Originally Posted by
3speed
Says the guy who couldn't even ween himself from modern printed maps. Nothing wrong with doing it old-school with hand drawn maps from the locals or just asking which way to the next town. But you just Had to have your modern printed maps...
It's all relative. A tablet, as mentioned, can be great for directions. And not everyone is on a meandering tour, traveling as long as they want. Some(Most) people have a set amount of time away from work and other responsibilities, and therefore ease of mapping a route, ability to maybe do some work tasks, email family, etc, is necessary. The blogging and instagram type stuff seems really silly to me to be doing while on tour. To me that's like taking a picture of a cool statue on your way past rather than stopping to look at it. I prefer checking out the small town or enjoying the state park, rather than sitting in a tent/hotel typing about the stuff I passed on the way to the campground. But whatever. Some people make money off of it, or just enjoy writing a lot.
Just plain sitting there surfing the net while on vacation, yeah, that's probably an addiction...
interesting comments mr 3speed
makes me think of lots of things--re maps drawn from locals--makes me immediately think of biking through central mexico somewhere, hadn't seen any other bike tourers until one day, there were two Scottish folks, riding old 80s road bikes they bought from some dude in California (an arse in my opinion, as the bikes were truly road bikes, 52/42 cranks and one of the bikes had a 13-25 cassette on it, and the guy of the couple was pulling a Bob trailer full of crap and extra water! yowzer!) so totally fricken over geared---but I digress--they were traveling totally a la hippy, and all they had were hand drawn maps, and names of upcoming towns. They were fascinated by the Mexico map I had (which I bought in Montreal) and the guy looked at it closely for a while-----why the heck one would travel like that when you could just buy a map of southern and central mexico like I did, I dont know, but hey, they were doing it and when talking with a local kid who showed up fascinated by these four gringos stopped on bikes, I heard right away that their spanish was rather good, so I knew that they would get by.
They were almost stereotypical hippies, although in their 20s, tattoed, piercings, dreads. Afterwards, down the road, I realized that I should have offered them my spare food supplies, as I could have bought more down the road, and they would have appreciated it, I remember traveling with hardly any money. I guess the surprise of running into other bike tourers made me not think of it at the time. I hope their adventure worked out fine.
so yes, you jest , and I get it, and sure, folks in the past got by with this way of traveling, drawing paper maps etc , heck I did it30 years ago to a degree, but at the same time, as you point out, modern technology is a tool, simple as that, and even though I still really like a honest to goodness paper map, modern technology is fantastic too.
re blogging--you know, Ive done it twice, and yes its a heck of a lot of work, but at the same time, it is pretty neat and fun. I enjoy writing, and enjoy photographing, and you know, I look back at my blogs, and Im really glad that I did them, because the style that I did, I put down thoughts and stuff in the moment (would take pen and paper notes in the day) and so it is very much enjoyable to revisit it years later, and fun to see the photos and thoughts of the time.
Also, its fun for my family and friends to follow, so I look at it like all technology, its pretty neat, but just to have balance of how it affects your trip, and Im comfortable with how it did on my trips.
again, good comments though.