Cue Sheets

[vickietae]

My wife and I are getting ready for a Southern Tier route soon. We did a shakedown ride last fall to Key West using the ACA East Coast & Florida Connector maps. The information was helpful but we found trying to follow the maps, especially in the metropolitan areas, challenging because of the map scale and small font on the cue sheets (combined with the need for reading glasses at our age).

I've been looking for something that could be used with a smartphone to either speak turn by turn directions or a GPS map route that we could follow. For the trip I bought a Galaxy S2 smartphone. I felt that it had more functions than a standalone GPS unit and didn't see the need for both. The Maps function worked OK on our KW trip, especially in locating and guiding us to a couple motels.

But what I really wanted was the ACA route on the phone. I was able to cobble together some things that got the route into Google Maps that I was able to display on the phone. However there were no turn by turn directions. Not being one to give up easily I kept looking.

I think I found a solution, at least better than before. There's an Android App, Cue Sheet, that takes GPS routes from the free version of the  Internet mapping site ridewithgps.com and makes them available on your Smartphone. The POI's don't seem to transfer over but I was only interested in the route.

I loaded the ACA GPX file into ridewithgps.com and then used the program to convert the route into turn by turn directions that follow the roads rather than point to point directions. This is not to say that it was easy or even intuitive at first. When ridewithgps converts the route from Point to Point to Follow Roads it doesn't always conform to the ACA route so it's necessary to go through the route and manually correct any discrepancies. It took me a couple hours for each map. But I've finished now and merely need to go into the Cue Sheets smartphone app and I get turn by turn directions with a map showing me my live location. There's nothing spoken, you need to advance the cues manually, and there's no indication if you pass a point. However, for me, that is much better than trying to follow along on the ACA maps which we'll still carry for backup and reference.

[FredHiltz]

That is a neat solution, Vickie. Thanks for posting it.

I'll round out this topic with a couple of other ways to skin this cat.

You could print the ACA narrative in large type if your map case has room for it. They offer the narrative in text form to purchasers of the Great Divide route now. If they see some demand, they might do this for other routes. Meanwhile, someone with a computer and a scanner could enlarge the text from their paper map and paste up a cue sheet.

A basic GPS receiver, loaded with the ACA routes and set for straight-line navigation, shows the distance to the next turn and whether to turn left or right, also silently except for a beep at the turn itself. That's less detail than the Android app, but easier to manage and waterproof on the handlebar.

And the high-priced solution: buy a tandem and pin the map on the captain's back. <grin>

Fred

[hem]

You could print the ACA narrative in large type if your map case has room for it. They offer the narrative in text form to purchasers of the Great Divide route now. If they see some demand, they might do this for other routes. Meanwhile, someone with a computer and a scanner could enlarge the text from their paper map and paste up a cue sheet.

There was discussion about using this approach on CGOAB http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/forum/board/message/?o=1&thread_id=254988&page=1&nested=0&v=S