Passes & Canyons Blog

I’m developing a bit of a love-hate relationship with the electronics I (try to) ride with.

For years I was the hold-out who still didn’t have a cell phone. Now I do and so when I ride I want it with me in case I have trouble and I want it to work. But I want more from it than that.

I have this REVER app on my phone that will track your rides, which for someone like, me who blogs about my rides, it’s really convenient so I can show the routes, such as that one above. But to use it you first need a cell phone with power and you also need to remember to launch the app and start tracking.

I did a ride with the RMMRC recently over Guanella Pass and had intended to track it but when I turned my phone on to start tracking I saw I only had about 19% power. First I figured I’d start tracking and let it die at whatever point it did, but then realized I had not brought a camera, needed to shoot at least one picture, and if I ran the battery dead I would have no picture. So I turned it off so I could get a photo, no tracking today.

Then I went on the Ice Cream Ride and this time I tracked. That’s the map above. But REVER uses GPS and that sucks a lot of juice so I brought along a back-up power source to supplement. Between the phone battery and the back-up I barely made it home with any power left. But I did.

I also found on this ride that they have upgraded REVER so that it now automatically powers down when you’re stopped and starts itself up again when you start moving again. That saves power (I guess, maybe not, the GPS must still be functioning) and it saves you having to constantly turn it off and on again. So thanks guys, that upgrade is appreciated.

Then this past Saturday I went on this dual-sport ride and definitely wanted to track it. And this time I took my camera along so I wouldn’t have to depend on the phone for pictures. So we started out from Performance Cycle and it dawned on me I had not started REVER. Oh well, I’ll fire it up at Sedalia when we stop there.

At Sedalia I pulled out the phone and pressed the start button and nothing happened. I pressed and held it and it came alive, started booting up, and shut down. Somehow I was down to about zero power. How the heck did that happen? Did I leave some app running that sucked all the power? Who knows.

So now I’m going to add a new item on my prep list: make sure all electronics are fully charged the night before the ride. I had done that with the camera, but that’s not even so important because with that I have a spare battery I can easily swap in. But I need to make sure that dang phone is fully charged and also that back-up power source. And then I need to bring them both! And then I need to remember to start REVER!

I may eventually figure this out.

Biker Quote for Today

I pull out the choke and turn on the key, I squeeze the clutch, press the button and I’m free. — Nsmith82990

Viewing my first Rever ride from my desktop computer.

I was recently introduced to a new tool that I may very well put to a lot of use on this website. Brought to us by many of the same folks responsible for Butler motorcycle maps, we now have Rever.

Rever is a ride-tracking app for your GPS-equipped cell phone. In brief, you create an account, download and install the app, and then turn it on when you go for a ride. Shut it off when you’re done with the ride and you then have, stored in the cloud, a complete record of your ride, including route, miles, time, average speed, and more. That image above shows my very first ride with Rever tracking me.

It’s dead simple plus it has a variety of uses. Offered in a freemium manner as is so common these days, the basic app is free but if you pay to subscribe it offers a lot more. But at its most basic, you can track rides and also plan rides in advance.

Once you do a tracked ride or plan out a ride, you can save it. Any friends you are connected to on Rever can see your rides. So if you’re taking a group on a ride you have done before, or that you have planned out on Rever, each of your friends can open up that ride and they have the complete route plan right there in their hand.

One issue group riders encounter at times is getting separated. If each of your riders is on Rever and is tracking, lose somebody and you can pull out your phone, go to their rides, and see where they are right now. How cool is that?

For the paid membership you can also get Butler Maps overlays on your map so you can plan the route to hit all the good roads Butler points out to you.

What really interests me about Rever is that back when I built this www.motorcyclecolorado.com website we did not have smart phones that were essentially desktop computers in your hand. But full-sized web pages don’t generally display well on a cell phone. In order to at least not get too far behind technology I have rebuilt the main pages of the site to be mobile-friendly, but that’s only 11 pages out of more than 100.

Of course, the main point of the website is to present the best rides in Colorado. I have created maps but they are static. You can’t zoom in or do anything else other than look at them. With Rever I see the opportunity to create new, mobile-friendly pages for all these routes that should really bring the site more up to date. So look for that to happen over the next couple years.

Meanwhile, in order to present all these routes via Rever maps, I’m going to have to ride them all again. Oh, what a dirty job. Please don’t throw me in that briar patch.

Biker Quote for Today

If you think I’m cute now, wait until you see me on my motorcycle.