Past Road Trip - Oxford AL and a Slow Ride Return / April 2015
Dynamic Objective
The intent was to ride to Oxford Alabama, take some more rides across the state, up and down Cheaha Mountain, and go visit the Barber Motorsports Museum. Though I kept an open mind and my options open because I was not willing to go closed minded into this trip. I made sure to bring a small amount of clothes, rain gear (which came in handy), and wanted to do a big loop in order to hit as many states as possible. This was the framework I have been working on.
Technical Objective
I also wanted to test some features of my Garmin Zumo 660 GPS that comes with the 2014 Softail Deluxe Screamin' Eagle edition motorcycle. Part of the mission was to really see and measure an actual route using the GPS. I have written a specific article just about that on this site. As a secondary technical objective, I have developed a series of steps and procedures to take all the "track log files" from a Garmin, and make that content displayed on a Google Map, to be publicly viewed, or privately immortalized in cyberspace (that's an older name for the internet, mind you).
Riding Objective
If you take a look at a lot of the challenge ride sites - Iron Butt Association comes to mind - they, and a few others offer the same challenge with rules and guidelines that someone must follow. I am sure there is a reason for something like that, and I wanted to challenbge mhyself in somewhat of an official capacity. Though I did not follow these sites, I did take the www.BadAssRiders.com challenges seriously... mainly because I have a say in that site's development, and rider challenge profiles. Challenge rides are still supposed to be fun, and not intentionally try to cause anyone harm. It is of course, still called a challenge ride for a reason. By my own account, I am a "Classic Bad-Ass Rider" based one day's riding log that I have rendered into image files. The details of this challenge ride can be found here... http://www.badassriders.com/challenge-rides.html.
The intent was to ride to Oxford Alabama, take some more rides across the state, up and down Cheaha Mountain, and go visit the Barber Motorsports Museum. Though I kept an open mind and my options open because I was not willing to go closed minded into this trip. I made sure to bring a small amount of clothes, rain gear (which came in handy), and wanted to do a big loop in order to hit as many states as possible. This was the framework I have been working on.
Technical Objective
I also wanted to test some features of my Garmin Zumo 660 GPS that comes with the 2014 Softail Deluxe Screamin' Eagle edition motorcycle. Part of the mission was to really see and measure an actual route using the GPS. I have written a specific article just about that on this site. As a secondary technical objective, I have developed a series of steps and procedures to take all the "track log files" from a Garmin, and make that content displayed on a Google Map, to be publicly viewed, or privately immortalized in cyberspace (that's an older name for the internet, mind you).
Riding Objective
If you take a look at a lot of the challenge ride sites - Iron Butt Association comes to mind - they, and a few others offer the same challenge with rules and guidelines that someone must follow. I am sure there is a reason for something like that, and I wanted to challenbge mhyself in somewhat of an official capacity. Though I did not follow these sites, I did take the www.BadAssRiders.com challenges seriously... mainly because I have a say in that site's development, and rider challenge profiles. Challenge rides are still supposed to be fun, and not intentionally try to cause anyone harm. It is of course, still called a challenge ride for a reason. By my own account, I am a "Classic Bad-Ass Rider" based one day's riding log that I have rendered into image files. The details of this challenge ride can be found here... http://www.badassriders.com/challenge-rides.html.
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Day-by-Day Trip Details
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The image above was initially created by downloading first day's set of tracks to my computer, uploading the combined GPX file to http://utrack.crempa.net, and finally adding some markers using some graphics applications to measure the 9 hour time and distance.
This was the last step in my own self-verification process, which made quite easy to verify what I was able to accomplish.
This was the last step in my own self-verification process, which made quite easy to verify what I was able to accomplish.
