“Where do you ride?” My last post had some analysis on when, how far, and how often I rode a bike. But missing was – where? Thanks to Strava, and some cool 3rd-party software by Jonathan O’Keefe, I can overlay nearly 1,000 bike rides on one map. Darker lines mean I rode it more, and lighter less. Here are a few samples.
I love how this shows preferences about route choice – the tradeoff between comfort, safety, speed, available bike facilities, and direct-ness that every biker makes when deciding how to ride from A to B. For bicyclists (like me, I think), this decision depends on all kinds of things, from weather, to time of day, to plain old personal preference. Sometimes, for example, on weekends or off-hours I just want to ride straight down an arterial to downtown. At rush-hour, I’d rather take side routes.
These maps encapsulate an entire year’s worth of those decisions.
All rides inside the Beltway. Outside of my neighborhood (Capitol Hill) and downtown, the major trails emerge. Also, I tend to bike west and north, rather than east and south.
Long rides in 2012, from DC. The route through Reston is the W&OD trail. To the west, mostly.
All 2012 rides through downtown Washington.
Capitol Hill and eastern downtown are pretty well covered. Also interesting to see where I never rode – like apparently I don’t like A St. NE (no offense, 20002-ers)
For fun – this was a great 5-day trip in southern France we took this summer. About 60 miles a day left plenty of time to shamelessly devour French food.
Also for fun – a 4-day ride through great Burgundy wine country.
Great annual summary data in these last two posts. Thanks for the link to my mapping site, and congratulations for a great year on the bike!
By: Jonathan on January 4, 2013
at 8:01 am