Pennsylvania Magazine

I hate to admit it….but I usually click the mouse before I kick the kickstand

I have found that there are several websites  and mapping tools that have enhanced my overall riding experince, these sites help me to find the best roads and help make me more prepared for what I encounter along the way too.  Here are a few of the resources that have been particularly helpful for me whenever I plan or think about hitting the road for a motorcycle journey:

Websites to help you locate the best roads & routes:

The following sites are ‘open source’ tools that provide input from riders regarding individual roads.  As with all ‘open source’ tools – you should  be cognizant of the fact that what may seem like a highly technical twisty road to one rider may not be viewed the same way by another – take the advise with a grain of salt.  That said – you are encouraged to add your favorite roads and routes to these sites – why keep them to yourself?

• www.motorcycleroads.us  This is  a very well organized and actively managed site that makes it very easy to locate and learn about other rider’s favorite roads.  This site  has more roads listed (over 2,500 in all 50 states) than any other site that I know of.  It provides an easy to navigate and user friendly listing of some of the best motorcycle roads you can ride – according to other riders.  The site places an emphasis on the ’two-lane blacktop’ and the road less traveled, however, some Interstate, other limited-access highways, and roads in urban areas are listed.  If you are traveling to another state or region and you want to do some research on roads your considering – this should be your first stop !
•  www.motorcycleroads.com  This site is very similar to the ‘.us’ version above but it is more geared towards routes and road trips.   MotorcycleRoads.com utilizes a  more formalized reporting structure that requires riders to submit some specific details about each road/route ina an attempt to provide more robust and consistent descriptions.  Many of the rider submitted entries have  pictures or personal accounts.  While it provides  more information on each road than the ‘.us’ site – it has significantly few roads listed.
• http://www.openroadjourney.com/ This is another site like the ones above that collects route descriptions from riders and it has rreally nice search tools and icons that help you find just the road or type of road you are looking for.  Openroadjourney is focused on helping you experience that great motorcycle road, route, or ride before you hit it on your motorcycle.  Openroadjourney provides a route download application which is a really nice value added feature.

Websites to help you find and learn more about interesting stops and destinations :

• http://www.roadsideamerica.com/ This site is a treaure trove of out of the way, interesting destinations – places that you would otherwise never g.   Using this site I found the place with the biggest burgers in the world,  the Kinzua Bridge, the Austin Dam, the Centralia underground mine fire, the Flight 93 crash site etc.  I haven’t even begun to tap all the interesting and off-the-wall places listed on this site. There are a whole bunch of places I plan to visit from this site – such as:  The World’s largest Glacier Pothole, The Tallest Smokestack in the US, The ‘Smog; Museum…
• http://www.pahighways.com/  Self-described road enthusiast Jeffrey Kitsko started PaHighways.com, an online guided tour and history of Pennsylvania’s roadways, partially in response to consistently negative Overdrive Magazine’s rankings of the Keystone State and “to dispel the notion that all of our roads are two steps from gravel,” the Pennsylvania native says. The  site dedicated to Pennsylvania roads.  Anything you want to know about roads in Pa – the chances are very high that you will find it on this site. 
• http://forgottenpa.blogspot.com/ This is an intersting site, loaded with pictures  and dedicated to abandoned places in Pa.  These interesting and abandoned places are usually in remote areas  (herin lies the connection to motorcycle touring) and they generaly  manage to be both alluring and kinda creepy too – maybe I’m the only one but I find these places too hard to resist.  This site is for the  Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in all of us !  

Websites to help you plan & (properly) prepare for the journey:

• http://www.msgroup.org/default.aspx This website is (IMHO) the most robust resource for improving your “head knowledge” about riding your motorcycle.  The safety tips section is a wealth of invaluable information and insight into the physics of riding – provided by James R Davis - a noted expert in motorcycle safety.  The forum is a great place to share experiences and to ask questions and get solid advise from fellow motorcycle riding enthusiasts who love to ride ! The forum is a very friendly community – very accommodating to newbies with questions about riding .  Browsing the safety tips section of the site is great way to pass the time when you are grounded due to winter weather!
• http://www.motorcycle-touring-made-easy.com/index.html Is a site dedicated to help make  “ your next adventure a great adventure. That’s why we put together Motorcycle Touring Made Easy”. Like the Master Strategy site above, it also has a forum and many other articles that will give you valuable insight and information by leveraging the experience of others.  Go here and read all the material before you embark on a long journey.
• http://ironbutt.com/tech/aow.cfm This link is the Iron Butt Riders Association (IBA) ”Archive of Wisdom”.  The IBA is dedicated to safe, long-distance motorcycle riding.  There are several other forums for discussion of LD riding topics on this site - the most popular is the LD Riders email list. Instructions for subscribing to the list can be found at http://www.ldriders.com/

In addition to these sites – no matter what brand of bike you ride, you can rest assured that there is at least one website with an active forum – specific to your brand – where you can go for helpful tips and valuable information on ways you can get the most out your ride.   Beware of these forums though – because its usually here that you will become acutely aware of all the FARKLE’s  ( Fun Accessory, Really Cool, & Likely Expensive) that are available out there.   FARKLE’s are things that we were perfectly happy going through life without – before we knew what they were! Darn those innovative and enterprising folks in the free-market who are always coming-up with new thingys that enhance ride comfort, safety, performance and enjoyment!  

Mapping tools:

Having used the above tools to identify the roads and the areas you would like to ride – your next step is to figure-out how you are going to string all these great places together for a single trip.  Its also helpful to have an idea of travel time,  the locations of gas stations, places to stay etc.  There are several options – these are the tools I use:

Microsoft Streets & Trips –I started using this package because it came with the computer I bought years ago! Its route planning application is very user friendly – you can basically just point and click your way around the map and plot your route.  The only downside is that it doesn’t like to work or play with my TomTom GPS unit (or any other for that matter as far as I can tell).  I have found this application to be much better suited to plotting multi-point routes than other online tools like Google Maps and HD tool noted below.

GPS Babel- Is an application that can convert routes created in MS Streets & Trips into another compatible GPS friendly format – TomTom, Garmin and others.

Harley Davidson - has a Beta version of a ride-planning application that is really nice – its not quite as user friendly for planning routes as Streets & Trips but it’s  pretty darn close – the price is right too - its FREE!! :)  The route pictures you see in the route posts on the blog come from this application.

Tyre –Tyre is a freeware application that works with TomTom GPS units.  Tyre is an acronym for ‘Tracking Your Route Everywhere’ and it works a lot like MS Streets & Trips while utilizing Google Maps technology.  The beauty of this application is you can sit at your desktop, create a route (itinerary in TomTom speak) and then upload the route directly to your TomTom GPS.  This is much better than using the impossibly cumbersome itinerary utility on the unit itself.  I am a relative newbie with GPS technology so I admit that there may be better applications. 

The process:I usually start with MS Streets, once I am happy with the route I save it and convert it to a TomTom ‘.itn’ format using the GPS Babel tool.  I then launch Tyre and open the newly created ‘.itn’ file and go from there.  With the TomTom devise connected to the PC you can load the route to the unit where it is stored and ready.

I know what some of you may be thinking – “Dude, just get on the bike and ride!” and you would have a point.  However,  when I set aside a few days or a few hours of my life to enjoy a ride – I want to make sure I maximize the time that  I am enjoying the ride and minimize aggravation of poorly selected roads.  The planning tools and techniques noted above help me to do just that.  It is not at all unusual for me to head-out on a trip, with course plotted in the GPS, and a detailed itinerary of places to go and see logged on my tank bag – only to decide half way through the route to just go and do something else and go “off the grid” completely.  That’s ok – at least I started with plan! I gues that is a result of the internal battle between the nerd and the free-spirit within ??? Either way, I find that I actually enjoy planning the ride – but not as much as the ride itself!

 Brad <xx><

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