By: Ben Spurr Staff Reporter
Toronto Star
Wed Mar 02 2016
GPS DOODLES / CATERS NEWS AGENCY
Stephen Lund's designs are so detailed - like this one of Darth Vader - that many people don't believe they're real. Lund says he wanted to create a special doodle for the unofficial Star Wars holiday of May the 4th, and eventually decided on the sith baddie. He completed the 46.3-km drawing with a member of his cycling club.
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They call him Cycleangelo. His canvas is the streets of Victoria, B.C., and his artist’s tools are a bicycle and a pair of spandex-clad legs.
Stephen Lund, 50, has become a minor celebrity in the biking world after creating more than 85 incredible virtual “doodles” by tracking his specially designed bike routes via GPS, and uploading them to the Internet.
He started with a simple New Year’s message spelled out on the streets, but his designs quickly evolved into massive, amazingly complex critters and characters that take hours to plot out and even longer to cycle through.
Lund, a 50-year-old who works as a marketing consultant, is an avid amateur cyclist. He said he biked more than 22,300 kilometres last year, about a quarter of which he spent on his map art.
GPS DOODLES
Some of Lund's designs span more than 100 square kilometres and require meticulous planning, and his efforts have earned him the status of a minor celebrity in cycling circles.
He said he conceived of the doodles as “a way to inject a little bit of fun into my bike rides” after he bought a GPS tracking device and paired it with the Strava app a little over a year ago.
“It struck me almost immediately that this red line on the map had more to it than just tracking ... I decided to do some experimentation,” he said.
The pieces, some of which span an area greater than 100 square kilometres, require meticulous planning. He uses the satellite and Street View features on Google Maps to write himself directions so detailed that he knows to turn “at this fire hydrant three quarters of the way up the block.”
“It becomes quite precise,” he said.
GPS DOODLES / CATERS NEWS
It took Lund three bikes and 12 hours to create this intricate 89.6-km mermaid, titled "Mermaid of the Salish Sea." While many of his designs take hours to complete, this was by far the most difficult one he has undertaken so far.
Some of Lund’s pieces represent a single continuous ride. But if the roads don’t align with his design he uses what he calls the “connect-the-dots” method — he turns off his GPS device and restarts it again from another position, which creates a straight line on the map and allows him to craft more intricate details.
The process can involve many stops and starts, so he has to pay close attention to where he is. There are no erasers when you’re drawing with GPS. “Three hours, four hours into a ride you start to get tired. You stop focusing and you miss a turn, and it’s like, ‘Oh, my god.’ ”
On at least one occasion, Lund has had to abandon a project partway through when he realized he botched it.
GPS DOODLES / CATERS NEWS
Using just a bicycle and determination, Stephen Lund wove this giant anteater design through the streets of Victoria, B.C.
So far, he’s drawn sea serpents, kangaroos, Darth Vader and Yoda, and even written “Merry Christmas.” But he said his favourite work is probably Garmina the Giraffe, a 95.4-km doodle that he completed in February 2015 and was his first to go viral.
His most difficult was a mermaid, whose face and hair he rendered in astounding detail. He said it took about 12 hours to design, and once he hit the road to create it, he had to use three bikes because he damaged the first two. The 220-kilometre trip was also hampered by rain, and took him two days to finish.
“It was like the universe was conspiring against it,” he said. “I would have been just absolutely distraught had it not turned out. There was no way I could have gone out and repeated the whole thing.”
GPS DOODLES / CATERS NEWS
Lund says he created this 25-km kangaroo for his Australian followers, who had asked him to tackle a marsupial.
Lund’s doodles are so incredible that some people don’t believe they’re real. Internet commenters have accused him of being a fraud, he said, but he’s adamant the images are authentic. He said the proof is that he records and posts them through the Strava app. “You can’t outwit the GPS,” he said.
Although he has detractors, he said most people’s reactions have been overwhelmingly positive. He’s done spots on Canadian and American television, been featured in numerous cycling magazines, and last November was invited to speak at the TEDx conference in Victoria.
His masterpieces have now been seen by thousands of people all over the world, and as warm cycling weather returns to British Columbia, he plans to keep adding to his oeuvre. “The possibilities for it are really quite limitless,” he said.
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