If you haven't come across this website yet, check it out. It's called Mapmyride.com, and after you register for free you can create and save routes that you normally ride, or create new ones, by advancing the cursor along the roads depicted on an overhead map. When you use your home address at registration, it causes the site to load with your house in the center, so you can create rides right from your door.

Unfortunately, one of the sites best features is hamstrung a little bit because of the lack of topography (i.e., hills) that we have here in the Southeastern Mass. area. After creating a route using the overhead map, you can get the profile of the route by calling up that feature. The contour intervals must be fairly large, however, because for any route around here, the profile line looks like an EKG of my heart after a Sunday Group ride - dead flat.

You are foolish if you don't take advantage of the great sales going on right now at Village Bicycle. Tell me you don't need a Spare Tire, 3-4 Tubes, some Energy Bars, Hydration/Replacement drink, or a Blinky Light (front and rear), some cool Bar Tape, or Summer Clothing, and I'll know that you used to be a bike shop owner in another life (NOT). Aren't we getting a tax refund? Don't be a Fred.......get down there and use that money on a new bike.

No charge for the Mapmyride.com hook-up.

Cheers