Free Garmin maps for outdoor GPS navigators and for planning excursions on the desktop converted even those who previously relied on paper. OpenStreetMap has changed the world of online cartography, but the graphics and navigation of those maps are not always perfect. That's why several projects were born on its base and today there are several portals where you can download free Garmin maps for GPS devices: let's see together which are the most useful for our purpose.
By now using a GPS for bicycle, outdoor activities or trekking has become very important, let me say essential. We have been using it for 15 years now. We started with a non-cartographic GPS together with paper maps, in order to track our routes, to then switch to a cartographic GPS more similar to a cyclo-computer. Now we are using a more generic one, more outdoor-oriented than bicycle oriented. Enough talking: let's see which are the best bicycle GPS in 2021 in my personal opinion and online research.
Gear ratio calculation and its development in meters (also known as roll-out), together with the gear range are often bypassed, especially by beginenrs or amateurs, when choosing the right bicycle. If you don't know what I'm talking about and you want some answers, take a look below at some information and the calculation tool.
The best photo apps for travelers in this article, remember, are just some of my favorite ones.
My biggest passions, after my family, are bicycle tourism and photography. When I'm home I always shoot with my reflex camera, which I always carry during my journeys. But in the last years, I enjoyed combining the "classic" photography with some experiments using my smartphone, in order to create content for the web, for the social media especially. During this time I stumbled upon dozens of photo apps for Android: some useful, some less. Since there are a lot of these apps in the Google Store, I decided to enlist those which, in my opinion, are the 11 Android best photo apps for travelers.
Which are the best foldable solar panels for bicycle touring? In the XXI century, let whoever can do without technology during a bicycle trip throw the first stone!
Nowadays, for better or for worse, technology surrounds us and we can hardly do without it, even in bicycle touring. In order to be able to travel in wildlands far from civilization for some days, it is necessary to find an alternative to electricity, to recharge our devices such as smartphones, GPSs, tablets, PCs... One of those alternatives is power banks or, better, foldable solar panels for bicycle touring: let's see how they work and most importantly how many alternatives we have on the market, in order to choose wisely depending on our needs.
We cannot hide behind our finger... in XXI century technology surrounds us and even us, bicycle travellers, have to deal with it. Even the most extreme and savage bicycle traveller has the need to be connected, everywhere and always. Other than the ethical question I'm not going to analyze here, this need is also practical: which are the alternatives to the electricity that can be used when this isn't available? In this article, we list some of the most common alternatives, like the dynamo hub connected to the lights system or, thanks to specific chargers, to your electronic devices, in order to charge them.
Lately, I've been experiencing a lot of curiosity about outdoor GPS Apps, in particular for Android OS. In general, what I like the most about these apps is their facility of use: I don't always have a lot of time to study and learn methods to exploit my smartphone at its best during MTB excursions or bicycle travels, mostly because I use a dedicated GPS navigator that is complete and satisfying. For emergencies, curiosity or urgency I don't disagree about using my smartphone with a good outdoor App, and recently some apps are remarkable. Today I'll present one of the most intuitive apps ready to use: Locus Map, very convincing and really powerful in its free version.
Editing a GPS track can be useful for many reasons: merging routes found on the web to define an itinerary you want to travel, creating and viewing altimetry of a specific route, reversing the direction of travel, splitting a trip by bike into multiple stages, creating points of interest or even creating a track from scratch... well, the management possibilities of GPS files (whether GPX, KML or any other useful format) is, nowadays, wide and varied. Often though during my researches on the web I find it hard to find a complete overview of free software to edit the GPS tracks therefore hereafter I grouped some software that I recommend based on my experience.
