Eric, good to hear from you...
First off, they accepted my Spotwalla track with embedded gas receipts, and it was plenty good enough to tell me I FAILED. The google map scenario that you describe would have not helped me, or at least I don't know how it would help me.
I was tooling along on my Ride Around Louisiana, an estimated 1200 mile trip. So knowing the mileage was secondary, since I had to End exactly where I Started. BUT, being 1200 miles, I was hoping to snag a SS1K on the way... if I cannot rely on any of my onboard tech to tell me when I've reached the 1000 mile milestone, what do I do? Keep riding to the 24 hour mark? My DBRs for start and finish with my odo only account for 1177 miles. A man with two watches can never be sure of the correct time!
As another example of how we must rely on tools like SWTracker and Spotwalla is Nate Steuber's recent accomplishment, which was 21 laps on the Lake Pontchartain Causeway. I don't know if he did, but I doubt he got a receipt at each lap, or corner as you call it. He also did an in-city SS1K looping around Houston. I'll ask him how he managed receipts at the corners next time I see him.
Give my love to your wife...
--Bobby
Spotwalla tracks alone are good secondary documentation. However, Spotwalla with embedded photos of gas receipts is a completely different level. You ARE supplying the DBRs with that method. But it's still the DBRs that count, not the Spotwalla track.
Stephen beat me to the method to have more than 10 points in a Google Maps route. It is also possible to simply manipulate the route so much that you can't even have 10 points. Often I find it simpler to just have multiple Google Map pages open. One starts where ever the previous one ended. The
KEY is that your Google Maps route must be
EXACTLY what you plan on riding, otherwise the mileage total is not going to be accurate.
You asked:
if I cannot rely on any of my onboard tech to tell me when I've reached the 1000 mile milestone, what do I do?
Here is a big thing; You're confusing the miles you rode with the miles you can prove you rode. The miles you can prove you rode are what the IBA is going to accept. Those miles come from
planning, not riding. Once you have an acceptable plan for the miles you want,
then you can go ride that plan and document it with your DBRs. How you choose to present those DBRs to the IBA is up to you.
Forget what your "onboard tech" says. No one cares. YOU need to know from your planning when/where you will be over 1000 miles and exactly where you plan on getting an ending DBR to document that. If you can't get to that location before the time window ends, and you still think you're over 1000 miles, you
must find some other ending DBR before the time window runs out.
Remember, the very first thing the verification team is going to do to verify your ride is plug in your DBR locations to their mapping software. They are not going to examine your Spotwalla track first. Your DBRs should
ALWAYS prove your route and mileage that you are claiming.
In other words, regardless of what route your Spotwalla track shows, if you plug the DBR addresses into a mapping program like Google Maps and it comes up short, you need additional DBR locations to document your correct mileage. To prove you indeed rode the route you say you rode. On a ride where no DBR locations are possible, then Spotwalla may be part of the solution.
If you wanted a SS1K in the event you timed out on the Ride Around Louisiana, then you needed to have a planned DBR end point for the SS1K already in your plan to document the end of the SS1K. You can't just say you were over 1000 miles even though your next DBR was past the 24 hour mark. The final DBR end of the SS1K had to be
before the end of the 24 hour period to document that ride.
In regards to the other rides you mention, they are
pre-approved routes with special documentation rules. You don't just do an In-City SS1K or repetitive loop route SS1K, you have to get
any circular repeating route plan pre-approved. Most of the time, if not all of the time, IBA approved witnesses are required to visually document your laps. Sometimes at multiple points on the route. Often this means IBR finishers and others that are known to the IBA. BTDT, didn't get the cert.
