It makes my day to hear from people using Epic Ride Weather, especially when I hear how their cycling has improved as a result of using the app. Here’s a recent letter that I received from Paul Olsen:

Just returned from my 8-day Denmark bike trip and now following up on our past correspondence about Epic Ride Weather -

Used the app throughout the trip to look ahead at conditions. We found the forecasts to be remarkably accurate. Rainfall amounts were spot on, as was the timing of rainfall. Wind forecasts seemed correct in terms of direction and intensity, although I couldn’t tell you whether the forecast gusts were accurate (hard to tell wind subtleties when moving). Bravo on marrying terrific Dark Sky forecasts with an outlined bike route.

I use RidewithGPS, and the connection to my preloaded routes on their site went without a hitch.

Graphic interface was clean and simple.

Before the trip I purchased additional forecast capacity. I’m guessing that I ran more forecasts than the average person would, but over 8 days of riding about 425 miles total I used far less capacity than I had been led to believe I might. That’s good news, and it suggests that whatever I used to estimate my data needs (I can’t recall) was off by a lot. Before the trip I purchased 10,100 forecasts and used only 1,548. To me this (now) suggests the forecasts are extremely cheap. I won’t have to purchase additional forecasts for a long while - good news for me, but not for you. I imagine you’ll need to think of repricing or other ways to make $$ off this.

I imagine the app being very attractive to other multi-day bike tourers in particular. You should be marketing this thing through folks like Backroads and other bike touring sponsors (easy to imagine their catered-to customers would like to look ahead at their weather), or a group like Adventure Cycling (https://www.adventurecycling.org) - In fact, I can easily imagine your working a deal to have Adventure Cycling pre-purchase forecasts capacity that they could allocate to people making donations, thereby helping you expand your user base. If you’re considering other features, people planning trips would benefit from an ability to use the app to look at weather trends well in advance (should I go to Denmark in August or May? I wonder how the weather would compare at each time on my routes).

So in sum - great product. Thanks for helping ME on MY trip!

Paul

Thanks Paul for the great suggestions. I’m already looking in to that and will keep you posted!