How to Track Your Biking Trips

I have been reading up several blogs about how bikers go around report their journey.

One particular blog which I think is a rider who I admire and respect a lot which is Captain Slash's blog which he records, reports and publishes his posts in a really discipline manner. His way of recording his journeys is nothing short of impressive and I salute him for being able to share his very informative experiences to all of us. He is a British who visits Thailand every year during winter time in his country and ride around for few months. He updates his blog with lots of photos, trip descriptions and GPS location codes. What really impresses me is his ability to update his blog on a daily basis without fail. His blog will end with his signature GPS map which tracks where he travelled on the day. Check out his blog here.

I searched around and was thinking of ways on how to track my trails. I have noticed that I should not use my phone - my Samsung Galaxy S 2 as the GPS will drain the battery dry half way my trip. Which is dangerous as you'll never know when you need to use your phone during an emergency. And I would not want to spend hundreds or even more than a thousand ringgit to get an external GPS which is another device that I need to charge when I am travelling. Another reason I would not use the phone as my GPS tracker as it gets really hot if I use it as GPS device after few minutes, I can literally feel the heat in my pocket. That, is not cool.

I have discovered another way to track my journeys which is using my iPad. The iPad's battery can last me for several days and I would be taking it with me when I am on the road anyway, and another good thing about the iPad is that it is able to track my journeys even when the data is turned off, means it will still work even though there is no data available. I am using a WIFI + 3G model, as I need to point out that the WIFI only model does not support GPS when the data is turned off. I am not 100% certain about this but I have tried it on my brother's iPad WIFI only model seeing the blue dot on google map become grey once the data is turned off. Even when we waited for more than half hour the blue dot does not appear when data is not available.

So when I want to go for a ride, I would use my Nokia phone as my GPS when necessary (see my previous post) and use the iPad as the GPS tracker with my phone in my pocket, which will likely be used as my MP3 player as well.

Finally, which app to use?

I have tried out a few apps and found that EveryTrail is the my choice. Reason being is that it is available on both Apple and Android, and most importantly, it's FREE!!! Other cool things about EveryTrail is that when I need to use it, I just turn it on my iPad, get the GPS position, start tracking and then just let it run in the background, and during the trip I can also use the iPad to take pictures which will be geotagged and it will be appear in my track as well together with the time and map details. Another impressive thing is that it also consumes very little battery when you are tracking using the iPad. I have tried on a 3 hour journey and it only consumes less than 10% of battery life.

Here is how the app looks like.

Other than the trail on the google map, EveryTrail also records the speed, time, elevation and distance of my journey. I have posted so far 2 of my trips' trails on my other posts. Check them out.