All My Rides on Garmin Connect Say Indoor Cycling

The ride type is specified/set under each activity profile

So the default is "Indoor Ride"? And you have to set it every time you ride? All my rides for the last two years uploaded to Strava don't show elevation because of this. And it reverts back to Indoor and if I forget to change it before I save my ride, it won't upload elevation to Strava? And you can't change the default? Wow, Garmin must hate its customers to set it up like this and not even have the courtesy to let you know. I'll be switching to another bike computer. 

The ride types is tied to each the profile. You should be able to change in on profile and that change should persist 

I appreciate your help. I have no idea what you mean by 'profile'. I turn on the Garmin it doesn't say anything about profiles. Is that under settings?

So on the 520+ on the home page under the RIDE banner is the name of your currently select activity profile. In my case it is customer named profile called "Vector"

If you select 

Menu -> Settings -> Activity Profiles

You will get a ist of you profile. If you pick the one that is shown as selected you will see an item

Default Ride Type. This is the default ride type for this profile. Make sure this is set to a value you want. It sounds like it could be set to "Indoors"

I

It worked! Thank you. btw, my friend who uses not one, but two Garmins when she rides (I don't know why) was baffled that the default setting was "Indoor". Garmin should really do something about the default setting.