RabH
Well-Known Member
Well done on passing 3000 miles Dave, nicely done sir!
Snowy day here so no chance of any cycling, Happy New Year everyone!2024 - Our Rides in Words, Photos, Maps and Videos
- Thread starter Saratoga Dave
- Start date
Snowy day here so no chance of any cycling, Happy New Year everyone!
Jeremy McCreary
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
- City
- Carlsbad, CA
Wow, that shot of the city lights and waterfront is a real keeper. Congrats on your mileage. How much of that is commuting?
BlackHand
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
- City
- Western WA
Thanks! Probably at least 85% was 'commuting', but I try to add an extra 5-15 miles on the way home whenever I can get away with it. My thing has been to try ride 'new' streets whenever I can - I've biked 44% of Seattle's 1963 miles of roads so far.
One of my main justifications for getting a 2nd ebike this fall was that I find it hard to motivate myself for recreational rides on the weekend when I've already gone 100+ miles during the week and the bike is usually already in need of TLC to be ready for the next week of commutes.
One of my main justifications for getting a 2nd ebike this fall was that I find it hard to motivate myself for recreational rides on the weekend when I've already gone 100+ miles during the week and the bike is usually already in need of TLC to be ready for the next week of commutes.
Jeremy McCreary
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
- City
- Carlsbad, CA
Plan A was to kick off 2025 with the local Wednesday morning group road ride but thought better of it after waking up to pea soup on New Years Day:
So now I'm writing up yesterday's final ride of 2024 instead:
As the Specialized app saw it:
This hill ride in upper Carlsbad had 2 purposes: (1) To explore a mysterious gap in Cannon Road, and (2) to run more RideWithGPS grade calibrations with my new handlebar inclinometer.
The Cannon Gap
Cannon Rd, a major SW-NE artery in Carlsbad, comes to an abrupt halt just NE of College Blvd, then picks up again on the far NE side of a rugged roadless open space bordering Agua Hedionda Creek.
Yellow arrows bracket the "Cannon Gap" in this Google Earth capture. The red arrow marks the water tank mentioned below.
As the crow flies, the gap's 0.8 mi across. A prominent-looking trail crosses it directly. But are bikes allowed, and if so, is my Vado SL with its 38 mm gravel tires up to the task?
Short answers found only by going there: No and no. Per signage at the SW end of the gap trail, most of the gap is occupied by the Carlsbad Highlands Ecological Reserve, where no bikes of any kind are allowed. And if what I could see of the decomposed granite trail was representative, it was way too steep, rutted, and slippery for the SL anyway.
Route planning tools
This brings me to the route planning/scouting tools currently at my disposal: RideWithGPS, the GPS map in the Specialized app, Google Earth, Google Maps, and various local maps and trail descriptions found online. For starters, none of these resources identified the Cannon Gap as an official ecological reserve. From local experience, that info alone would have put my odds for legal ebike access at slim to none.
Google Maps can be a helpful planning tool in bicycle mode, especially in satellite view, but not this time. It happily plotted an illegal and potentially dangerous bike route through the gap. No word of the bike ban or trail conditions in the route description.
To its credit, RideWithGPS found nothing bikeable (marked green) in the gap with the settings as shown. It was right this time, but I've found bikeable trails around here that it knows nothing about.
Google Earth offers 3D satellite views and a measuring tool that also help at times. The rudimentary GPS map in the Specialized app is OK for figuring out where you are and seeing where you've been on a ride but has little use as a planning tool — especially offroad, where the detail's pretty scant and sometimes misleading.
Might have gotten better advance intel on the Cannon Gap from a service like AllTrails or Strava or a GPS mapping bike computer from Garmin or Wahoo. But I have no experience with these resources and have little interest in paying for them for the infrequent planning I actually do.
Checking RideWithGPS grades
This ride's 2nd objective was to gather more grades with my new handlebar inclinometer for later comparison with the grades that RideWithGPS reports once a ride is finished.
Short answer: Relative to the carefully calibrated inclinometer, RideWithGPS grades are at best 1-3% too low and sometimes much worse. Made sure each time that the slope of the bike's wheelbase was representative of the pitch being measured.
Example: Started up this nearby water tank access road after bailing on crossing the gap. No problem climbing but decided at the top of the first steep pitch that I didn't trust the SL's 38 mm Pathfinder Pro tires to get me back down in one piece.
Consistently measured maximum grades of 18-20% on this pitch in both directions, but the RideWithGPS grade plot (blue line) later showed nothing steeper than +10% headed up and -13% headed down — on the very same stretch of road.
Saw the same pattern on my first inclinometer outing. Plan to collect more data, but results to date support my impression that RideWithGPS grades are consistently too low — or at least lower than a hill's steepest part.
Of course, some of that's to be expected when the steepest part is shorter than the sampling interval. Just trying to learn (a) to eyeball grades on the fly without the inclinometer, and (b) how far off RideWithGPS grades can be.
So now I'm writing up yesterday's final ride of 2024 instead:
As the Specialized app saw it:
This hill ride in upper Carlsbad had 2 purposes: (1) To explore a mysterious gap in Cannon Road, and (2) to run more RideWithGPS grade calibrations with my new handlebar inclinometer.
The Cannon Gap
Cannon Rd, a major SW-NE artery in Carlsbad, comes to an abrupt halt just NE of College Blvd, then picks up again on the far NE side of a rugged roadless open space bordering Agua Hedionda Creek.
Yellow arrows bracket the "Cannon Gap" in this Google Earth capture. The red arrow marks the water tank mentioned below.
As the crow flies, the gap's 0.8 mi across. A prominent-looking trail crosses it directly. But are bikes allowed, and if so, is my Vado SL with its 38 mm gravel tires up to the task?
Short answers found only by going there: No and no. Per signage at the SW end of the gap trail, most of the gap is occupied by the Carlsbad Highlands Ecological Reserve, where no bikes of any kind are allowed. And if what I could see of the decomposed granite trail was representative, it was way too steep, rutted, and slippery for the SL anyway.
Route planning tools
This brings me to the route planning/scouting tools currently at my disposal: RideWithGPS, the GPS map in the Specialized app, Google Earth, Google Maps, and various local maps and trail descriptions found online. For starters, none of these resources identified the Cannon Gap as an official ecological reserve. From local experience, that info alone would have put my odds for legal ebike access at slim to none.
Google Maps can be a helpful planning tool in bicycle mode, especially in satellite view, but not this time. It happily plotted an illegal and potentially dangerous bike route through the gap. No word of the bike ban or trail conditions in the route description.
To its credit, RideWithGPS found nothing bikeable (marked green) in the gap with the settings as shown. It was right this time, but I've found bikeable trails around here that it knows nothing about.
Google Earth offers 3D satellite views and a measuring tool that also help at times. The rudimentary GPS map in the Specialized app is OK for figuring out where you are and seeing where you've been on a ride but has little use as a planning tool — especially offroad, where the detail's pretty scant and sometimes misleading.
Might have gotten better advance intel on the Cannon Gap from a service like AllTrails or Strava or a GPS mapping bike computer from Garmin or Wahoo. But I have no experience with these resources and have little interest in paying for them for the infrequent planning I actually do.
Checking RideWithGPS grades
This ride's 2nd objective was to gather more grades with my new handlebar inclinometer for later comparison with the grades that RideWithGPS reports once a ride is finished.
Short answer: Relative to the carefully calibrated inclinometer, RideWithGPS grades are at best 1-3% too low and sometimes much worse. Made sure each time that the slope of the bike's wheelbase was representative of the pitch being measured.
Example: Started up this nearby water tank access road after bailing on crossing the gap. No problem climbing but decided at the top of the first steep pitch that I didn't trust the SL's 38 mm Pathfinder Pro tires to get me back down in one piece.
Consistently measured maximum grades of 18-20% on this pitch in both directions, but the RideWithGPS grade plot (blue line) later showed nothing steeper than +10% headed up and -13% headed down — on the very same stretch of road.
Saw the same pattern on my first inclinometer outing. Plan to collect more data, but results to date support my impression that RideWithGPS grades are consistently too low — or at least lower than a hill's steepest part.
Of course, some of that's to be expected when the steepest part is shorter than the sampling interval. Just trying to learn (a) to eyeball grades on the fly without the inclinometer, and (b) how far off RideWithGPS grades can be.
Last edited:
JGcycle
Well-Known Member
- Region
- Canada
- City
- Saint John
Where did you get the inclinometer?
Stefan Mikes
Gravel e-biker
- Region
- Europe
- City
- Mazovia, PL
Hi Jeremy!
I've just checked with Komoot. It clearly shows the Carlsbad Highlands Ecological Reserve but does not prevent you riding through the Gap.
The second thing: We already have a separate 2025 thread
Happy New Year!
I've just checked with Komoot. It clearly shows the Carlsbad Highlands Ecological Reserve but does not prevent you riding through the Gap.
The second thing: We already have a separate 2025 thread
Happy New Year!
Jeremy McCreary
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
- City
- Carlsbad, CA
Yes, but this was a 2024 ride, as stated. Interesting about Komoot.Hi Jeremy!
I've just checked with Komoot. It clearly shows the Carlsbad Highlands Ecological Reserve but does not prevent you riding through the Gap.
View attachment 188020
The second thing: We already have a separate 2025 thread
Happy New Year!
Jeremy McCreary
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
- City
- Carlsbad, CA
Amazon.
