iMapMyRide...Awesome.

Almost 3 years ago I decided to take myself off the grid. I decided that I would learn to work with my hands and I would live off of cash. I lived in a house where I wasn't on the lease and none of my bills were in my name. I was well on my way to getting off the grid and living anonymously in a big city. Then I decided to open a checking account... I know right? Big step with that checking account. I thought to myself, "Man, here I go, sliding straight back onto the grid". Well yesterday I bought an iPhone, and along with it I downloaded a little App called iMapMyRide. Slippery slope my friends, the Grid is a slippery slope.

Anyway, I've used Map My Ride since May of 2007 with varying success. I was on early, back when they were still replying to e-mails about different problems. I started strong and was posting in a regular basis. It was conceptually awesome, but there were a lot of inconsistent problems and troubles. When I got my Garmin last December things kind of changed and I stopped posting on MMR as much. I was off the page for a few months and then popped back on to see what was going on with the site. It had totally changed. There were adds all over the place cluttering it up and they were beta testing some new mapping technology. I tried it out and it just didn't work. I got another e-mail from MMR the other day so I popped back on. The adds were still there, and the site was still a little cluttered, but it was looking better. I decided to update my profile and stuff.

I'd also been thinking about getting an iPhone for a while. When I saw that MMR had put together an App for the iPhone. I did a little research, and some of the wording for the App was a little weird, and it made it seem like the App might not work unless you set your phone to stay unlocked. I got the iPhone, and then downloaded the App since it's free and I figured I didn't have anything to lose.

I decided to test the app tonight on my ride home from work. I'd played around with it a little after work before leaving and decided it did look pretty cool. When I rolled out of work I set the App up, got it started and stuck the phone in my pocket. My thought was that if my pocket didn't turn the App off, then when my phone locked it would turn off. I headed home on the 4 mile ride. I stopped at a parking lot and checked the phone, and lo, the App was still running. Well, It had paused, but there is a resume function so it picked up right where it had left off. When I got home I checked the phone, hit STOP and it had recorded the 3.96 mile trip. I hit "SAVE" and went in to check my laptop. I logged into MMR and there it was, my route from not 10 minutes ago:



This tool is pretty sweet. I was really impressed. This might just bring me back into the MMR fold full time.