I just have to share --

[SadieKate]

I love my Garmin Edge 305 for new reasons! I'm sure yellow told me about this way back when but I didn't "get it" until I moved to a new town.

Courses and waypoints -- WAY COOL!

I've always been a route researcher and mapper to the extreme, but now we're exploring completely new roads, including lots of unmarked Forest Service Rds where maps don't really help a lot. Using ww.gpsies.com, I've been marking up routes galore and then loading them as Courses to my Garmin. We then just go ride and follow the black line on the Edge screen. Gpsies is very fast at creating tracks and elevation profiles and then very, very flexible with all the formats for downloading purposes. We don't end up wondering which way to go at a 3 way dirt intersection to nowhere.

And waypoints? I finally set a waypoint for our house and now we no longer get lost "just over the hill" so to speak. Behind our neighborhood is a very wide flat ridge covered with a maze of dirt roads and trails. On a gray or snowy day it is very easy to become disoriented, but now I can see where our house is! No more panicking about getting lost in a snow storm only a half mile from home.

Lots of you are probably pros at using this stuff and going "ho hum," but I'm just so tickled at how easy and useful these features are that I had to crow. Matter of fact, on motionbased I've already found the course for the metric century the Bobs are riding with us on July 4th and loaded it up.

Even my roll-his-eyes-at-my-gadgets hubby likes the course.

Ok, maybe I'm just celebrating another outlet for my innerwannabegeek.

[maillotpois]

Ok, maybe I'm just celebrating another outlet for my innerwannabegeek.

"inner"???

[crazycanuck]

Celebrate the innergeek

[SadieKate]

There, you guys happy?

[F8th637]

I have an Edge 305 and haven't used any of those functions yet. I know there is still so much more potential in this little thing. Thanks for this post especially the link to www.gpsies.com. I'll figure this thing out yet. Yes, embrace the geekness.

[SadieKate]

gpsies is very nice if you don't care about creating a printed list of cues. It maps your route effortlessly and then downloads in multiple formats so you can look at it in Google Earth if you want.

Of course, I could really use a tutorial in Google Earth . . .

[jobob]

Matter of fact, on motionbased I've already found the course for the metric century the Bobs are riding with us on July 4th and loaded it up.

Does it show the ice cream shops & brew pubs along the route?

[Veronica]

Only if SK has put them in as waypoints. She would have to go there first.

Don't forget to take pictures of the ice cream eating flamingos.

V.

[SadieKate]

Does it show the ice cream shops & brew pubs along the route?

We can stop and create waypoints.