The good thing is that you can start the course seemingly anywhere.
I was worried about what would happen as I started Statrixbob's course about ten miles in, he started to the east of where I began.
By the way, keep an eyeball on Statrixbob's site, he's off to do RAGBRAI in a few days.
So anyways, it seems that as long as you're going in the same direction, you can jump the route without any problems.
I also didn't go as far on the route as Bob did, and this is where the error messages began:
This isn't from Bob's route, but again, my own downloaded route.
As you can see, even if you are on the course, if you broke from the original route in some way, you get this "off the course" message.
Press enter and it goes away, and it then tells you "course found."
If you look at the screen, you can see I'm on the route, but still getting the "off the course" message.
You can also forget about tracking information:
I cut my own course short and now it says I'm 12 miles behind!
On the breadcrumb screen, at the "off the course" message, when it asks you hit ENTER, I thought it would reset the unit to follow the course you are now on.
It does send a "found course" message, followed by another "off the course" prompt.
The Garmin is now confused.
This wouldn't be a problem on a loop, but on an out and back, while the breadcrumbs still work, the "off the course" messages can get a bit irritating.
The screen on the unit is small, which is good, but the routes lines are close together. It can also get a bit confusing without any references:
Now if you've jumped someones route, you no longer have the white arrow to follow and you have no reference to tell you which way to go.
In this case, I pass by the same intersection three times on my ride, and you would have no way of knowing which leg is next.
Trial and error would be the only way; you'd have to choose one and hope it's the next part of the route.
Resolution of the route side by side seems to be about three lanes, a two lane road and the line appears almost as one.
It's then difficult to determine which direction one should go. Remember, if you've jumped the course somewhere, you've lost the white arrow to show you where to turn:
The two out and backs to the left and right of the screen are on five lane roads, so the routes are well defined.
Without the arrow though, you'd have to make a choice and take a chance on which way to go.
You could still follow the route, just not in the intended direction.
In other words, you are on your own.
Okay, let's simplify.
For me, this is the disclaimer part, it's great.
If you are going to follow a particular route from start to finish.
If you aren't, be prepared to do some guessing, and dealing with that error message that pops up every now and then.
To be fair, probably not what the unit was designed for anyways.
In this case though, it did help me stay on a path that had some funky twists and turns, so despite the deficiencies, I was pretty happy to have it on my bars.
Statrixbob's route was a simple out and back without the backtracking and loops and turns of my own route.
If I did a lot of exploring, I'd go and get an Edge 800 with the full on mapping, but being on an island, it's pretty hard to get lost.
You cannot "create" a route on a the fly, meaning you can't create a route and follow it back, the route needs to be "preset" and downloaded.
Or maybe you can, I just haven't figured out how to do it.
It's not a full featured GPS, but more of a training computer for those that don't need the mapping.
The Edge 500 is great if you want to "compete" against yourself, or someone else, providing you do the whole route from start to finish.
If you're looking to keep yourself from getting lost, look elsewhere.
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