groverdill

I want to get to know the town I've lived in for close to 20 years a little better, and what better way than cycling? So my goal is to ride every street, road, and alley in my small-ish town. It's not a big town, maybe 7 or 8 miles from end to end, but it spreads out kinda wide into the Amish countryside with lots of small developments and alleys. What do you guys suggest to keep track of what's already been ridden and what still needs explored? FYI, I'm a trail rider so I don't currently have any apps that do what I'm looking for but I'm open to suggestions. Thanks.

Mike

terrymorse 

Ridewithgps.com lets you create a personal heat map of roads you have ridden.

That should be just what you are looking for.

PeteHski

Or Strava heat map should work

aplcr0331

This is pretty popular…

https://wandrer.earth/

Connects to Strava, seems to integrate decently.

facewizard

I use wandrer.earth to track the % of streets I've ridden in various towns. It's lightly gamified and awards you achievements for completing 25, 50, 90, and 99% of any Open Street Maps city/neighborhood/county etc region. Currently in the process of trying to 100% my town. I find it very rewarding. It's encouraged me to check out a lot of places I would not have otherwise ridden and it gives me something to do when I want to do a medium-length ride rather than some long and challenging trip.

SoCaled 

C&V solution - Stick a map on your wall with thumb tacks. Cross off or highlight areas after you ride them. Only half kidding, this is how I got to know New Orleans, on foot, pre-internet.

Pratt

Since the goal is to "get to know" the town, your brain is the place to store the information. Some or all of the suggestions above may help to achieve that goal, but "knowing" should work when GPS is off, when you can't see the map, etc.

Chuck M 

I like this idea. A black and white map of the town with the streets explored highlighted in yellow on your wall could be kind of neat.

rsbob 

OR, carry cans of spray paint and paint a line on each street you ride on. Sure it’s more expensive than a yellow highlighter, but you won’t get on a previously marked street by mistake.

BobsPoprad

I used to do this with my "long" rides. It's cool to look at. Much more impressive at family functions.😁

OldTryGuy

I use STRAVA and enjoy the display. Here's my 141.25 mile 70th Birthday ride >>

https://www.strava.com/activities/3741404995

SoCaled 

Troul 

Could log it thru a reputable bicycle computer [wahoo] .

wheelreason

Amish buggy exaust dodging is a thing in Southern MD...

Black wallnut 

terrymorse is the heatmap included in the free version of RWGPS? I believe it is a paid subscription item on Strava. Nice feature.

Agree with ones mind being the best place.... but not everyone is gifted for that.

I have never heard of wandrer.earth sounds interesting. facewizard excellent first post!

msu2001la

The Strava heat map is cool to look at and might work for what the OP is trying to do, but it's really just a visual graphic and doesn't come with any stats. I don't use Wandrer.earth but it appears to track mileage and % of new roads a lot more closely.

Is there a subscription fee for Wandrer? It says you can sign up for free on their website, but I'm curious if that gets you functionality or if you have to pay extra for features.

One Wheel

I have a free wandrer.earth account: it says it's limited to your last 50 activities.

I'm planning a bike race for next summer: I'm going to get a big map of my county and the immediately surrounding area, everybody starts and finishes together, and while we're sitting around a bonfire everybody traces where they rode on the map in a different color highlighter and then votes on who had the best ride.

facewizard

When you start a free account is only processes your last 50 rides. Subscriptions are yearly and are $30 USD. The subscription purchase will start the site processing all your Strava rides ever.

I bought the subscription because this is a significant source of my weekly entertainment (I am doing short rides to get additional street mileage 2-4 evenings a week) and I figured I owed them a little walkin-around money, haha. Each month I probably spend the equivalent of 6-8+ movie runtimes doing wandrer related rides so 30 bucks a year feels like a bargain to me.

I am not sure what I'll choose to do once getting new miles becomes more difficult and inconvenient for me. If I get to the point where I am rarely or never biking new road miles, then I am not sure it would be worth it. However I live in Los Angeles so it'll probably be several years at least before I complete the neighborhoods directly adjacent to me, haha.

retswerb

I'll cast another vote for wandrer.earth , it's absolutely perfect for this. As facewizard says, subscription is needed to pull in more than 50 old rides, but it keeps tracking new ones regardless. I too have bought the subscription, it's well worth the value it gives me—and for the record, I don't pay for Strava but the two sites integrate seamlessly.

Before I got into cycling I did a bit of running, citystrides.com does a similar function for running/walking but doesn't support cycling for some reason (or at least they didn't last time I checked). These kinds of gamifications are super powerful for me, and I love the way citystrides and wandrer have gotten me to explore new areas in my city. I pre-plan much of my riding to incorporate new streets, even if it's just a block here or there that I've previously missed. My entire relationship with my city is different now that I've spent time on two feet / two wheels all over. I'm at 53% of the nearly 900 miles in my city and 10% of the 7400 miles in my county, I can't tell you how many cool things I've discovered that I'd never have bumped into on my own and I'd never have discovered in a million years by car.

Troul 

un more idea! Get the police to chase you. intense cardio + a free ride back! Might be able to cop a donut out of it too!

#/Life hacks

facewizard

As of last week they still don't support biking. I was talking with some folks in a local biking organization about my attempt to 100% our town, and someone who had walked every street recommended I do citystrides. I checked it out and it was pretty specific that it would only import my walking and not biking.

retswerb

I'm puzzled why not. Seems like the creator has already done all the hard work for it, and honestly I like various things about the user interface better on citystrides than on wandrer. Both are great sites though.

noimagination

Bonus points: you can stick it on the wall and look at it, planning out new routes, at random times.

Seriously, this is the best solution IMHO. You can get an overall view from a paper map that you just can't get from a computer screen.

tcs

That's the way we did it in the 60s~70s, coloring in the streets on a free map from the Chamber of Commerce, but we kept the map folded up in a drawer.

biker128pedal

I keep track of all my rides. But I want a copy on my computer out of the cloud. I use Garmin BaseCamp and a Garmin GPS. First a Nuvi 500 then Montana 610. Now Edge 1030. For me it’s easier to look at the tracks than Garmin connect in the cloud. I can select the bicycles folder and see all the tracks. This is what you want. There are other apps.

Just every so often plug it in and copy ride over in BaseCamp. I have a folder for bicycles and sub folders for places and general road or MTB. So how much gravel constitutes a folder for gravel.