No, but I was a mite bewildered

Someone once asked Davy Crockett if he'd ever been lost and he supposedly replied, "No, but I was a mite bewildered a few times." A few months ago I scoped out a ride which would take me from Monrovia Canyon to Red Box. This would involve many miles of fireroading far from civilization. I prepped by going to Topozone.com and also I have a good mountain bike specific map of the local area. After riding up to a gate at about 4600' and heading west for a while two things struck me. First, it was getting colder and rainier and second, I hadn't seen a soul for about two hours. That's when I turned around and went home to order a GPS unit.

Understand, this is not a plug. I ordered a Garmin ETrex Vista CX and a RAM mount and your research may lead elsewhere - I just support the concept generally. My wife reads all the newsgroups related to long-distance cycling and this combo seemed to be a good way to go if you're not too concerned about weight and/or appearing geeky. The mount is huge, made for motorcycle rallying, and sticks up about 4-5 inches from the bars. The unit is bulky compared to the bike-specific ones. I don't recall what I paid, the important thing is that now I've managed to make the ride I wanted to go on without leaving skeletal remains in the San Gabriel mountains.

I was able to scope out a route and enter it as waypoints in the unit. It then guided from waypoint to waypoint. This is common behavior for these things, but be aware I've heard that some of the bike specific units don't support this kind of navigation. Also, GPS units seem to have something in common with musical instruments, practice is necessary. In addition the Garmin add-on maps are, IMO, pricey and their installation is complicated. I now have a MyGarmin account. How did ever live without it? There ought to be a law against requiring an internet connection that must finction flawlessly during a lengthy installation. Frankly, you can live without the online maps and use resources like Google Earth and Topozone to find waypoints.

Anyway, this entry is mainly to provide context for ride descriptions which will follow. I'm still struggling a little with GPX files, and my plan is to convert ride tracks, both road and mountain, into KML (Google Earth) format. I still need a place to post them, but that shouldn't be too hard to get.