Routes & Mapping now on Twitter

As an organization, we have been using Twitter (@advcyclingassoc) to keep you abreast of organizational news as well as breaking news or interesting bicycle travel links. Routes & Mapping is happy to announce our adoption of Twitter to better facilitate communication between cyclists on the road and the cartographers back in Missoula as well as other cyclists on tour. Our twitter handle is @acaroutes.

You can use this tool to send comments -- limited to 140 characters -- called tweets, about things you encounter on the road that would be helpful to someone cycling through after you or that should be updated on the maps. (If you need more than 140 characters to express this information or it is a map update, please use the online Map Correction form). Some examples might be:

• road construction or closure occurring on route, especially if it entails a detour
• great ice cream/hamburger/pizza/coffee stops
• excellent (or horrible, be honest) campground/lodging experiences

When you have a comment to make, include the hashtag associated with the route you're on in your tweet. Hashtags work like labels to help organize the information stream. The hashtags we have developed are listed below. (Note: capitalization is not necessary.)

#acaTransAm
#acaUGRR
#acaPacCoast
#acaGDMBR
#acaNoTier
#acaSoTier
#acaWashParks
#acaGrandCanyon
#acaGrRivers
#acaGrParksS
#acaGrParksN
#acaLewisClark
#acaAtlCoast
#acaSierra
#acaWestExp
#acaNoLakes
#acaPotomac
#acaLakeErie
#acaFLConn
#acaGreenMtns
#acaUtahCliffs
#acaAlleghMtns
#acaUGRRPitt
#acaAdironLoop
#acaBR66

Hashtags can be collected into a RSS feed for easy viewing. Eventually, you will find a link to the feeds of the most recent entries on each route's Routes & Maps webpage. We are rolling out feeds for four routes this week: TransAmerica Trail, Underground Railroad Bicycle Route, Pacific Coast Bicycle Route and Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, with the rest of the network to follow soon. So, if you are riding one of our routes and using Twitter, use the appropriate hashtag for the route, and join the conversation!

Important note: The RSS feed displayed for each route is an aggregation of tweets from Twitter. Adventure Cycling is not responsible for the content of the tweets nor do these tweets constitute advice from our Routes & Mapping team. For official updates from our Routes & Mapping crew, follow us on Twitter.
If you're new to Twitter, there are a lot of great resources available online. You can start with the Twitter help page and be sure to check out this How to Use Twitter tutorial.

If videos are more your thing for learning, check out the ones produced by Common Craft on the concept of Twitter and Twitter Search and Hashtags. Twitter also has a good description of hashtags.

There are literally dozens of applications for managing Twitter on your computer and phone. A good roundup of your selection can be found at Twitdom. To assist you in keeping the tweets short, some of these applications provide a built-in website address (url) shortener. If you are posting tweets without one of them, try the bit.ly service to get more bang for your character.

You might also want to consider bookmarking this blog entry for future reference. We will update the resources as needed over time.

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GEOPOINTS BULLETIN is written by Jennifer 'Jenn' Milyko, an Adventure Cycling cartographer, and appears weekly, highlighting curious facts, figures and persons from Adventure Cycling's Route Network with tips and hints for personal route creation thrown in for good measure. She also wants to remind you that map corrections and comments are always welcome via the online Map Correction Form.