OK, well that title may be a little misleading. A more appropriate headline would probably be 'BikeWrappers can be seen from GPS SATELLITES from space.' 

So I needed to get out and go for a little ride yesterday and figured what better way than doing a little GPS map writing(no idea if that is a real thing). I figured it would be kind of like those planes that write out stuff with smoke in the sky, but using my fancy phone instead. Being in San Francisco made it a bit challenging with all the hills, but figured the Richmond district would be a great place to do it. Plus the roads there kind of look like a piece of graph paper. So I fired up the RunKeeper App on my phone, decided to get a little creative in my route, and got some urban cycling in(with our BikeWrappers on of course). It took a little mental horsepower for me to make sure I was writing it out properly from the street and took a little over an hour to do, but the final GPS product is kind of cool...and we spelled it right. We are just glad we didn't name the company, "Reflective Wrappers That Go On Your Bicycle So You Can Be Seen At Night". That would have been a doozy...

And a random fact. How many miles did it take to spell this out to be seen from space? ...13.7. You can see the full RunKeeper stats here.

Get out your compasses, your GPS units, your smartphones, your ability to navigate by the stars, or just your freaky psychic abilities to compete in BikeWrappers first promotional giveaway. Why do you need one of these nifty gadgets or supernatural abilities to participate in this competition on Tuesday June 15^th starting at 7:30 PM? Quite simply because we will have several sets of our BikeWrappers scattered throughout the city of San Francisco to be discovered by those lucky, quick, and diligent enough to beat out all your fellow scavenger hunters to the secret locations. The whole promotion will be run through the Twitter account@BikeWrappers with the instructions, news, locations, updates, and all that good stuff being posted before, during, and after the fateful night. So how is this all going to work, you ask? Starting promptly at 7:30 PM on June 15^th, 2010, we will tweet out the GPS coordinates of all of the hidden sets of BikeWrappers. All you need to do is, take those coordinates and put them in your GPS or your smartphone and try to be the first one to find it. Once you get to one of the spots, the free set of BikeWrappers(a $45 value) will be hidden in a cone with a reflective BikeWrappers sticker on it so bring a flashlight if you want to make it a bit easier on yourself. If you are one of the lucky folks to beat everyone to the punch, please send a message(preferably with a pic) to @BikeWrappers that you have found your set at the location # and we will tweet an update so everyone knows not to waste their time going there and can race to one of the other spots. We will be diligently tweeting the progress of the scavenger hunt and let everyone know when it is over and they have all been found. So how exactly will you find these things with just a GPS location? Well, luckily for you people that have a fancy smartphone, you can use this to enter in the GPS location into Google,Yahoo, or Bing maps, download yourself a Geo-cacheing app(here’s 11 good ones to choose from), or use your own or borrow a friends’ GPS unit to simply enter the coordinates. For example, this will be an example tweet: “Location #1: (37.802°N 122.419°W) or just enter (37.802, -122.419) into your Google Maps”. If you do this, you will see that the location is (the famous Lombard Street in SF). 

So let the games begin…on June 15^th…@7:30 PM… sharp. If you aren’t lucky enough to find a set yourself…or don’t know what BikeWrappers are, visit www.BikeWrappers.com to buy your own or learn a bit more about them and us.

I have always been a fan of Google Maps. I use it on my computer to find stores, driving directions, public transport directions, my house from space, and scour mountain ranges that I plan on climbing. Until recently, you had the options to figure out how to best get from point A to point B by car, public transport, or walking. I have recently discovered that Google Maps now allows you to find the best routes to BIKE from point A to B. It takes into account routes that are bike only streets, bike friendly routes, and even helps you to avoid the steepest sections of where you are going(which is very valuable in SF). Thanks Google…

On another note, I recently discovered that you can enter GPS locations into Google Maps which will be very important with an upcoming contest BikeWrappers is putting on…