I wrote earlier about the Grand Tour of Georgia (GTGA) Kicking off. The Start date is March 14, 2015 – Saturday. The organizers push through all the information via email on the Wednesday prior to the start date. After much anticipation all through the day, the email finally popped through (after innumerably refreshes on the web and smartphones, I’m sure) to everyone’s respective Inbox, earlier this evening.

The email contains 3 files:

1. A PDF copy of the Passport – which lists all 20 locations that participating riders need to ride to and document per the instructions. The printed Passport – in a booklet, much like a Passport, is mailed out the next day. Early riders can use the PDF copy of the Passport to plan and ride before the Passport arrives in the mail.
2. A GPX file – which is a GPS compatible format file with the GPS (Latitude and Longitude) coordinates of all the locations. This is saved and opened using various GPS software. The most popular being Basecamp.

   

   Basecamp is used by most riders who use a Garmin brand of GPS unit. I use TyrePro software which is the companion GPS software to my GPS Unit-a TomTom Rider. For my level of ‘novice’ and ‘occasional’ riding, the TomTom and Tyre combination work just fine.

3. An FAQ file – which as the name suggests is a file with Frequently Asked Questions.

The most anticipated file is the GPX file. This gets saved to the GPS. Riders would then plan a route based on their home location. Factors such as weather, traffic, highway riding, ‘non-highway’ riding, time of day, get considered as the routes are built, saved and pushed to the GPS unit, ready for the Ride Day.

I have all the GTGA (and BikerLife files) files saved to my Cloud storage on OneDrive (I have a whopping 140GB of space! Free, of course!) just in case I need to refer to any of the files on the fly. This works quite well via its iPhone App – OneDrive.

I have built my route for my 1st day of GTGA Ride. Opted for two versions. Created two GPX files. Printed a ‘Road Book’ – a printed version with routing, miles and approx time through the ride. Both these files have been pushed through to the TomTom Rider. And ‘Job Done’. At least on the GPS front.

Next would be to get the bike set up for Ride day. More on this later.