My name is Andreas Vogel and I like to ride my bike. I live in San Francisco since 1996 and have been cycling in the area ever since. I ocassionally race (Master 35+ 4) on the road, cyclocross and just started track. But most of all, I enjoy riding through the beautiful California scenery.
On this Web site I have put together all my favorite rides. Every ride, I did at least once (unless noted otherwise)- most likely more often. I will add routes as I ride them.
All distances and elevations are given in metric units (km and m). You may ask why. Officially, the US is a metric country. But this is beside the point. The metric system is just so much more practical, for example when calculating grades. There are 1000 m in one kilometer. How many feet are in a mile? What's the grade of a 2 mile road ascending 1000 feet? Hmm, that's a tough one. Now what's the grade of a 3 km road ascending 300m: 300m/3km = 0.1 or 10%. Convinced?
For all the equipment talker out there: I ride a black Canyon F10 Pro (Carbon frame, Durace components, compact crank), made by a small German manufacturer. I got a good deal on it and nobody else rides one in California. I also have Gary Fisher 29 hardtail mountain bike (for my GDR adventure) and two Felt models, one for cyclocross and one for the velodrome.
It's a problem. Google maps need to mature and include elevation
- is their an undocumented API?
Apparently there is - I found a Google add-on application which displays elevation lines,
but it's not that great.
The information densitity is very thin.
Also often the name of town is not shown, just street names or no identifiers at all,
depending on the zoom level.
So I checked out Microsoft's Virtual Earth - it's pretty much the same deal.
I also use DeLormo Maps which have elevation and a lot of other useful features. But they are very inaccurate. A lot of back roads have "gaps" in the map, e.g. Mines Rd, Palomares Rd or Alpine Rd (in the Bay Area). Another problem is that the inaccuracies lead to profiles which are totally off. You will find a lot bumps in the elevation profiles of the climbs, where in reality the road is just going up, up, up.
For any comments or questions email me at andreas.vogel at gmail.com.