In Mapping Bike Rides (Part I) I covered the goal, to map out my bike rides, so I could see everywhere I’ve biked since February 2024. I was hoping the tools I already used could work with the data I created to do so. Such was not the case… yet. So let’s look at some other solutions.
The post Squadrats by Bike talked about how I was using Strava to move data from Apple Fitness/Apple Health into Strava just to get it to Squadrats. I actually do like Squadrats, maybe because they are not a tech company based in the US, maybe because I don’t get hit constantly with annoying messages to subscribe or go pro or whatever would extract money from me.
And the Strava map? It’s useless for seeing all my rides… unless I haven’t figured out how to do it yet. Maybe that’s why third-party services offer mapping that do.
Strava does offer some neat data, but ultimately it doesn’t seem to achieve my goal of a giant map showing all my rides. (Not by itself anyway, but as an intermediary it certainy plays a role.) I have friends who use Strava, and I guess it’s fun to see their rides on occasion, but I keep getting “awards” for riding fast, which is silly, because I am hauling ass on an ebike to get to work, not pushing myself for ultimate fitness or whatever.
But wait! There is Wandrer, which does show all my rides, though it also gets the data from Strava. Also, with Wandrer “You’re limited to your 50 most recent activities. Get all of your previous activities added (and more features) for only US$30 / year.” so once again we’ve hit the paywall of this mapping.
Look, I get it… Wandrer, just like any other online service, has expenses, and (good) mapping isn’t always free. So I am certainly willing to compromise. Others will happily fork over $30 USD per year for a solution, but I’m happy to host my own solution or write my own code, so I’ll be doing that. (And yes, there are more posts coming!)
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