On 12/7/2021 5:28 PM, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 7 Dec 2021 11:35:34 -0500, Frank Krygowski
<frkrygow@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
On 12/6/2021 11:47 PM, John B. wrote:
As for the small viewing screen and maps, I never remember riding
somewhere that I didn't know where I was going, at least in a general
way, so the map was more of a "is it this street or the next where I
turn for home".
My riding has been much more, um, adventurous. I remember riding in
England, following a crappy "tourist" map that left out dozens of roads
and sent us over steep hills so tall they hosted microwave towers.
I remember trying to follow a map hand-drawn by a Tourist Information
lady, and riding a gravel road up a mountain in Ireland until we hit
barricades that stopped our progress and forced us to turn back. All
this was as a storm was blowing in.
I remember following a beautifully quiet road shown on a highly detailed
Ohio map, then finding that the road had been taken over by some sort of
mining company. We chose not to backtrack, so for miles we walked and
biked on some of the worst gravel I've encountered.
I remember being sent on a gravel road detour in North Dakota and
realizing that we were so remote, I couldn't even guess the direction of
the closest human being.
Perhaps I'm not as good a navigator as I like to think?
I don't know about England but remember the maps that you could get at
every filling stations? I navigated across the U.S., admittedly in a
MG sports car using them.
What I did here for bicycling was go to the book store and buy a
proper map which you can get here by sections of the country and if I
was going to try a new route I'd first plot it on the "good Map" and
in one case even make notes "highway 1 to highway 2, etc.
I've used various maps at various times. Of course, I've used ordinary
county maps to navigate rides around here. And I was the prime mover on
our city's, then our Planning Organization's bike transportation map.
Way back in the 1980s, our state DOT Bicycling Coordinator hired
engineering student one summer to pore over detailed county maps. They
used traffic data and other information (in those pre-GIS days) to
choose "recommended roads" for touring cyclists, shooting for roughly a
grid with five mile spacing. I used the resulting maps for many decades.
For one tour (from the Ohio River to Lake Erie, following the route of
the historic canal) I used the Gazeteer book of super-detailed maps.
(They do one for every state.) That involved lots of detective work,
since I was trying to ride as close to the old canal route as possible,
and much of the southern part of its route is poorly documented. I was
scouring the map for things like "Canal Road" or "Lock Street."
For our Coast to Coast ride, I used Adventure Cycling's route maps for
their then-new Lewis & Clark route, at least for the western portion of
our ride. Those maps are usually excellent, showing not only well chosen
roads, but campgrounds, other lodging, bike shops, sources of food, and
even elevation profiles.
I've done some touring following U.S.G.S. Topo maps, the 1:250,000
series. In fact, if you dig back into the 1970s, you can find an article
I wrote for _Bicycling_ magazine explaining the use of topo maps. (That
was back when the magazine was interested in practical stuff, not just
gee-whiz technology and cycling fashion.)
--
- Frank Krygowski
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