free tool for helping classify rides

[Aprilian]

This might help people ORGANIZING rides to let others know what they have in mind and potential attendess understand whether it is appropriate for begginers through experienced riders.  Take a look and make comments/suggestions.

[Jared]

Holy liability Batman.  The idea is an interesting one but anyone putting something like this out ahead of a ride they are organizing is begging for the 1-800-ASK-GARY crowd to sue the ever loving shit out of them if something goes wrong and someone gets injured.

[carlson_mn]

Outside of what Jared is point towards, I like it.  It still seems a bit overkill though for most rides.  I've ridden with guys where I do ride quite a bit quicker, and honestly I never have to stop for much more than a minute for us to come together at every route change.  Most of the twisty roads around here are only a few miles at a stretch before a stop or turn.  Now, having said that I took my co-worker out for a Wisconsin ride last fall, he on his Shadow 750 and a relative 'noob' and it was pretty painful as I would be smoking a cigarette waiting for him sometimes.  Still had a good time with him but would not want to do that on most rides.  /ramble

[Ray916MN]

Very interesting.

I would have a very tough time filling this out before a ride. I'm old enough and foggy enough that there are any number of roads on a route I might put together that I don't remember what they're like until I ride them. Put another way, I don't remember them by route number or letter, I remember them when I see them and think I like this road, whatever letter or number it happens to be.

I also increasingly use a proxy for waiting at every turn, I slow on straights every so often, until I can see the last rider in the group has caught up with the group. Some route changes when I arrive without the entire group being together,  I will only wait for the next in line rider or most of the riders to appear, and then continue with the route, with the expectation that at least one rider at the route change will wait for the last rider to catch up. When the gap gets really big, I slow down enough to practice my slow riding skills. I hate stopping and waiting. In peak riding season you always get very hot, sometimes when you're stopped the mosquitoes attack and every once in a while, riders will start to take a break (pee break, cigarette, take their helmet off and have a candy bar and a drink) and this slows progress and isn't terribly fair to the riders everyone is waiting for, since of course, they don't get a break.

One of the things we have occasionally had problems with is when riders get spread out and if the are not really keeping track of what route they are supposed to be on and then coming up to a fork in the road without a rider in front of them in sight they make a wrong turn without realizing it. For example, you're on CR-E and CR-EE which are running together, The route sheet says you're supposed to be on CR-E. CR-E splits away from CR-EE and you've lost sight of the rider in front of you and you haven't been following the route sheet so you don't know you're supposed to continue on CR-E, and not CR-EE. This is the mystery of the missing riders and typically the riders who split off on the other route take a while to realize that they lost the group and the group takes a while to realize they lost part of the group.

My favorite story is of two members who were both riding without route sheets who went 20 miles before realizing they had lost the group, The lead rider figured since the rider behind them kept following he must have been on the right route and the following rider figured the lead rider must have been riding off the route sheet and knew where he was going. By the time the lead group realized the following riders were gone and got turned around to look for them even though they back tracked all the way to where the two riders we last seen, of course they found no one. The best part of the story was told by the two guys who got lost. Their description of when they realized neither of them were riding off the route sheet was priceless.

It struck me that this document might make a really great post ride survey which would help riders gradually build a better understanding of how each other feel about routes and what paces riders like to ride on different routes. This might help people find other who match their riding preferences within the group. I would love to use this or something like it as an after TWiSTAR feedback form to see what attendees think about the ride.

That's the first quick reaction. I'll have to look at this and think about it a bit more.