How Wandrer Reinvigorated My Love of Biking

20 February 2024 by Charlie LaNoue

We’ve all been there – for whatever reason, the thing that used to bring you joy no longer does. What to do?

It was the spring of 2020, and like just about everyone else in the world, my life was turned upside down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. An elementary teacher at the time, I had meticulously planned out a three-week, 1500-mile bike tour criss-crossing middle America from Austin, Texas to Michigan. The plan was to start in late May and head north, immediately following the last day of the 2019-20 schoolyear and escaping the southern summer heat.

I have always loved cycling – I took pride in being the only teacher to ride a bike to school each day – but at this stage in my life, I had very little time for riding outside of my short commute, and this deficiency was really starting to weigh on me. Whereas my last profession as a bike messenger allowed me to probe every nook and cranny of my city, my life as a teacher left me craving more exploration.

I channeled this unmet desire entirely into planning out the upcoming bike tour. All throughout the early months of 2020, I pored over maps, identified free campsites and Warmshowers hosts, plotted out daily routes, calculated distances between supply stops, scouted out elevation profiles, fine-tuned my pack list, and even created my own laminated cue cards. I could not wait. Every single day I would daydream of the open road. I had put all my eggs into one basket, so to speak – or maybe, packed all my happiness tightly into a set of panniers and frame bags.

Needless to say, when COVID-19 forced me to cancel my bike tour, I was devastated. Months of planning and anticipation, all for naught. For a while, I became restless and depressed, feeling like a caged bird.

Accepting the Wind; Adjusting My Sails

As the saying goes, we can’t direct the wind, but we can adjust our sails. I had to reframe my mindset and think: People are dying of this pandemic; this isn’t about me and my preconceived plans. Plus, I reminded myself: even if I can’t go on a bike tour, I can still go biking!

And to be fair, there’s a lot to love about cycling in and of itself: the hypnotic churning of the pedals, the effortless subtle movements that result in making a turn, feeling the breeze on your face, being connected to your surroundings. Biking, just for biking’s sake, is great.

However – and it has taken me years to realize this – much of what I love about cycling is not about the physical sensation of pedaling around on a bicycle, but moreover what traveling by bike facilitates: Namely, getting a novel perspective on a familiar place, or better yet – traveling somewhere completely new, where everything you see is unknown.

And this is why the idea of going on a long bike tour held such an appeal to me: I had grown stagnant in my bike rides. I typically frequented the same trails and bike-friendly thoroughfares in my neighborhood of north Austin, and felt I’d seen it all. Sure, I liked to go biking just to get out and exercise, but that critical “sidequest” component was missing. That itch to see unfamiliar territory wasn’t getting acknowledged.

Eventually my anguish over the canceled tour gave way to a sense of local curiosity. Fair enough, a cross-country tour isn’t feasible right now with everything closed and interstate travel frowned upon… but a day’s ride around the city and outskirts? This was safe and doable, and suddenly more interesting than usual. A surprisingly pleasant combination of empty streets and temporary pop-up bike lanes had made the city much more inviting to cyclists.

And so, because my highly-anticipated bike tour was canceled, a domino-effect sequence of events took place. Since I couldn’t go on the multi-week ride I’d planned, instead I began going on a series of longer rides around Austin, making a point to go to new neighborhoods I’d never been to. After a few months of this, a desire to aggregate all my Garmin and Strava bike ride data led me to Googling something along the lines of “how to combine all bike rides to one big map”. This yielded a Reddit post which then directed me… to Wandrer.

How Wandrer Changed Everything

Pretty instantly, I was hooked. After the initial setup, all my previous Garmin activities were automatically imported to Strava and then synced to Wandrer. I found it fascinating to see where I had been, and more importantly where I hadn’t. Clicking on different cities and neighborhoods and seeing my progress bar was strangely soothing and infinitely intriguing. And I loved the newfound ability to toggle between traveled/untraveled roads, and begin conceptualizing new routes.

Suddenly I was excited to plan out new bike rides, even if they were just in my own city or nearby suburbs. I wasn’t just riding around the same uninspired loop for exercise – no, this was all about diverging from the beaten path, adding unique miles to the Big Map! Of course, once I was out riding (thanks to the call of the sidequest), all the other fringe benefits of cycling came along for the ride – the vitamin D boost from sunlight, the endorphins from exercise, cortisol levels dropping, fresh air to the brain and increased blood flow, to name a few.

Sometimes you just need a little nudge in the right direction – a reason to go through the motions and do the thing you love. I knew I loved riding bikes just to ride, but Wandrer gave me a new reason “why”. Whether I was setting off on a century ride or just a half hour cruise, there was always something new to see. The ennui I’d experienced on my “same-old, same-old” rides was gone, and instead replaced with a fresh new sense of excitement.

The Oddities in Your Own Backyard

Thinking back to the “cycling rut” I found myself in before Wandrer, I almost felt guilty about it. I knew I should be enjoying riding a bike more often, but I felt an uncanny sense that I was missing something – just going through the motions. I daydreamed about going on a bike tour because I desperately wanted to see something that felt brand-new while cycling. I mistakenly assumed that was only possible by riding off to a far-flung destination. This mindset meant I was overlooking the oddities and curiosities hidden right nearby!

With Wandrer as a guiding force, it became obvious there was plenty more to see. It felt like I’d inherited a new superpower; a new lens to view my surroundings. Whereas before I was metaphorically staring into the dark abyss, and now I found myself equipped with infrared night-vision goggles! There was a whole world out there, and I had barely scratched the surface.

I thought I’d seen it all – at least locally – having ridden to the north and south ends of Austin, crossed almost every bridge across the Colorado River, rode all around downtown and Zilker Park, and even biked the whole length of Walnut Creek and Shoal Creek trails. However, after importing my Strava data (going back about 1 year) I was blown away just how many of the city’s 3,600+ unique miles (5800+ km) I hadn’t been to. I had only rode a paltry 8% of the city, despite thousands of miles of riding during that time!

With this figure in mind as inspiration, I began looking forward immensely to my random Wandrer rides. I even enjoyed planning routes almost as much as actually going on the rides - which felt a bit like a real-life adaptation of Pacman. For no particular reason whatsoever, I developed a strict rule of never “crossing my own tracks” within a ride - instead always doing some sort of zany loop. After my route was set, I knew I would come across something unexpected.

Any city approaching a million citizens is bound to have its share of quirks tucked away within its borders, but Austin* definitely kept it weirder than most, and for that I was grateful. I came across front yards adorned with hundreds of pink flamingos, inspiring murals I never knew existed, a new housing development getting built, an outdoor art installation comprised of metal junk, a bright purple house – all in a day’s ride! I never knew what bizarre treasures were awaiting when I found myself on uncharted territory, and this allure of the unknown kept me coming back for more!

Thanks to the Wandrer Leaderboard feature and public Strava accounts, I was able to follow other similarly-minded Austin-based cyclists, spontaneously run into some fellow Wandrers out in the wild, and through the process I also learned about the active r/BikingATX subreddit. Through this new community, I also stumbled upon another “gamified” form of cycling that truly sparked joy: “Bike Tag”, which involves cyclists identifying a mystery photo in their city and then biking to it before anyone else locates it.

*Although I’ve since moved on from Austin, my connection to the city is forever cemented through Wandrer. I’m proud to have completed over ⅓ of the unique roads in the city (1226 of 3644 miles), and yet equally impressed by how there is still ⅔ of the city I’ve never been to!

It’s the Journey, Not the Destination

As much as Wandrer gave me a reason “why” to keep riding from an emotional standpoint, it also very practically gave me the “where”. Using the Wandrer Map Overlay extension coupled with the Strava route builder, I began planning out future rides based on maximizing new roads. Whether I was setting off on a century ride or just a half hour cruise, there was always something new to see.

Later along in my journey, after some reading and troubleshooting, I found out how to download an up-to-date Wandrer map onto my Garmin Edge bike computer – and that changed the game for me. Pre-planning a specific Wandrer-based bike ride is great; but the ability to go for a whimsical ride without any planning – and still have the ability to see at a glance which roads you’ve traveled down – scratches a different itch, entirely. This freewheeling, unscripted method of wandring works best in large urban areas and is particularly useful when tackling new roads within a city you’ve already traveled in.

A New Lens to View the World

Throughout my journey, Wandrer has taught me an invaluable lesson: You don’t have to go far to see something new. Hell, you don’t even have to go somewhere new to get a fresh perspective. Maybe you’ve been at a certain intersection or neighborhood before, but just approaching it in a new way can provide a novel viewpoint.

For those who love cycling but want to “gamify” the experience, look no further than Wandrer. Those who enjoy the feeling of steadily adding to a project with no end in sight will find Wandrer provides them the ultimate IRL “open world” RPG.

If you’re like me, you’re happiest out exploring the world by bike, soaking up the new sights, sounds, and smells. By revealing and cataloging the uncharted territory all around me, Wandrer has permanently changed how I see the world. With endless goals to pursue and lines to draw on my Big Map, Wandrer has reignited my passion for cycling, and for that I’m forever grateful.

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