After 1200 kms with it, I can only say it’s the best motorbike I could have bought, since it’s perfect for daily usage as well as for off-road, specially after having changed its tyres yesterday:

Now all the mud, snow and tracks around here are nothing I can’t deal with

Fortunately this is changing, with the release in 2008 of the new Yamaha Teneré:

And, if rumours are true, the new Honda Transalp:

(I hope the real one looks better than in this mockup though )

/me starts saving money for the Teneré

I haven’t really looked yet at the details on how you edit the routes, but the theory seems quite easy:

1. You record your routes with your GPS unit in GPX format
2. You load that GPX file into one of the OSM editors. With this, you add information to the route you just created, like identifying streets, paths, motorways, etc
3. You upload the resulting file to OSM and that gets included in the full map

One of the nicest things, in theory still, seems to be osmarender, which is a tool to create a SVG file out of the OSM data created with the OSM editors. This means you can create a map out of a GPS track, or, that is, create your own maps!

Right now, Britain seems to have the best coverage, Spain being just partially covered. So, while the map itself is still not too useful (at least for me), it looks a very promising project, which just needs people all over the world to contribute to the map. So, if you have a GPS unit that can record routes to GPX, please start doing so whenever you can. If you are lazy enough to not want to learn all the process, just send me the GPX files or wait until I learn and I describe the process here.

More to come as I learn more about the whole process…

Another coincident characteristic of these places (at least the ones in Western Europe) is that, in some of them, there is (or was) a megalithic monument (maybe because the Neolithic people catched the magic of the places and decided to build their monuments there, who knows). And that’s the case for Artajona, in the middle of the way from my place to Pamplona. Most people would visit Artajona to see the medieval remains of the town, very spectacular:

But the real beauty is 4 kms away from the town, where there are 2 dolmens:

They are not very spectacular, but what is indeed awesome are the views you can see from the hills where the dolmens are:

I didn’t feel any mystic energy or magic but I was really impressed by the place, quite beautiful and, being alone there, quite relaxing.

More photos here.

It was a very nice place, with some nice tracks for the motorbikes, but the last part of the route we did was a bit hard, going downhill on tracks plenty of stones, very slippery sand and huge holes, very bad place indeed for the tyres my motorbike has. For some of the way down, I was skating more than riding

Here are some views from the path that took us down the hill. You can see other tracks in one of the photos, that go up to the Peña Isasa (that’s the name of the peak). Unfortunately, those paths are closed during the summer, because of fire danger in the area, so we’ll have to wait till the Autumn to get around them. In the second photo you can see the last part of the downhill track, although you can’t appreciate the difficulty in the photos.

I almost falled down on my bike a couple of times, but fortunately, I managed to control it and not bite the dust. My friend Guelphon also had some problems, but managed to get to the valley safe and alive.

To start with, last Sunday I went to Cascante, 50 kms from my place, to watch the Basque-Navarre Supermotard championship.

I didn’t take many photos, because I met there with a few friends, and we left early to drive some kms around in our bikes.