Guitarrick

I've recently gotten hooked on reading Crazyguy journals. I just finished Erin & Sam Barkley's "A Honeymoon To Remember". It was an awesome read and I'm looking for more great journals like it. You guys have any favorites?

Here's theirs, if you have some office time to kill. Like 386 pages worth of time to kill Reading about the hospitality of pretty much everyone they met (except for the crazy ladies) and stayed with was unbelievable, especially the Mongolian people. Their making it to China and getting the rock star treatment was funny, too.

https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?..._id=3259&v=2F3

Gus Riley

Joy Santee's 2006 TransAm

https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/circumtrektion

Mike Riscica's 2005 TransAm

https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/T...ctylQuadroflop

The Vogels 2006 - 2007 year long trip...in the end we bought their Santana Triplet!

https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/familyadventure

zeppinger

My favorite of all time was The Long Ride home. You can just google it. Japan to the UK. It was the inspiration for my own, recent, cross Asia jaunt.

eay

This writer consistently makes me laugh. She is not afraid to tell it like it is.

CGOAB journals are usually my bedtime reading. Yay for the droid phone.

Cyclebum

Anything by Leo Woodland(current featured journalist) about his rides in the states. Superb writing with historical, often hilarious, observations about the US. The first journal I read, "OFF" by Shane Keating is high on the list. An adventure most of us would not ask for.

pasopia

Jeff Kruys' journal has a ridiculous amount of useful info. He rode from Canada to Argentina and back over 4 years.

https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/jk

Especially useful is the info from his travels through the eastern side of South America, most people stay west and follow the Andes.

Guitarrick

I started Reading Joy's journal, got about 10 pages in and it dawned on me... I read it last year It was pretty good. Her infatuation with Pepsi was funny.

I'm 70 pages into this one right now, it's another great one. He put his bike on a scale and it weighed 150+ pounds?!! Wow.

She's freakin' hilarious. Calls her bike the "Hell *****"

I think after Jeff's journal (1000+ pages ) I'll check out the Long Ride Home. Thanks for the suggestions.

Louis

+1, Linda really livens the place up. I like her warped sense of humor.

The nonconformist in me also enjoys reading Douglas Coulter.
www.crazyguyonabike.com/thegimprider

GeorgeBaby

Ditto for both Linda and DC. I also like Heidi Domeisen, who rode from North Carolina to Alaska and back on a tricycle.

Louis

Excellent! Now I'm hooked on Heidi. Thanks.

drmweaver2

My favorite CGOAB journal is the "delete bookmark" button.

90%plus seem self-aggrandizing, poorly written, incomplete, or simply a collection of haphazardly-compiled notes. Of the remaining 10%, well over half are simply hard for me to identify with - either in terms of locale or the writer/rider. Maybe 1% of 1% are memorable to me. Shrug. To each his/her own. Obviously, CGOAB has its devotees.

zeppinger

What your speaking to is the difference between commercial printed media vs free internet media. Stuff you have to pay for is almost always going to be of higher quality than free stuff and has little to do with wether or not CGOAB is a good website, source of entertainment, or resource for planning your own tour. Also, some of my favorite journals have been those from people who tour very differently than myself. Just because I dont "identify" with the author doesnt mean that I dont gain something from reading their journal. I have never ridden, nor never plan to ride, a penny farthing but the journal by the guy who rode one around the world was fantastic!

Caretaker

If I want to read great writing I buy a book. I use CGOAB journals only as a resource for information on someplace I'm planning on touring.

I wrote a CGOAB journal myself once on a tour of an island (Sicily) that isn't very well covered by CGOAB. It was laced with route and accomodation advice but not great writing.

It's not on there anymore.

Altair 4

https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?..._id=8285&v=1V5

After almost 9 months on the road, Jordan Sanford is concluding his ride across America in the next couple of days. He started out in St. Pete, FL in early March of this year, rode up the East Coast, followed the parts of the C&O and the GAP, and then moved across the northern states to the West Coast. I have enjoyed his descriptions of his adventure, his wry humor, his photographs and their captions, and his sense of wonder about people, nature and this country. I will confess to actually worrying about him when he occasionally didn't post for several days at a time....silly, I know, but still....

Through his posts, I feel that I learned a little about the wonderlust that drives some people.

zeppinger

I find that people who primarily use CGOA bike as a resource for routes and accomodations are likely to write their own journals that way. Other people who read the journals that are more about the people and the story of the ride will write journals along those lines. For me, I just like to read about other places from the seat of a bicycle and thats how I tried to write my journals. They are not perfect, but I did them in my free time and others seem to enjoy reading them.

jabantik00

i rarely read any of the journals, but i can spend hours refreshing the serendipity page and looking at pix. the ratings page is pretty good too, but i prefer a random page of thumbnails

Derailed

This may be an ignorant question, and I apologize if it's been addressed in the past, but why would one choose to use CGOAB over something like WordPress or Blogger?

On the one hand it immediately connects the writer to a community of other bicycle tourists, but for me that wasn't so attractive because I wanted to pretend that my tour wasn't quite so run-of-the-mill (when, in reality I knew, it was)

Upon a little more thought, I suppose the existence of this thread pretty much answers my question!