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!