djb

Hey Toronto guy, you know your capabilities, but how much load weight will your friend be carrying and any idea what gearing the person's bike has, in gear inches?
I guess other than doing repeats into the Don Valley , you guys don't have a ton of climbing training rides do you?

pstock

True, around here (and in most of southern and middle ontario) you have to really seek out "hills" if you want to get your GPM legs in shape. (i.e. there aint many hills)
When I signed up for a Tour de Mont Blanc trip a few years ago (gulp, 10? time flies) I did indeed "train" on the Bayview Extension hill which runs alongside the Don Valley Parkway, Google Maps says it is 2.3km one way and 62m vertical, so doing 20 reps of this was at least something.
there are a few other "hills" - Rattlesnake Point, up the Niagara Escarpment.... but you really have to seek them out.

pstock

On my recent week in the Azores I towed a trailer behind my Bike Friday on 3 of my 6 riding days. For example, on arrival day from the airport to my first hotel. and from Hotel 1 to Hotel 2 on Day 4. but inbetween I would day ride with a completely unloaded bike.
I like the mediative quality of loaded or semi-loaded touring. Just plodding along, on the steepest bits (and there were a few in the Azores) dropping to 6-8kph, just fast enough to not topple over, and muttering Left, Right, Left, Right.... under my breath. until I got to the top.
But This trip will be credit card touring, with our gear likely shuttled from hotel to hotel. I'm 64. life is short enough.

pstock

I should have been clearer too. In asking my original question I was less concerned about needing help charting an appealing, scenic route - I am pretty skilled at that from careful study of hundreds of Michelin maps over the decades. Green border routes are scenic, roads that border rivers (usually) run pretty flat, chevrons mean HILLS, lookouts are marked, distances are marked between Pins ....
it is more the overall elevation estimating I want to get a handle on. THAT is harder to gauge from a map over a long route.

and while this trip is just for personal pleasure/challenge, that's a good idea seeing whwat routes and lengths of days other tour companies suggest.
(Though My commercial trips are all just day loop rides from a base camp. I don't offer Point to Point to Point trips.)
and depending on the fitness of clientele other tour companies are targetting, I figure I can take a competitors trip and add 20-50% more distance.
though I think Thompson Tours targets a pretty strong rider base and so I would probably aim from no more than their daily distances.

I presume you consider Komoot fairly accurate? Given the +/-20% evelation stats of the 3 planners I have tried, that's really what I am trying to nail down ,

checking my test Corsica Day 1 (north on the east coast up from Bastia, then down the west coast of the penninsula to Saint Florent) Komoot is esitimating 1700m vertical which is 618m (+60%) More than Google Maps, 163m (-10%) less than RWGPS, 247m (-13%) less than BRouter and 724m (-30%) less than RouteYou.
so I think I'll throw out the high and low outliers (Google Maps, and Route You) and stick with Komoot or RWGPS and maybe BRouter which all seem close enough.



cheers

Peter

djb

funnily enough, I lived in East York as a kid, and my friends and I would bike down one of the streets into the valley near Pape Avenue and explore the then, pretty obscure Valley area, nothing really there except old abandoned buildings and the odd homeless person. Quite the adventures and a thrill bombing down, but mostly walking up on our single speeds back 50 years ago.
And your screenshot made me remember going to the leaside hockey arena all the time, my best friend played hockey there.
Remember the mohovlich brothers in the NHL in the 60s? Their dad was the ice sharpener guy at the leaside arena, his little cubicle jammed pack with his sons NHL photos, very impressive to us kids.

Small world eh?

Tourist in MSN

From my previous post where I said:

ironwood

The first Bikecentennial groups had a leader. Bikecentennial, now Adventure Cycling Association, also had detailed route maps for the first routes across.the US. They were useful, but if you wanted to go on your own you had to use maps that covered a larger area.

dvdwmth

Google maps shows an active rail line near my home as a bike route. It cannot be traversed safely or legally.

staehpj1

I like to think plenty of that still goes on. Am I delusional? In 2007 when I rode the TA everyone seemed to still be using paper maps. In the years since electronic maps have become more and more common, but on a major AC route like the TA I'd still be inclined to consider using paper and supplementing with the phone GPS. Have things changed to the point that paper is an oddity for maps?

I plan to ride the TA again in 2026. I'd love to think I'll be able to do exactly what you describe again like I did when I rode it in 2007. It makes me a little sad to think that may not be possible. Don't get me wrong. I'll be thankful to be able to do the ride even if there i are no paper maps available. If that were the case, I'd have to decide whether the sentiment softie in me would carry my out of date 2007 maps or the weight weenie would prevail knowing they will be far out of date.

You didn't absolutely have to have a wider view, but I suspect most riders picked up state maps as they went. It would have been possible to get across the country with just the little strip maps, kind of like having blinders on. If you'd have an emergency that required going off route you'd have to rely on assistance or guidance from others. That generally isn't the end of the world and sometimes happens whether you have maps or not.

State maps were free at many gas stations in those days, also at state visitor centers. I know that in 2007, we generally did pick one up for most states, but I don't think we ever really considered it enough of a necessity that we worried about it if we didn't run across a free one. We usually gave them away to the first rider going the other way when we were at or close to the next state line. We got some of our state maps from riders going the other way doing the same.

maartendc

I would say RidewithGPS is the more accurate than Google Maps.

In RidewithGPS you can select OpenStreetMap (OSM) Cycle, which has an overlay for cycling routes etc., which is very accurate in terms of routing at least. For Europe they contain all the EV (Eurovelo) long distance routes accross the continent for instance, as well as national cycling routes for several countries. Not sure where RideWithGPS pulls the elevation data from, but I doubt it is the same as Google maps.

I would trust these maps over Google Maps, as they seem more accurate on routing in general, and cycleable routes specifically (designated cycle routes, paved/unpaved, etc.). The paved vs. unpaved info I have also found to be mostly accurate on a recent trip in Southern France.

Google maps is really made for cars, and the info on cycling and walking is very poor. Its suggestions on cycling routes are mediocre at best, and in some cases outright dangerously inaccurate.

njkayaker

It’s possible Google is measuring elevation while driving around doing road surveys but that would miss a lot.

For world-wide elevation data, there are very few sources. So, it’s fairly likely Google and RWGPS are using the same data.

https://gisgeography.com/free-global-dem-data-sources/

pstock

here's a reply I got from RouteYou when I asked them why their Elevation estimates were so high.

Thanks Peter
I think you are correct to say that the RouteYou D+ of 2687m are on the high side. Google will indeed be on the low side. The truth will be somewhere in the middle.
I am not really familiar with the coast roads of Corsica, but I guess it will be an issue of 'noise in our elevation model'. Maybe a technical story, but an elevation model is build up out of cells with a certain resolution. We know the height in these cells, but due to the size of the cells in our elevation model (90m x 90m) you can have a lot of noise in the resulting heights along a route if there is a lot of (extreme) height variation on a small distance. For example, a route along a road lying on a cliff. Sometimes the cell used to link a height to a point in the route will have the height of a lower lying area and sometimes the height of a higher lying area. A bit similar to below image along a river in a rough landscape:



You can also see that noise in the elevation profile:

We do our best to filter out that noise, but sometimes it still results in an exaggeration. Could you send me the link to the route on RouteYou. I can look into this problem and see if I can tweak our algorithm a bit to give a beter indication.

Regards,

Yan 

I don't plan. I just go.

stardognine

Thank you, that's what I usually do too.
Or sometimes I ask for advice here, but only if it's too late, and I'm already on the road. 🙄😁

Last year, I decided to go a different way, up to Seattle, from Sacramento. I went across to Lake Tahoe, then North through Reno & those other little towns in Nevada. The only issue was in the far Northern end of Nevada, when I had to ride an extra 20 miles each way, to get enough food & water to make it. 😲🙄 Those deserts go right up into Oregon, believe it or not, so you need a lot of water. 😁

maartendc

This is actually very interesting. Thanks for sharing

staehpj1

I certainly don't plan with the level of detail at least some folks here seem to. For some that is a major part of the joy of the trip. For me it would be a huge pain and suck some of the joy out of the trip. I'd likely not follow the plan any way.

I am more likely to either roughly follow someone else's plan usually improvising much of it, follow an AC route, or start with a rough plan of my own. I absolutely have never planed daily stops or mileage and pretty much always wind up straying from the planned route some portion of the way.

To me a really appealing plan sounds like "follow route US 90 and see how it goes. If it goes well stay on it for 1600 miles to the coast", or "keep the ocean on your right and keep going as long as you want to ride". Those kind of directions are supplemented with a bit of reality checking on the map as you go and maybe some adjustment, but no need for a whole lot of detailed planning.

djb

Stae, it is interesting how different people approach things differently isn't it?
I certainly appreciate planning, but I'm also very much an improvisational sort of person, and enjoy some unplanned adventure-- the key is just to know from experience of when that's ok and or to have a plan b and c too.
​​​​​​

staehpj1

Yes. It really is. I am sure that since you enjoy some unplanned adventure you get my approach. I am also sure that some would be horrified at some of the spur of the moment route choices I have made. Sometimes my improvising gets me into situations that might get pretty sketchy. That said I try to just take it as part of the adventure. Some of them are the most memorable parts of the trips (in a good way).

Using AC routes avoids most of that (both the good and the bad of the sketchy choices) as long as I stay on them, but I usually do my own thing at least a bit and it usually is a bit unscripted when I do. So even on an AC route I manage to fine some unscripted adventure that would horrify some folks and the people back home who worry about me might disapprove of and worry about.