riding with a GPS
 

do you? why? when? where? carry it in a pocket or mount it on the bars? is it always on or do you check it only occasionally? if you mount it on the bars how does it handle the bumps and vibration?

I use a Garmin 705 bike GPS which is mounted to the stem or bars. It's always on to record my ride, and often to provide navigation.

I have Google maps on my cell phone. Keep it in my pocket. When I'm exploring a new route, I sometimes pull it out to see where a road or trail goes.

There's two GPS options. A phone with GPS is inexpensive, but the batteries don't last too long. The Garmin bike computers are costly, but they are designed for bike rides, with a small size and a useful display, that works great in full sun or at night. They'll run well over 12 hours on a charge. And the Garmins are waterproof!

I got my Garmin so I could add routes and use the Garmin for navigation. It shows the route as a purple line on the map, and can beep and show prompts for turns.

I found that I like the recordings of my rides. There's a lot of different software and web sites to upload the ride.
Here's a few screen shots of ride data:

The free My Tourbook software totals my distance, elevation, etc by month and by year. It can map and graph each ride in a lot of different ways.
The overview display. Altitude graphed in green, speed in blue.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-C...n%2520shot.jpg

A ride's route with color coded speed:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-X...yTourbook2.jpg




Rides can be uploaded to ridewithgps.com showing the map, and a lot of statistics.
No other site has this graph: Minutes spent at each mph speed, then average grade at each mph. (this was a hilly ride!)

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-p...%2520Speed.jpg

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-a...%2520Speed.jpg

turns out my tomtom xl 310 has a bicycle feature, duh

My friend on a bicycle tour used his smart phone GPS like you would in a car. Most of the time it was not used, and remained in his bag, he knew where he was and where he was going.

However when he decided to find a new route or address, it went on his bars so he could look, see and hear directions.

I had questioned the need for GPS up to this point, But when I saw the flexibility with witch he could safely take the road less travled, I knew I must have one for my next tour.

I have been using a Garmin e trex vista cx for five years and it is only now starting to give me a few problems. I attach it on the handlebars of my road bike, on my camel back when I mtb, and have a Ram mount for when I use it on my dirt bike. It has taken a beating over the years and I may replace it with a Montana soon. Over all it has been very durable.

hokadilic

I use a Garmin Edge 800 which is mounted to my handlebars. I use because I like the data and I like to try and ride with a certain heart-rate range. I also use it for training rides, for recording my routes/rides and hence recording data for maintenance purposes and I also use it for navigation purposes.

I use it on all four of my bikes. This photo is of it mounted on my Surly Long Haul Trucker. The other item is a PedalPower+ Super-i-Cable.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-r...0/IMG_2754.JPG

Regards
Andrew

Garmin 500 on stem, but my sweat drips onto it so I am considering moving it.

That mytourbook software looks pretty nice.

I use my GPS (Gramin Legend cx) in conjunction with transit. I'll take the train or bus and since I know where I'm getting off, I can create routes and upload them to my GPS. That way once I arrive at my destination, I'll turn on the GPS and it will point me to all the turns. I don't even have to look at the map to determine where I'm at and just use the GPS to point the way.

I ride with GPS on weekend rides and tours and sometimes during trail riding. I have a Garmin GPSMap 60Csx and a handlebar bracket. But the bracket was always a little weak so I also use a couple of rubberbands to keep the unit in place, attached to the bracket. Then it stays on fine, I never had it fell off.

Here's what I'm using:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI...E:L:OC:US:3160

LOL, after riding in pouring rain for a couple of hours my Garmin GPSMap 60Csx seems to be dying: it shuts off every few minutes. It must have developed a crack, it's kind of old, 7 years maybe, and was dropped many times on hikes, and water must have gotten inside.

Now I'm not sure what to get. I see contradicting reviews everywhere. I am not interested in cadence, heart rate monitoring etc, and I may want to use it on hikes too, so I'm thinking about the new Garmin GPSMap or maybe Oregon. Does anyone have one of those?

I use the "Map my ride" app and the built in gps on my iphone, open the app and click start, couldn't be easier. It keeps track of distance, speed, elevation, time and more. If you're stopping somewhere along the ride you can pause it and then resume when you get going again. Website affiliated with it allows you to share your routes with the popular social networks, creates a url for your ride to share the actual map of the route. I keep the phone in a ziploc bag in my seat pack.
http://www.mapmyride.com/

GL and ride safe

For cycling in Europe, I use a Garmin GPSMap 60Cs and a handlebar bracket along with the Europe Navigator software. My trip enjoyment is far above when I did not have this setup. The GPS lets me remap or reroute anywhere and never get lost. It also shows every little goat path of a "road" you think might be someone's driveway. The only time the routing fails (even in bike mode) is with "bike only" no-auto paths and then it routes you to hell and back over whatever autobaun is near, until you are back on a routable road and then it takes over normally again.

Super cool being able to bomb unknown switchback decents and know what's coming up ahead, ride through dense cities without knowing the signage and traffic flow (one-ways, etc), and tell a tour organizer his route stinks and you're heading over that other pass over there to the right... :)

I have a few beefs with Garmin though:

1. The biggest problem is that software is licensed per GPS device and not per individual. That is moronic. Obviously I only use 1 device at a time but would like to own multiple devices and not pay $100-$300 each license X each device.

2. The handlebar mount sucks as a slight road bump can jar the GPS from the mount. I improved it by simply adding sticky-back velcro to the sides of the GPS and then wrap the grabber velcro around the underside of the mount.

I use endomondo & strava apps on my iphone. I like to record my mileage to see how far I rode in a year. These apps make it super simple as I don't have to write anything down, just press start & end. They both have gps data on them & it's a nice freebie since I', tracking anyways. I suppose it would be of more use if I was on a tour or something, but it's still nice to have. I don't normally look at the apps while IP'm riding though. I just use them to track & store the data.

How far can you ride before the iPhone runs out of power? Do these app run in the background?

Yeah, same here, about Garmin. I used rubberbands to keep the unit on place. I think I will give Delorme a shot, I think they have better maps.