I found a way to make charts and graphs on the fly with the new Google chart API. I added a Google-o-meter to show my miles per gallon for each gas stop on my Map for gas waypoints.

After many hours of work I have a map mashup which combines my GPS tracks with waypoints I collected over the last year.

I’ve been meaning to give my whole site a facelift for a while, and finally found (or borrowed) that time over the past few days. I’m using a two monitor Mac with the resolution turned all the way up, so I’d really like to know how it looks on your setup. Drop me a line with any thoughts Ryan!

Click on the map above to go to a Google map with interactive photos.

View Larger Interactive Map

I owe a big thanks to Kevin and Rebecca, my wonderful hosts here on the Big Island. Kevin let my borrow his R1200GS and gave me the best tour you could imagine. In the past 3 days I’ve driven 830 miles, without any Interstate (there’s not one on this island).

Day 1: Kevin and I took the southern road to Hilo stopping in Volcanoes National Park to walk through a lava tube (think lava cave). We drove the amazing Chain of Craters road. In Hilo, we ate lunch at a local favorite Ken’s House of Pancakes. We drove back to the leeward side of the island on the Saddle road which passes between the two giant volcanoes Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. Even though it was foggy and rainy on the windward side, we had an amazing ride. This is one of the best motorcycling roads I’ve ridden. It has lots of twists and turns, beautiful scenery, and not much traffic. These two enormous volcanoes aren’t shaped like the perfect cones I remembered from 8th grade science (the volcano that Rett and I built was bright blue and blacklight reactive, way cooler than the drab brown). They are instead gentle sloping giants, that measured from the sea floor to the top are the tallest mountains in the world. We cruised back through some lava floes and big open spaces on the high road.

After you look at the state signs, be sure to check out the set Westward Ho! which has images from my drive across the bottom of the US. The California set shows my pictures from guess where.

I’ll add links below once I get the rest of my photos uploaded.

Photo Maps:
Westward Ho!
California
Northward

Kim, my stepmom, got the coolest cake for my Send Off Party. I was amazed having never seen a cake in the shape of the US, especially one with a red motorcycle.

I’ve collected all of the photos from my last few weeks preparing for my trip. They are all in the collection below.

Predeparture Collection

Here’s how it works:
Most new GPS units create a trail of tracks as you move (I have on one my handlebars ).
Once you get back (or at least take a break from) your adventure, you can download the tracks to the computer and sync them with the photos you’ve taken along the way.
The photo-sharing site Flickr can take the location information from each photo and place it on a Yahoo! map. (You have to tell it to use this information Geo Preferences).

If you’re interested in doing this yourself, GPS Passion has a guide

GPSPhotoLinker is the OS X program I use for linking .gpx tracks and photos.