I know the garmin edge 500 uses breadcrumbs, but I only plan to use it for the highways, which is where I'll spend 90% of my time probably. When I'm in the city, I'll have with me a regular gps (~0.5 lbs) that has street navigation. Because they only have 2 hrs of battery life, I will only use it to find out where I am, or where the nearest restaurant is, and then turn it off. from the city/town, it should be simple to find the highway and be on my way again.

and I do want to stop and smell the roses, so to speak.. But I also want to get there quicker, and try to use the more direct routes and safer routes. one of the nice functions of ridewithgps is that it has street view. I plan to use that pretty extensively to determine if the road has a good shoulder, how busy it will likely be. etc.


I just tried the route feature. And it appears that the route likes to disappear. the online community seems to think that garmin purposely tried to dumbdown the 500 so people will be more inclined to buy the better versions. anyhow, I realize these gps things have a pretty steep pricing margin. my 500 cost $150 on holiday discount. the 510 costs twice as much as that. the 810 costs 4x as much... I mean it's to the point where I'm happy with just paper maps than spending that much money on a GPS.

But I'm going to try out the map function again, with the zoom held constant at 500 ft, which will decrease the amount of thinking the garmin 500 has to do, and hopefully keep the route on the screen. b right back