Share your Rides with Everytrail.com

This is a great tool for writing ride reports and sharing your routes.  

Clicky for a sample of the ride we did at the International Vstrom Meet in Germany
Here is my tutorial to ensure your data is displayed correctly.
Firstly you will need a GPS unit that records your route/track data.  I am using the Garmin Zumo 550 which works great.  Next, create an account with EveryTrail.com so that you are ready to import your route.

I will explain for the Zumo 550 here, but if your GPS unit can export .GPX files then you should be able to do the same.  Just jumo to point (6) with your .GPX file ready...   

1)  Before you leave home, clear the trip-log on the Zumo, and make sure you have some space left on your memory card.
2)  If your ride is more than a few hundred km's, I have found it safer to regularly (or after each day) save the current trip-log as a route.  This is because the trip-log can only handle so much data.  And I have had experience where the trip-log does some strange things occasionally, like overlapping data.  Once saved as a route on the Zumo, its safe!
3)  Connect your Zumo to your PC, open Mapsource and select 'Transfer from Device'.  Select 'Routes' and Mapsource will import all routes from your device.  In Mapsouce, save this file so that you don't have to keep transferring from the Zumo when you start to delete routes you don't want to work on.
4)  Delete any routes that you don't want at this stage and double check that your data/waypoints are all ok, rename if you wish to so that they are in the correct order.
5)  Now save the route as a .GPX file in My Documents.
6)  Go to GPS Visualizer  and select choose your .GPX route file on your PC from the 'Choose File' tab.  Choose the Output format as Google Maps, and hit GO.

7)  Your route will be shown as a Google Map.  (If you have your own website, this can be imported using the Google Map API feature).  But wait, there's more...

  Having already registered with EveryTrail.com, now you can click 'SAVE THIS TRIP, add photos and share with others'

and voilà!

Now this is the fun part, you can link your account with Flickr, Picasa etc and link your trip photo's.  You can also Geotag these images, so if your cam has a GPS feature you're laughing, if not, you have the option to place the photo's where you like on you're route.  You can do this for videos too.

Whilst you are there, you may as well link it to your Facebook page as well, and link this to the VSRI Facebook Group!!


Look forward to seeing all your ride reports from now on    

Happy Riding.
DC.