In preparation for my Trans America bike ride, I’ve identified three ways to keep track of my exercise, location, and stories during my journey across the United States. This will satisfy my drive to measure my physical activities, share my discoveries along the way, and enable friends and family to answer the question, “Where’s Ben?”

Arc

After I bought my first iPhone, I used an app called Moves to track my activity, particularly bicycling and walking, and summarize them for me over time. Moves was great because it activated automatically as I moved. However, the app was acquired by Facebook and later shut down.

Fortunately, Arc came along with the direct intention to replace Moves, including importing users’ existing historical data. Arc similarly captures my physical movement activities automatically, showing them on a map and a timeline, and summarizing them by day and/or activity.

I can add custom labels to locations I visit (spend time), show various trip details, and more. Arc puts privacy first, though, so I can’t share any of this information with others.

LocaToWeb

To address the location sharing issue, Dave Hamilton at Mac Geek Gab recently referred me to LocaToWeb, which makes it easy to track my GPS location and share it on a website. I’ve tested this on a few rides prior to this writing and found it to be reliable enough at this task.

I can easily share a link with anyone I like and they can view my location, almost in real time. This satisfies both the concern that I’m safe and the curiosity of where I am along my journey. People close to me will help me publish these links on my website for your benefit.

Blog

Speaking of my website, it’s time to renew my presence there. I plan to use my blog as a place to journal publicly about my experiences on the road this summer. I’ll also put photos in this iCloud shared album for your enjoyment.

Will you join me on my cycling adventure?

[Update: I didn’t end up using LocaToWeb, my blog, nor the shared album because RideWithGPS, which I used for maps and directions, also handled tracking my location, provided a platform to publish my journals, and I included photos in journal entries. Oh well. At least Arc kept tracking me and serves as a reference point for places I stopped. Read more in Where’s Ben.]