Ambassador Part 2: Planning and Editing Routes

Now that you’ve got your Ambassador profile set up, it’s time to create your first Ambassador route. The Ambassador route builder uses routes from your personal Ride with GPS account. Editing of the route itself takes place in your personal account, using the route planner. Plan your route, add photos, and check your cues. Once you have finished planning your route, save it, and it will be available in the Ambassador route builder.

Ride or otherwise familiarize yourself with the route and take notes about scenery, terrain, points of interest and hazards. This will help you write an accurate and helpful description of your route.

You should also take plenty of photos. Photos are the best tool we have to capture the beauty, excitement, and fun that is possible on a great route. They can be a bit of a double-edged sword: too few, and the route is not sufficiently represented; too many, and it’s cumbersome to find the highlights. If a photo doesn’t add something unique, we recommend removing it. If you have multiple photos showing the same thing, pick out the best one and let it stand alone.

Ambassador routes require at least three photos.

To add photos to your route, return to your personal profile and follow the steps to add photos. You can also take photos in the Ride with GPS mobile app, which will create geo-tagged photos that show up on the map in the location they are tagged.

If you have rides on your account that you would like to turn into routes for your Ambassador account, you can use the trace function, available to Basic and Premium subscribers, to turn great rides into great routes.

Be sure to review your route and cue sheet to make sure all cues are correct, The cuesheet produced by our route planner is not always perfect – an imprecise click can result in a u-turn, and often a cuesheet is missing an important detail (or includes unnecessary details). Make sure to review every cue for accuracy and relevance. Remove irrelevant cues. Add cues when necessary.

Imagine yourself riding along with our app hearing these cues aloud as you approach:

• Would you miss a turn?
• Would you get confused?

A carefully crafted cuesheet can be absolutely critical in keeping the rider from getting lost.

Once you have completed and carefully reviewed routes in your personal account, click the “+ new ambassador route” button under your Ambassador profile. Click “edit” in the new route box, and you will be able to select from the drop-down menu containing all of your saved routes

You’ve chosen this route because you want to show it off, usually that means there are points of interest along the way. Whether it be a trailhead, a beach, a statue, a rest stop, bike shop, or viewpoint, you can denote it on the route map using a POI icon. You can also add links to websites associated with your POIs.

Once you have selected the route you wish to use, add a short description if the route does not already have one. Type carefully; it will be displayed as your route overview and will show up on your Ambassador Route Page and in search results.

Now that you’ve got your route together, head over to Part 3 to learn how to make your route Postcard.