Problem using mapping sites
 

Please forgive me for double posting. I posted this on the right site but it is not seeing much use right now and this forum is very active and I know alot of you use the mapping site so here goes:
Newbee problems with bikeroutetoaster and ridewith gps, please help!
I am new to these or any for that matter, mapping sites. Taking baby step to ease into it. I feel so dumb. All I'm trying to do at this point is plot a route and then save it, file it, and print it. (Both the map and the cue sheet.) Later I will get into the "how do I export or what ever it to my gps and then how do I use the gps to follow the route". Here's where I'm at. I reg so I can log in. I try to follow the tutorials and just start clicking. I usually get started in bikeroutetoaster and after a few turns, I will notice the cue sheet has stopped and is behind a few turns. What do I do or what did I do? Usually I just erase all points and start over and repeat the process. Then follow the same step and expect different results but it just happens all over again. This example of where I am is with bike route toaster. I joined ride with gps but I can't make it work for me either so I would appreciate a step by step from an actual user of these or any others that you think I could master as the tutorials are expecting too much from this old dawg.
Please somebody help me.

Really somebody please help me with this. 37 people veiwed it so I must not be the only one who would like some help with this. Before I retired, there was always somebody to help with computers but now I need you guys.
Thanks for all replies.
Tony

Not sure about those particular sites, but I just map out routes in Google Maps (Street View is handy for determining road safety) and use this bookmarklet to make a cue sheet:
That doesn't really help you with your GPS problem, but I bet there's a way to get a Google map onto it

I use mapmyride.com. It works well enough for me, although I do have some qualms with it. When calculating elevation, for instance, it uses arbitrarily chosen points a fairly significant distance away from each other, rather than the constant stream of data you have coming from a GPS. Consequentially, the elevation data is often significantly off from the actual climb. This being said, I haven't found a site that does a better job of it without GPS data. I don't ride with GPS and thus have no knowledge of how well it integrates that data. Mapmyride doesn't let free members print maps, but it does allow the printing of cue sheets, and more functionality is added if you decide to pay.

I'm sure if you tell what GPS unit you are using, people who have experience with it will chime in with what works best for them. There may be a better free third party software package out there than what you are using at the moment.

I use Map My Ride because it's very easy and intuitive. Rather than use or pay for their maps and cue sheets, which are clunky, I start a cue sheet in Excel and make my own notations as I reach turns on Map My Ride.
When I'm done, I do a screen shot of the route (eliminating the mile markers) , and edit it with Photoshop. I remove anything extraneous and add road names. Both the map and cue sheets have a cleaner look. You can see a couple of examples at
www.bikenewengland.com/disk.html

Thanks for the replies. So say I use google maps to plot out a bike friendly route. How do I download it to a gps?

use ridewithgps.com.

Use ridewithgps.com to download google maps or instead of google? If you will notice, ridewithgps was giving me problems but I've not given up yet. This is the second part of my question which was how do I download from the mapping sites to a generic gps or garmin 305?

I've used ridewithgps quite a bit and the authors have improved things greatly. I generally download gpx or tcx files to my computer and simply transfer directly to my 705, but ridewithgps supports direct download to Garmins. I believe there would still be issues in going back after the fact and adding coursepoints to overlapping portions or a route, but you can overcome this by adding rest stops and such as you build the course.

Mapmyride is useful for accessing others' routes, but the ads are annoying as is the overall interface. I've not had good luck with bikeroutetoaster.