Pause-and-Resume Trick

Sometimes you have a great idea for a picture that almost works, if only you could draw a few lines where there aren't roads.

A route stops at a river and starts again on the far side.  A thin red line joins the pause and resume markers straight across the water, the way a crow flies, while a dotted line shows the long way round over a footbridge

To draw those lines, use the pause-and-resume trick. While you're riding or running:

  1. Pause your GPS recording.
  2. Detour to the next point.
  3. Resume. Your GPS trace will join the two points with a straight line, as if a crow flew between them.

To plan this in RouteDoodle, use Bird Mode. Select the segments, then click the bird button. Bird Mode segments are shown as a dashed line. See Routing modes for more.

To Pause or Not to Pause?

Pausing makes it easier to draw a perfect picture, but some artists challenge themselves to pause as little as possible, or not at all.

  • Constraints cultivate creativity. In 1975, the pianist Keith Jarrett had to improvise jazz piano at the Cologne opera house on a piano where only half the keys worked well. The performance became the best-selling solo piano recording ever. It was great not despite the constraints, but because of the them.
  • Fulfilling challenge. Fitting a picture to real roads takes both puzzle-solving and artistic skill. Pulling it off without shortcuts is satisfying, and impressive.
  • Technological advance. Traditional origami allowed cuts. As folding techniques improved, cuts became unnecessary, and today folded-and-cut paper is called kirigami instead. Likewise, tools like RouteDoodle make it far easier to plan routes that need no pauses.

Neither way is wrong. Think of them as two disciplines, like origami and kirigami.


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