (England), and lately in Ile-de-France, in and around Paris. The Netherlands trip (late June/early July) was the only bit that involved travel just to ride (journal at CrazyGuyOnABike.com (http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=4&doc_id=8838&v=Aq)). The rest was cycling around where I happened to be living at the time. I should actually say "is," not "was," since I'm still cycling in France.

I should do a map of the year's riding. If you plot out your rides in GPX format (either with a GPS or with a website that will produce GPX files), you can load them into Google Earth and produce a composite map. I did that for the cycling I did in the Paris-Ile de France region in summer 2009, and it was kind of neat:

228358

What's particularly nice about doing this with Google Earth is that the brighter the line is, the more frequently you rode that stretch.