Find a trail, buy a helmet – On your phone!
If you’re just now getting into texting on your phone I hate to tell you but you’re way behind the times. These days you can do a whole lot more and you don’t even need an iPhone, just a phone with a mobile browser (even my free phone from 3 years ago has this). Let’s start by finding a sweet mountain bike trail to ride on our Florida vacation.
Just type in singletracks.com/go (notice the short URL – easier to type) and you’ll see a simple form (you can even preview it in your browser right now). Since we’re looking for a trail in Florida, we’ll type an “F” into the third text box and hit “Go.” Click the “Florida” link and you’ll see a list of cities in Florida that have mountain bike trails. Let’s say we’re near Fort Walton Beach – click the link and you’ll see the name of a trail – Timberlake. Click the link and you’ll get directions and a short description. The best part is the short, simple pages will load fast and won’t hog your data plan. Look for the ability to search by zip code coming soon!
Now let’s say we’re browsing the local big box sporting goods store and we see a slick looking helmet on sale. The price seems good but maybe they just jacked the price up so they could put it on “sale”? Fire up your mobile browser again and hit BikeSomeWhere.com to compare prices. BikeSomeWhere has created a special mobile version of their website that lets you shop and even place orders so you always know when you’re getting the best deals. Result: lower prices everywhere as retailers compete for your business.
Yep, amazing times we’re living in today – what will they think of next?
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January 3rd, 2008 at 10:06 am
You can also pair your GPS with your mobile phone to find trails when you’re on the road. Download all the singletracks trail waypoints (trail and full subscribers only, see GPS page) and load the file on your GPS. Now fire up your GPS and search for nearby waypoints and note the names of the closest ones labeled MTB##. Type in the ## portion of the waypoint name on singletracks.com/go in the trail ID field and you’ll get the name of the trail, directions, and a short description. Gnarly!