first long ride with GPS !
An impromptu plan works for me most of the time. My friend Deepak, ex-member of Hyderabad enfield bullet club, was all yes the moment I suggested a short ride to some beach. The “short” ride eventually became a ride to montauk, the east most point of long island, 80 miles from home.
I mounted my garmin eTrex Vista C gps in the normal map mode so I can see the map around my position. The map scrolled as I moved and it was just fantastic to see my position in real time with the town names and roads around me.
This was Deepak’s first ride in the USA, so I made sure he was comfortable. A couple stops along the way, including a lunch stop at McDonalds charged us up. The weather was just great, a sunny day with occasional clouds and a light breeze made the ride much more comfortable than my solo ride back in November last year in freezing temperatures.
We stopped by the hampton bays, crossed a bridge over the sea for a brief stop at the beach of a narrow island, then back on 27 east after a little ride along the country road 80. I usually mix fast highways with slow country roads for a good balanced ride, and today with the gps I realized how important it is for any enthusiastic traveler, if not only for a motorcyclist.
A couple of overlook points en route to montauk had us stopped by its amazing view of the sea from an altitude of 1000 feet. I always enjoy the steep roads and a little bit of twisties around that part, and today was no exception.
The montauk parking lot charges $6 but only till 4pm. We reached there around 6, so we happily took the opportunity for some pictures. Deepak test rode my bike and was absolutely thrilled. I had exactly the same feeling when test riding it on a fine saturday morning before buying it last november.
We took detour to Sag harbor on the return way, and visited the beautiful Noyack bay. Again some amazing back roads till the relatively boring 27 west. I never had to stop or become confused even without much signs on which road I was travelling, the gps always assured me I was in the right direction.
A great ride for a half day. Below are the trip data from the gps:
Trip odometer: 181 miles.
Max speed: 77.6 mph
Moving time: 4hr 12min
Moving avg: 42.9 mph
Snaps: Montauk ride - 1 May 05
May 2nd, 2005 at 5:23 am
When i looked at the 40.jpg.. the guys in that snaps resembles more like Abuzar.. ??? I am sure Abu will not deny that… But nice snaps… I am really amazed at the seriousness if collecting the data about the performance of the bike… keep it up man…
May 2nd, 2005 at 6:04 pm
40.jpg is me
I donno who is Abuzar… looks like me?? wow !!
May 2nd, 2005 at 9:08 pm
sounds like a nice trip you guys had! great post and I’d loved the pictures taken while riding… you should really put a snapshot camera on your helmet and maybe even take movies
May 2nd, 2005 at 11:25 pm
It is back here man, the post IS here
May 3rd, 2005 at 9:27 am
Abay where are the cramsters.. saala dump kar diya..??!?!?
May 3rd, 2005 at 10:09 am
Those Cramster bags look very well designed and well manufactured. Is the owner of this company a personal friend of yours?
May 3rd, 2005 at 10:36 am
Yup, Kj makes them.
May 3rd, 2005 at 10:44 am
Hey Francesco - I liked your site very much. Very neat design. Are u into usability too? Amazing pix too.
note: Joy if he is ur friend pls pass on the msg. Thanx
May 3rd, 2005 at 12:50 pm
Thank you Rocky, I appreciate your comments. I have been concentrating my graduate studies (MS) in computer graphics, user interface design and multimedia. The best product, of which I am very proud of, is “iSign”, an application that helps deaf children to learn how to read English. This application is still in development support by a grant from NSF and with the collaboration of the Cleary School for the Deafs in Ronkonkoma, NY.
BTW, your website is full of fascinating pictures. I like how you guys see motorcycles in India… it is a passion that reminds me the stories my father used to tell me about his rides in the 40’s all over the north of Italy with his friends…
May 3rd, 2005 at 8:59 pm
Beginning next ride, make sure that your GPS data can be uploaded here. I read something about google map that allows uploading GPS data and pictures… if i find the link i will let you know….
May 3rd, 2005 at 9:03 pm
There you go: http://gps.engadget.com/entry/1234000917034960/
It is too cool not to try playing with it Joy, I hope you have the time to do it
May 3rd, 2005 at 9:38 pm
Thats one awesome link you gave, Francesco. I will definitely try it out. In that link, the role of a gps is just finding out the latitude and logitude.
In fact, my original idea was just enable the track feature of the gps which basically samples the gps position every few time or distance intervals. I forgot to enable that feature in the last ride. With that feature, I can load the track log back to the gps software on my laptop and it will display a visual track over the places I had physically been, (including the walk to a roadside restroom, if I carried the device
) which I can just grab from screen and post. I will do it from next post. Just now I loaded few detailed maps, and I can see my apt complex showing up on the map. I can find just about everything - food/gas/lodging/point-of-interest/hospital withing the detailed maps. My gps has only 24mb of internal, non-expandable memory. Some of the better and costlier gps devices allow compact flash cards, and on those you can put the detailed maps of the whole USA, around 1.2GB of data. I can only store the whole long island and manhattan and a part of NJ together.