Coffee with Alasdair

This morning I had coffee with one of our visiting cyclists, Alasdair Sinclair. He is a British man cycling across the country on a combination of our TransAmerica and Lewis & Clark Bicycle Trail routes. By the time he reached Missoula he was ahead of schedule and so took a couple of rest days here.

Why coffee with Alasdair? It began last spring when our routes & mapping email box started to fill with notes from one address in particular, Alasdair's. It was apparent by his comments, questions and feedback that our correspondent was studying both the maps and gps waypoints quite carefully. We responded to items that needed immediate attention and filed others away in our addenda queue to be amended at the next update.

Somewhere along the way, Alasdair mentioned he would be keeping a blog. I added the address to my feed reader so I could follow his progress. This is always one of the highlights of the summer for me, to follow a few bicycle traveler's blogs and ride with them vicariously. You can check out his journey, too, at 2012 Cycling Across America.

In addition to his desire to see some of America, Alasdair is also raising funds for the Smile Project, a group that aids children and young adults in developing countries by correcting facial deformities such as cleft palette and cleft lip. (He is still accepting donations if you're interested in supporting the cause.)

When Alasdair reported he was just about to Missoula, Carla and I decided we wanted to acknowledge the time and efforts he put forth in sending us corrections and feedback. This is invaluable information for us to receive and much appreciated. And while a cup of coffee is only a small token of the appreciation we have for him, we hope he realizes the impact his feedback has on the community of cyclists who use our maps.

In our morning chat in the bright summer sunshine, Alasdair related to me some of his other travels and how he came to be a traveling cyclist. We discussed the Adventure Cycling maps and routes, how they are made and updated as well as paper vs gps navigation. Sadly, his gps gave up the ghost about a week into his travels so much of the work he put into organizing them for himself was for naught. He was able to salvage them somewhat by using them in the evenings on his netbook to plan ahead. In the end though, the paper maps seem to be serving his purpose just fine.

It was lovely to connect face to face with someone I had been emailing with, and it renewed my energy and enthusiasm to return to my desk for another day of mapping. Thank you Alasdair, may you have mostly tailwinds in your future!

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GEOPOINTS BULLETIN is written by Jennifer 'Jenn' Milyko, an Adventure Cycling cartographer, and appears weekly, highlighting curious facts, figures, and persons from Adventure Cycling's Route Network with tips and hints for personal route creation thrown in for good measure. She also wants to remind you that map corrections and comments are always welcome via the online Map Correction Form.

Source: http://blog.adventurecycling.org/2012/07/coffee-with-alasdair.html

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