Veloroutes.org In The Washington Post!

Last year I was contacted by a freelance reporter working for the Washington Post, who wanted to do a story about cycling, hills, and online mapping. Lucky for me, she picked veloroutes.org out of the many mapping tools available!

I thought it wasn't going to run after all, since it had been so long. But yesterday the story was finally published! While it's not all about me & veloroutes, we do get a plug towards the bottom!

"It's not just mapping experts who rely on high-tech tools to figure out where to ride. Matt Mikul, a 30-year-old Seattle software engineer with a gears-are-for-sissies approach to cycling, wanted to gauge some of his area's formidable hills before attempting to ride them on his fixed-gear bike. With the help of data from Google Maps, the U.S. Geological Survey and a bit of calculus, he designed a hybrid application -- what Web designers call a mash-up -- that automatically calculates the steepness of a hill and creates a profile of the entire route. The self-styled tool he named Veloroutes and posted to the Web two years ago ( http://www.veloroutes.org) has been averaging about 10,000 users per month."

(I'm actually not quite yet thirty, and I haven't touched my fixed-gear bike for a few months... so the whole "gears are for sissies" part wasn't from me.. but I'll take the link nonetheless!)

Big thanks to the Washington Post for the article!