By Andrew Matranga
Hello to our loyal All Over the Map followers. If this is your first time here, welcome. My name is Andrew, and I am the new Map Editor for Bicycling and Mountain Bike. I’ve been a user and contributor to this site for many years, and I am excited to see to your local rides and to help you learn the basics of GPS and mapping with the Ride Map tool.
We just wanted to get you up to speed with everything that’s going on here. If you’re a return visitor, you’ll notice that the site looks a little bit different, so we’ll do a quick tour to make sure that you know how to navigate the site, how to access your rides and how to post sweet new routes. If you’re new, this will be a nice intro to get you started.
First, hovering your mouse over the Ride Maps dropdown you’ll see newly organized links to Featured Rides, Find Rides, My Ride Maps Account, My Rides, Map My Next Ride, Import GPS File and Our Phone Apps.
Dropdown links
Each of these links takes you to a new part of the page. For new rides, check the Featured Rides and Find Rides links. Featured Rides will show you routes from the magazine and rides from our database. The Find Rides page has a zip code and address search that will give you sweet rides close to home. For accessing your account and settings, click My Ride Maps Account. All the features you’ve used are still there, so go ahead and check your stats. To see your rides, hit the My Rides link. That’s where all your rides live, so you can still view your time in the saddle. Map My Next Ride is where you can either use our online map editor to create a ride, import a ride from your GPS-enabled phone, import a ride from Garmin, or import your ride from a file. Just like before. Import GPS file will take you to where you can upload a file from your computer. Lastly, Our Phone Apps directs you over to mobile applications from our partner Trimble Outdoors. There, you can learn about how to turn your GPS phone into a trainer and workout tracker that collects your rides. What’s great about these apps is that you can wirelessly upload your data right into your Ride Maps account.
We’ll dig deeper into planning rides and mapping trails, but for the moment go ahead and play around on the site and let us know who you think. Like we said, the site isn’t perfect yet, but we want you to involved. So start mapping, stop reading, and check out some of our great new rides.
Latest contributor rides:
Brian Beer. New Providence, NJ: Ravine Lake Exploer
Brian Beer with the help from Tim Waddington and Micael Gengler of the Bombay Bicycle Club and Brian Stoveken of UW Cycling. Blue Mounds to New Glarus Loop
Thomas Upshaw. Atlanta, GA: Buckhead Climbs.