Another project that started with a "I wonder what it would take to..."
Biking Raleigh
So about 6 years and 790 miles ago I was looking for a new place to ride my bike and thought I should just ride though the neighborhoods near my house and see what I stumbled upon. With the aid of a Garmin that tracks my rides this turned into the question "What would it take to bike ride every single street within a mile of the house, or two miles?". The answer for me seems to be about 6 years and 790 miles. North Raleigh it seems has a hell of a lot of neighborhood streets. The Blue rings in the picture are the 1 and 2 mile radius circles.
(Note: because of the out and back nature of the bike rides there are lots of overlapping miles in the total. I have no idea of how to calculate the minimum number of miles.)
| Year | Rides | Miles | Time (hr:min) |
| 2023 | 18 | 123 | 14:30 |
| 2022 | 3 | 23 | 2:10 |
| 2021 | 22 | 114 | 13:58 |
| 2020 | 32 | 136 | 21:45 |
| 2019 | 16 | 105 | 12:45 |
| 2018 | 33 | 281 | 31:16 |
| 124 | 788 | 96:22 |
How to make a map like this yourself?
If you know of an easier way please let me know. I could not find an automated way, so this all manual.
If you are wondering how you make your own map like this, that will take some work. Gamin doesn't have the ability to show multiple rides at the same time, to you have to put this together by hand. The Gamin website uses Google Maps in background to show the base map, but it's a modified view that is stripped down and works better for something like this.
I created a massive 7800x9500 pixel170MB Adobe Photoshop file. Then I went to the Garmin site and just started taking screen shots, moving the view a bit, and taking another screen shot. Then I used Photoshop to stich all of the tiles into one big blank map.
Then after every ride I would screen shot the ride and use Photoshop to delete out everything except the ride in Red. Then repeat this layer after layer for six years.
The largest problem I've had is getting the scales all lined up. Multiple times over the years either Garmen or Google have changed the display of their map scales. Over the last year Google Maps changed the base map display, so I've just had to live with the patchwork quilt effect of the base map as I keep expanding it, because it's way to much work to create another giant base map.
8-26-2021