Take The Long Way

We've all been there. A long awaited ride with friends, filled with hope and excitement of finding monumental stretches of twisties, delicious burgers and ideal places to rest nearby. But what happens when we can't find the monumental roads, when riders get separated, when crashes happen?

By Alex Crookes Alex Crookes is a motorcycle aficionado and President /Chief Technology Officer at EatSleepRIDE.

April 12, 2023

Editor's Note: The good folks over at EatSleepRIDE believe they may have come up with a solution—a powerful smartphone App designed specifically with riders in mind. Alex Crookes, the company's self-proclaimed "chief motorcycle addict", explains the genesis of the technology...

I'm excited to share the EatSleepRIDE Motorcycles App with you. At ESR, we ride pavement, gravel and dirt all over the world, but because we’re based in Toronto we’ve mapped over 50 motorcycle rides in both Northern and Southern Ontario available for you in the App or free on the website.

You know, a great motorcycle journey is not unlike building a motorcycle App. It can break you. It can change you and you can find yourself in the depths of despair. Just when you think you've given all you can give, you lose your way, blow a tire and a pheasant hits your left side mirror. But if you have a group of riders around you, they keep you going and a hard gravel road turns into pavement. Before long, you're flying in quiet rhythm with the nature around you.

A few years ago, four friends had the idea to create a mobile App that would not only get us riding more often, but keep us together on the road, help us meet other riders, give us real opinions on gear and provide our community a stronger voice, all while keeping us safe. We had no idea how hard the journey would be.

We continue to be encouraged by every rider we talk to and touched by every story of a life lost needlessly. Motorcycle riders are a powerful lot, but we're vulnerable on the road. When we told people we were building a mobile app that automatically detected a motorcycle accident and notifies contacts of the rider's last location, they told us "that's cool, but can you really do that?" We didn't know at the time.

Around the same time, we were riding the Blue Ridge Parkway and met a guy who told us about his buddy Franky from Atlanta, Georgia. They'd been riding in a group of four riders, gotten separated but already planned to meet up at the rest stop at the end of the parkway. Franky didn't show. They looked for him, riding back and forth along the parkway. Nothing. Police were called; the searched for two days but came up empty.

It turns out, Franky went off the road somewhere along the ridge. There were no skid marks and no indication of where he went off so he was impossible to find. A few months after the tragic accident, a hunter found Franky and his motorcycle at the bottom of the ridge. An autopsy revealed that he'd managed to stay alive for four days.

We never want this to happen to anyone again and if we can prevent it, we will. Here in Ontario, many of us often ride in remote communities, particularly in the North. Fortunately, the EatSleepRIDE App covers more routes in Ontario than for any other province, and we believe that the App is ideally suited to the particular rigors of riding the many scenic roads that we're lucky enough to find in this great province, from urban to rural.

The Features

The EatSleepRide Motorcycles App is the most advanced and comprehensive mobile app specifically designed for motorcycle riders. The App not only enhances the motorcycle experience, it makes it social + safe. Among it's many features, I'd like to highlight a few:

CRASHLIGHT® is a premium feature available in the App. This revolutionary safety crash detection technology automatically detects a motorccyle accident and notifies pre-set contacts of the rider's geographical location. Now friends and family can have peace of mind knowing they will be connected if things go wrong. See how CRASHLIGHT® works.

Want to relay the epic ride? The ESR App enhances the motorcycle riding experience through a dashboard that lets the rider record and play their rides with speed, elevation and lean angle.
Waiting for someone to catch up? A GPS-enabled riding feature makes it possible for riders to create a private group and see each other's location on a map so that they can stay together and stay safe.

EatSleepRIDE Motorcycles is currently available for iPhone and iPad devices, with an Android version coming soon. For more information on the app, please take a look at http://app.eatsleepride.com/ or browse the website anytime. For iTunes, the ESR App is available here.

We hope you find the ESR App useful and we look forward to your comments and unbridled feedback. Enjoy the ride, EatSleepRIDE.

Yours,

Alex Crookes

http://EatSleepRIDE.com

Enjoy a few of the ESR App's Ontario Rides: Grand Algoma, Northern Ontario Mini Tour, Haliburton-Algonquin Park, Manitoulin Island, Georgian Bay & Wasaga, Kawartha Lakes