Google Earth is a great tool for blowing away a few hours on the computer – you can fly all over the world looking at all sorts of interesting spots from the perspective of a satellite. But I found the my first practical use of Google Earth yesterday when I was trying to figure out a course from our home in the Lair HIll neighborhood of Portland to Downtown. There are several bike maps available that show the various streets with bike lanes and the multi-use paths, but I still could not figure out a way to get downtown safely from our neighborhood. It turns out that some innovative developer at Portland Metro decided to create a map overlay onto Google Earth – the “Bike There! map on Google Earth” that shows the various paths on top of the actual satellite photos. This was immensely helpful to find the right path.

For example, there is a pedestrian bridge near our home that was not really marked on any of the bike maps but could be used to bike across (it has a ramp rather than stairs). There are also a few low volume streets underneath the I-5 bridge that are marked on the Google Earth map but not shown on any of the other maps. Using these paths I was able to head out on a ride with the family yesterday and only have to cross one street with traffic. So maybe Google Earth is not just a time waster after all.