Though I thought I would only post about technical issues here, I now make an exception. After all, (soft) rules are for breaking occasionally, aren’t they?

So in case you don’t know, there is a nice service out there to record your bike trips that I have recently discovered. It is a Google Maps application where you first search your point of departure then your point of arrival and Gmap Pedometer does the rest for you. Occasionally you have to lend it a helping hand, though, in case the automatic route generation does not work well. It usually does not if you take bicycle roads that does not run paralelly with the highway since the automatic route generation selects the “car route” by default (it seemed to me). You can set up your itinerary in no time and promptly see the distance you did and how much energy you burned during the process (and ultimately also the elevation of your trip).

I also grab the opportunity to tell you how bike tours are the perfect way of tourism for me. You can easily do 40-50kms per day in a moderate pace. In my opinion that’s a perfect middle ground between being too slow and passing by magnificent landscapes and towns in a car. What’s more, there is the thrill of riding your bike, feeling the air against your cheeks, the ability to stop anywhere and the ambiance of adventure that comes with the nomad lifestyle.

One thing I miss is a convenient method to store your trips. According to the site itself, Gmap Pedometer is “A hack that uses Google’s mapping application to help record distances traveled and calories burned during a running or walking workout.” so one should not expect a full-fletched, shiny application but a basic user registration/login method would be handy so I could quickly access my trips. To be able to review your trips, you must store the unique url that is generated for each one in a safe place.

To give you some example routes and also to store a pointer to some trips I would like to be able to access in the future I list the daily routes of two fairly recent bike routes:

The Netherlands (summer 2007)

Amsterdam - Den Haag Amsterdam - Enkhuizen Urk - Elburg Elburg - Appeldoorn (Beekbergen) Beekbergen - Arnhem (Oosterbeek)

Austria, going along the Danube (summer 2006)

Passau - Obernzell Obernzell - Feldkirchen Feldkirchen - Au an der Donau Au an der Donau - Willersbach Willersbach - Aggsbach Aggsbach - Krems

So what are you waiting for? Hop on your bike! :)

ps. Walking trips can also be recorded on the site and there is automatic route generation for walkers, too.