The Art of Suburban Exploration: How Wandrer and Tile Bagging Helped Me Overcome the Doorstep Mile

I have a couple of ways to keep rides interesting – even those close to home. One of them I have been doing casually for a while, and the other I only just recently found out about.

First there is Wandrer.earth. This connects to Strava which I use for tracking and logging my rides. Whenever I log a ride it checks it against every other ride I’ve logged there. That is over 1,800 rides since I started tracking there in 2013. (For those keeping score at home, that’s 33,481.8 kilometres and over 257,000 metres of climbing or 29 Mount Everests)) It gives a nice map at the end and lets you know how much of various neighbourhoods, cities, provinces, and countries you’ve covered to date. It’s all laid out on a map showing what is and is not covered. My map has a few small bits here and there: some in Vermont and New York, lots on Ontario, a little bit in Quebec and a tiny bit in India. Here’s what my map looks like for North America:

Zoom in a bit more and you can see the area around Toronto with bike rides in blue and runs in pink.

Even with all that in Toronto, I have only been on 21.8% of the rideable routes in the city. There are so many potential adventures.

Then, more recently I discovered the idea of “Tile Bagging“. In short, veloviewer.com has overlaid the map of the world with an approximately 1 mile x 1 mile grid. Each tile in your map is “coloured in” when you ride through it. The goal is to get the largest square you can. So you can see my map here. This one gives an idea of how much I’ve visited a particular area with often-visited areas having lighter colours:

Tools like this make coming up with routes for new rides fun for someone like me who craves novelty. Yesterday, despite the loveliest weather we’ve had so far this year, I was feeling lazy and sedentary. I made a deal with myself I’d go out for a ride, though, and off I went. Here’s how that tile bagging adventure went.

The routing tool on Strava can work with a plugin to overlay your heatmap on the routing map so I was able to see where I needed to go. I had a whole line of squares missing below my last ride’s route that I wanted to get and a few other little ones here and there. The route it gave me was reasonably good with a few exceptions.

The weather was fantastic with temperatures in the mid 20’s. In the sun it was actually hot enough to work up a bit of a sweat even in shorts and jersey. The route took me along the Hydro Corridor again which is my usual east-bound exit ramp:

I was lucky to catch a photo with nobody in it because there were so many people there on bikes, skates, with strollers and kids and dogs. It’s a nice safe route but on lovely days like this I had to take it slow to keep more vulnerable trail users safe. Once I got off the trail, though, I was rewarded immediately with a nice downhill at Cummer Road which let me get my speed up to 60 km/hr. (I sheepishly note that with a speed limit of 40 km/hr I probably could’ve been given a speeding ticket there. Whoops!). This road took me through quiet suburban neighbourhoods until I got to Don Mills Road.

I’ve talked about Don Mills Road before as I used to live near the southernmost end. With three lanes there can be quite a bit of traffic. However, for whatever reason, the “culture” of the road is more tolerant to cyclists than, say, Bathurst, where drivers seem to be much less patient. In any case, I was only to be here for a block or so before I turned east again on Van Horne . This one was smaller and more quiet. I tend to think of Scarborough as a bit of a nightmarish place to ride my bike, but often those are able to be avoided. Before long I meandered down to Huntingwood which not only was quiet, it had a curb-separated bike lane through a beautiful neighbourhood. With a tailwind, fresh legs and nice pavement I was able to maintain good speed sometimes keeping up with motorized traffic.

When I cycle I wear bone conduction headphones. These let me listen to music transmitted to my ears through the bones near them. The result is not unlike riding in a car from the 1980s with a stereo from those days and the windows open. I can hear everything and I’ve even chatted with others while they were in but I also have my music or occasionally an audiobook if I’m somewhere rural where I can focus on the story. So I asked Siri to put on The Clash’s Combat Rock album which was a great choice for a sunny bike ride.

Eventually I got far enough east that I reached Markham road where my GPS told me to turn north on the road. This road is six lanes of fast, impatient nonsense. This is not a road I would ride under any circumstances as it’s a glorified highway with no shoulder. While I didn’t grab a photo at the time, this is what the road is like. Imagine it packed with rush hour traffic and you’ll see what I avoided.

I debated on rolling slowly up the sidewalk as this direction was to be only a short spur to get one tile before resuming on my old route. But I was having none of it and just continued forward. I am now kicking myself for leaving a single missing tile in a large block of completed ones. Now I will have to go out of my way to get that one. That’ll teach me.

Looping around I ended up on Ellesmere Road for a bit. This is not quite as bad as Markham Road but still stressful. My Garmin told me I had 1.5 km or so to go so I started down and hoped I could quickly knock it out. However a distraction popped up to save me:

Now this is not something I’d be permitted to do on the organized rides I was looking at doing and it’s a really great example of why I don’t do them. Of course I pulled over immediately and for $3.23 got a cold drink and three samosas.

While it was a really nice stop at a great time in the ride where I was hot and thirsty, this was not the best samosa in Toronto by a long shot. The wrapper was a bit doughy and barely crispy. You can see there are hardly any bubbles on the outside which, to me, indicate a likely delicious samosa. The filling was dense and mashed not cubed potato. The seasoning was OK with a little spiciness that I liked. Overall, it was fine. A good samosa might get me too make a special bike trip out just for that. I wouldn’t even stop again if I were riding by. We used to get much better samosas in our old neighbourhood in Thorncliffe Park. I’ll keep my open though for better samosa opportunities on subsequent rides. Or maybe I’ll broaden my ride food horizons a bit and try the dabeli place I saw to the west of us…

Having had a bit of time to look at the map while I snacked, I saw that I could avoid more Ellesmere by heading due south and resume the ride route later. This took me through yet another beautiful neighbourhood. This segment of the ride really gives a feel for the variety you get in Scarborough. On the one hand, this area looked like this:

That would change, though, in just a few minutes when I hit Warden Road. This is another busy north-south arterial. Though it’s not quite as bad as Markham road, Highway 401 was just to the south and not only that there was a lane blocked by a broken-down truck. Riding on the road was a no-go for this one. However, I decided I really wanted the tile on the other side of the highway so down I went, slowly navigating the sidewalk first down then back.

After going back across the highway again, watching carefully for those zooming to try to exit onto the highway, I was back on quiet suburban streets. It wasn’t long before I was retracing my steps home on the same roads. This included that first 60 km/hr hill I went down – a good message for cycling and life in general. Natural laws and the outside world are just there without opinion. Sometimes they make us zoom downwards. Other times even in the same place we must grind upward all just to get back where we started. It’s just the way of the world and none of it is personal.

And how did I do on tiles and new road visits?

I even surprised myself with tiles. This was my best ride since starting that: I got 21 new tiles. Now, however, I do have that one sad Markham road gap I’ll have to go back and close later.

I rode on so many “new to me” roads – over 33 kilometres in total! Here are all the details (all the blue lines are new roads for me):

And here’s the details on the ride itself:

It was yet another great example of how the obstacle was not riding, the obstacle was getting out the door. I had a great time and visited parts of the city I’d never been to before. I had (mildly disappointing) samosas and coke and was surprised to find some really good cycling infrastructure in a place many associate with suburban traffic. All in all, I would call this a success. But then, if there’s one thing I know (and that Sage is quick to remind me of when I have trouble getting out the door): I have never once in my life returned from a ride regretting having gone on it – and that even includes times I literally crashed.

I’ll be scheduling rides in my calendar from now on and if I have trouble getting out the door, I’ll use these tools to help do it.