On by bike ride yesterday I composed this post. I was thinking about the steps I went through to determine where to ride. This story starts during a discussion with my Dad about recent bike rides. He suggested that I try going to Castro Valley and up Redwood Rd, through Moraga and then back south to home. The ride sounded great. It would be about 40 miles with some decent climbing. The route would take me on rodes with little traffic and lots of good views as it passed above a reservoir.
Krebs Map
My first step to plan out this new route was to pull out my trusty Krebs map. I bought this paper map over 5 years ago when living and cycling in the south bay. It was the de-facto standard at the time. These maps are specifically created for cyclists as they show you which roads are the best for bikes and where you can expect steep inclines. The problem is that my map didn’t include the area I where I wanted to ride. The map contained details for San Ramonsouth, for the peninsula and for San Francisco, but didn’t detail the area north of SR, where I intended to ride. I think I have now officially surpassed the use of this offline product. 
MotionBased – Searching
Next I went onto MotionBased, where I have a subscription account and searched for similar routes. I quickly found one and started checking out the details. The routecovered most of what I was looking for, but it was longer than I wanted and I certainly didn’t want to climb up Mt Diablo. 
I wanted to use this route as a template, but make it my own. MotionBased doesn’t let you edit or create routes, just view rides uploaded from a Garmin GPS device.
Bikely
My local riding partner, Scott, pointed me to Bikely. This is a cool site where you can build your own route. It’s a Google Maps mashup with a really good interface and the added benefit of an elevation profile. I started building my own route and within about 7 minutes was done. I now new the roads I needed to take, the estimated mileage and elevation profile.
Note:It turns out that Bikely’s mapping feed is incorrect. It shows that there is a street named Nash Way in Castro Valley that does not exist!! This added about 3 miles of climbing to my ride.
MotionBased & Live Search - Actual
Bikely doesn’t offer a means to print a route since it doesn’t technically know what roads you’ll take. You just draw lines that approximate the route. I needed to jot down the turn-by-turn directions and chose to do so on my mobile phone using Microsoft OneNote Mobile. I figured that a piece of paper would get all sweaty and heck, I’m digital baby! I popped my GPS onto the handlebars and headed off. About 8 miles into the ride I took a long turn (Bikely gave me wront directions, noted above). I pulled out my mobile phone and opened up a map from Windows Live Search. Quickly, I figured out to double back and head off on a different street. I used Live Search later in the ride when the rode signs got squirrely.
Upon my return home, I uploaded the GPS data to MotionBased and you can compare my actual route to the template that I found earlier. I had a great time on this ride and look forward to trying it again in a week or two.
