Sounds a bit like me and I have found some cracking roads and passes that way
I remember 4-5 years ago with a few guys from here in the Austrian Tyrol - they were going one way and I just fancied riding the valley floor for a bit, so we just did our own thing that day
Riding along from our overnight stay in Vipiteno towards Sillian I stopped for a coffee and spotted the Passo Stalle on the map
Roughy in a similar direction I followed that road over the Alpine meadows (cue Sound of Music scenery) and found the Lago di Anteselva, at the start of the Stalle and the road was so small it was signal controlled every 30 mins (no drama as the lake views were stunning) and when it was our turn, the filtered to the front of the queue (past all the cars & motor homes) and I had the whole pass to myself, without any fear of oncoming traffic (as it was alternate one way, every 30 mins)
I had a ball, carving up the bends with only me on the road
Great pass and one I have never heard of since in any guide books etc
Lunched at the top of the Pass and had a great day
Had I not had my map on the tank, I doubt that I would have ‘browsed’ the Passo Stalle (certainly not a 4” GPS screen, set on a 1:2/3 km scale range)
Then onwards to Lienz and a browse around the KTM shop there, before arriving at the Gasthof Hochalmspitz in Malta to join the others for 3 nights there
I have ridden that Tyrol valley road from Vipiteno to Lienz & Spittal many, many times and still found something new to ride
So maps most definitely have their place on a tour
I agree, maps are great.
But everything you did there could have been done using a GPS device
with a map. For example, when you decided to ride on your own along the valley floor, you could have looked at your map, seen the pass and thought to yourself “It goes to roughly where I need to go” and created a GPS route to take you along it. That would have been the same as colouring in the route on a paper map or writing ‘After town XYZ, take pass ABC on the right to 123’ on a sheet of paper and stuck it in your tank bad, old skool style.
You seem to think that people with GPS devices don’t know how to use a map, relying exclusively on a device to take them from A to B, avoiding motorways, unmade tracks and U-turns. That might be true in some (possibly many) instances but it’s equally true of bods that don’t own a GPS device either. On the same theme, you seem to say that everyone with a GPS device follows the magenta line blindly. That might be just as true of someone who has highlighted a route on a paper map or listed towns on a sheet of paper.
An argument might be made that bods using a GPS, running a route A to B provided to them by the device (ie with no input from the owner) might be more inclined to to go ‘off route’ than someone with a map or hand written instructions, simply because they know that their device (depending on its settings) will always take them to destination B, no matter where they go in between. Indeed, this is often a central theme in the GPS section, where bods sing the praises of the recalculation function. Ironically, there is then a bunch of bods who get very frustrated when the same recalculation function leaves them very confused. But that, more often than not, is down to human error and not knowing how very advanced - though sometimes quite dumb - GPS devices actually work.
I could bet that there will be some bods, using their hand written piece of paper, listing towns to ride through, equally confused when the sign post at a road junction does not list any of them. Then them having to dig their map out, work out where they might be (praying they have the right scale and detail) and wondering why they are doing this in the rain, with four blokes moaning or tittering behind him. We’ve all been there and done it, I’m sure.
You and I love our maps, no question of that. I love my GPS device too, and have done for years. Equally, I love the maps / route creation software that some of the now very good app’s offer. You can see in the ‘Tell me how to get to the Black Forest’ thread, how easy it was for adm1 to share some routes from MyRoute. I never knew it could do that in the flash of an eye. When I have shared routes with the forum in the past, I have had to laboriously write them out or host them on Dropbox. One simple app will now do it for me. That, whether we like it or not, is progress.
Not least, I like the way that, with a bit of imagination and help from Google, lots more information can be dialled up at the touch of a key pad. If I want to know 10 great things to see and do in Provence, north Yorkshire or Thuringia, I can ask Google for suggestions. If I like the idea of seeing one of them, I can mark its electronic location and create a bespoke route to take me to the front door. I can even check the location’s front door in Street View, if I want to *. That I can do much more besides, is just a bonus. In a similar way, if when riding along, I pass by a nice cafe or town but can’t stop, I have been known to tap on the GPS screen on the move to mark its position. I then tidy-up this electronic pin drop later. I have lost count of the number of times, riding along, wondering where to stop, this little pin (perhaps made years before and forgotten about) will pop up to remind me. I can then chose whether or not to stop there. That is made really easy on a GPS device. Similarly, on the move I have marked some really duff roads which looked great on a map (we all make mistakes), as a reminder later to look for something better if I ever went that way again. The great thing is, electronics does not forget.
I am the first to moan that modern GPS devices - with umpteen infotainment functions - and the whole connectivity thing (phones, music, texts, tyre pressures, lean angles, service due dates…… the list is endless) on motorbikes has got out of hand. But, taking away all that junk, leaving just a now very powerful (but often just very dumb) GPS device, when used properly, is a great aid to enjoying riding a motorcycle over longer distances. Hopefully you’ll get to see that when you unbox and start to use your XT.
* A great aid when it comes to deciding whether you really do want the hotel by the railway sidings, adjacent to the sewage works.
