Journaling Your Ride

Journaling Your Ride

July 3, 2020

The wife and I ride about 20,000 miles a year and like to document our rides, not only with pictures but also with journal-type information. I usually keep a gas log and she has a little notebook or uses the Note App on her iPhone for journaling. Then, at the end of the ride, I put together a ride report, or story of our travels. I’m sure many of you do the same thing.

Each year I plan about a two-week ride for a group of friends and family to embark on. I plan the ride, with input from the group, then other group members make all of the room reservations. I make sure each couple has a general map and a waypoint list to keep track of where we are headed. This past year I created Ride Journal that I shared with the group. I put it together in Microsoft Word and printed one out for each couple. It combines a gas log, a description of the ride, waypoints with mileage in between, notes for each day, and a place for a ride story.

This seemed to work pretty well. Handwriting the information in the journal was easy and kept things organized. I guess our future rides will have to include a journal as everyone seemed to enjoy it. I usually create a graphic of some sort for the cover or use a picture.

I’m not that creative and I want to give credit where credit is due. A friend gave me a small journal during my retirement from a former life. It's called, “Write it Down! – Motorcycle A Rider’s Journal” by Journals Unlimited, Inc. and they have lots of journals for every need. This started my idea of Ride Journal.

Over the winter, I created Ride Journal, in Microsoft Excel. I’m just a basic user of Excel, but it seems to do the job and I can run it in Numbers on my iPad. Which makes it easy to read verses in my handwriting. It also does the math on daily mileage and miles-per-gallon calculations. I’ve tried it a few times and it seems to work okay. I’m still trying to figure out a good way to input the information into the Ride Journal in Word so I can print out a booklet like I have been doing.

The idea I had next was to use the Shortcuts App on iPhones and iPad. I had no idea what this app did until my son showed me what he was using it for. The Shortcuts app includes over 300+ built-in actions and interactions with other apps. It’s actually not hard to do if you take a few minutes to learn and look at other actions that people have created. (Google how to use the Shortcuts App) The Shortcuts app has many “safe, and virus-free” apps that you can look at and see how they are built to help you.

Anyway, I created a shortcut I called, IBA Receipts, to help track information needed to document an IBA ride certification. IBA Receipts finds your GPS location and street address, then allows you to take a picture of your receipt next to your odometer, then asks for the receipt number, bike mileage, leg mileage, GPS mileage, and why you stopped (gas, food, bio break. Etc.), and finally, any comments you want to make. It then pulls the weather information for your location. The final part of the action, emails all this information and the picture to whomever you want, it also sends a text message of the information to whomever you want and it then adds it to a note in the Note App. I know that all seems redundant and it probably is, but I was learning how to use this app and wanted to see what it could do. I usually send an email to myself and a text message to family and friends who are following me and they can then see where I am with the links to google maps and my Spotwalla map. Here is a sample message from my final stop on my 100CCC ride:

DATE:
May 19, 2020 at 2:30 AM

LOCATION:
3425 Midway Dr
3425 Midway Dr
San Diego CA 92110
United States
Latitude:32.75050089301638, Longitude:-117.2128038375726
https://maps.apple.com/?q=32.750501,-117.212804&ll=32.750501,-117.212804

 

RIDE INFORMATION:
Receipt #: 32
Bike Mileage: 28425 miles
Leg Mileage: 172.5 miles
GPS Mileage: 4772.5 miles
Reason for stop: Gas
Comment: Everything is good! End of ride.

Spotwalla Map: (my route progress)
https://spotwalla.com/publicTrips.php?un=Lnelson

WEATHER:
Conditions: 64.4°F and Mostly Cloudy
Feels Like: 62.6°F
Wind: 11.185 mph
Humidity: 66%
Chance of Rain: 10%

So, if I provide the dedication of inputting the information at the end of the ride I have a lot of information for my journal and good documentation of where I was and what happened, without a lot of trying to remember what happened and when and where it happened. I bought a small three-ring binder and put all of my journal booklets in it and keep it on my shelf to read and to look back on. Maybe, the grandkids will get a kick out of it someday. Ride safe, stay focused and enjoy life.