Tuesday July 31st 2012 – Happy birthday Sherry!

MapMyRide has totally tanked it and is no longer saving workouts. Before I left I bought a support package so I decided to use it. At the time I was pissed it wasn’t working and wrote the following:

First off your support links are not very obvious and I posed a question to community support instead. When you click on a link for “support” it should go there especially if you are logged in.

The last three workouts appeared to save but with zero stats and there was no way to recover the workout. These are actually my rides as I bike across Canada to raise money for water projects for Haiti. It helps explain where I rode and the difficulty involved. To re-create them would be difficult an should be unneccesary. I will advise my followers of your sub standard product. Another problem I encountered is when I am out range from a data signal I cannot save progress. There should be a way to at least save the last know gps locally so you can recover the workout. Instead I end up with 3 or 4 days recorded under one workout.

Not a very happy customer right now.

To which I received a reply from Ronald Neri:
Hi Jeff,

Thank you so much for you feedback and for letting us know how you feel about our free Android application. This has been suggested and we do hope to implement the feature to save workouts locally on the phone in future updates to our apps.

Should you have more questions about the app’s functionalities please visit our community support site at http://support.mapmyfitness.com/mapmyfitness.

Best Regards, Ronald – MMF Support

Note in the subject line the issue is stated as “Solved”. I sent back the following and have heard nothing since:
Hi Ronald, I paid for the bronze package l believe which is not free. I would not lodge a complaint with a free product. I also raise the complaint because I have a special use for your product. While it works well in big cities I will be unable to recommend your product to travellers. I think it would be a reasonable request to receive a better package or even better some form of promotion about my trip on your website or users. In fact in would be a good way to raise awareness of your product.

Back to the saga –

I left fairly early in the morning and the road was crappy for a good 10 kilometers until I came upon the outskirts of Maberly. I saw a bakery on my side of the road and couldn’t resist. Upon entering I met a gentlemen who was curious about my trip. Once inside he bought me a “Western” which is a fried egg sandwich except a thousand times tastier. He also introduced me to another gentleman just minding his own business. “Wayne likes to donate” he ventured. Well it turns out he does and donated $20. When I was leaving I spoke to Joyce at the front counter who donated $10. She told me about Beryl Stott who a few years after Terry Fox ran across Canada setting a Guinness World Record. There is a story about it here: http://www.frontenacnews.ca/2011/11-46_nov_17/stott_beryl.html

The road got mighty flat from that point forward so the biking is hardly worth mentioning other than it started getting pretty hot again. I will also mention I found a road that ran beside the Trans Canada for some time but eventually was forced back onto it. By this time it was A1 quality road and quiet enjoyable with a massive shoulder. Tonight I would be staying with Colin and Misha Hamer in Kanata which is about 20 kilometers from the Parliament buildings. As per usual I had a warm welcome and was offered food and drink right away. Winston, their Brittany Spaniel also welcomed me with a good tail wag. Misha was working away on dinner as the rest of the Hamer clan where coming to see the lone cyclist yours truly.

All in short order they showed up starting with Peter (Hamer – oldest son), wife Georgie and kids Mia and Arlo followed by Mitchell Bellman, wife Nicola (Hamer – middle sister) with son Noah but I believe they have one or two more kids that didn’t come. I had a wonderful time learning about my friend Alex through his family while he was not there, you should have never done it Alex! I guess Aex has the last laugh on them because he has managed to get them all on Apple products, poor folks!
This is Alex’s room, notice the raggedy Anne doll 🙂

It was a fun night talking about the trip with everyone and the China trip always works its way into the conversation as well making it an inspiring evening for some. Before leaving Georgie Hamer gave me her contact information in the hopes that I can meet the Mayor tomorrow. At the very least she will arrange a tour of city hall, cool!