How to Map your ride

Here's how I mapped my rides. I mounted my Garmin GPS III+ to my handlebars on my Schwinn Cruiser Four. It automatically tracks your journey. Before I started, I cleared the tracklog.

Once I returned home, I connected my GPS to my Sony VAIO PCG-GR170K laptop running Redhat 7.2 Linux through my Socket I/O pcmcia serial port. Any serial port will actually do, but my laptop doesn't have a built in serial port, so I had to buy a separate one.

I downloaded the tracklog using gpstrans

$ gpstrans -dt > tracklog-20020108
This created a text file with my bike ride data points. Then, I used rideplot to turn this tracklog into a png image.
[brian@laptop gps]$ rideplot --color --brush-width=2 \
--speed-cutoff=25  < tracklog-20020108 > bikeride-20020108.png
I opened this image in the GIMP where I added the street names.