Buffalo Buff

One of my mistakes with my last tour was not documenting it well.

I took some photos with my phone, and brought alone an HD camera that I used to shoot videos here and there.

Didn't write anything down, and didn't take nearly enough photos and videos.

For my next tour, all my friends are asking me to update something online daily. Maybe post a video to youtube every night, or write in a blog with some photos.

Anyone have experience with this? Any suggestions for which platforms to consider using?

Machka 

Here's mine ... Charlene (Machka) - 2012 Round the World Tour

And I posted photos on Flickr ... https://www.flickr.com/photos/machka...7632796492886/


Quite a few people use Crazy Guy on a Bike.


Others just use Facebook.

Caretaker

For me I've better things to be doing on tour.

Maybe a few lines in a note book and write it up when I get home. Did this a couple of times but now I just take photos and mark my route on a map.

bgav

You could create a Blogger, Wordpress, or Tumblr page. Post photos & videos (mobile uploads) and GPS routes for each day (Strava widget) as well as write-ups to document and share your tour.

andrewclaus

crazyguyonabike.com: Bicycle Touring: A place for bicycle tourists and their journals works fine for me and those who care. I was able to update every day or two from public libraries using public computers--I carried no electronics at all, not even a phone.

You can go overboard. I met a guy on tour who was stressing over getting to a motel with internet every night so he could update his blog, upload photos, etc. to keep in touch with his "audience." I checked out his blog and it was pretty sad--full of misspellings, bad grammar, pretty lousy photos (he even included one of me and who cares about that?)--gadgets and wifi don't make you a good writer/photographer. His blog had very few hits, just a few family members it appeared.

mev

I've been on the side of those who "go overboard" , but enjoy getting a journal of my trips. I've done a variety of different approaches including:

- Keep a paper notebook, so I can write a journal entry at end of the day and not forget.
- Shorter trips, tended to post intermittent photos and occasional quick status on facebook
- Set up a Crazy Guy on a Bike web site one occasion
- Create basic one-page web site summaries, often after the trip, for many of my one week rides
- For my longest rides, I've generally created a separate site. Here for example was Africa in 2013: A bicycle ride across Africa | with Tour D'Afrique 2013 and Russia in 2007: Amsterdam to Vladivostok » Home Most recently these blogs have been based on wordpress. I had started running things on my own web servers, but by now just use a hosting company.

During a ride itself, I try to avoid expectations from others to "update something online daily". I don't want the hassle, and don't want folks to get concerned if for some reason there isn't an update. There can be plenty of reasons I might not have an update (e.g. no network access, having too much fun, etc) and if I feel required to punch online timecards with updates, that loses some of the motivation for me.

I have used a variety of different methods to get updates out there. I'll usually carry a laptop so I can download my photos and also connect to the internet. However, in addition:
- On the Russia trip, used twitter and cell phone to post GPS coordinates and a very brief tagline. My father kept GPS a google map with GPS coordinates.
- On the Africa trip, had a cell phone and got SIM cards for countries as I passed through them. This allowed me to use a wordpress app for Android to get a short posting to a blog from a cell phone. This was handy as cell phone was much more reliable than other internet.
- On my Australia trip, had a "pocketmail" device that let me send things out from Telstra pay phones via acoustic modem. I also mailed home zip disks with phones so they could get posted.
- Have also occasionally posted things to other social media.

I think it depends a bit what you enjoy doing as well as the scope and duration of your trip. I would caution to think carefully before you commit to posting something each and every day - since that can set expectations and troubles as well as somewhat alter the trip you are on.

Walter S

I update my wordpress blog. But don't be a slave to it and feel like you must update it every day. I've made that mistake before. I take pictures. Then I update the blog every few days or so, particularly if I find myself in a motel room on a rainy afternoon.

edthesped

I always plan on it and sometimes even think about what to write while I'm riding but never do. FWIW, I also planned to document and or video the build up of my last bike, the bathroom renovation and a couple of other odd projects and never did that either. I guess it's true, the road to hell is paved with good intentions...

cyccommute 

I don't use electronic media much while riding but I have made a habit of writing a letter...yes, with pen and paper...to my wife every night. It's what I do while so many others are doing their daily laundry Every few days, I mail it...with stamps...home. I find it helps me organize my thoughts and I then use it for crafting my journals on CrazyGuy. If I don't write down something every night, all those stories get lost.

The letters can be long or short. They can be truthful or they can be total fabrications. They can be facts and figures or they can be letters about people I've met.

I find that the total fabrications are ever so much more fun to write and read. Who needs to know what I ate for dinner when I can tell a story about grasshopper love or the terrible heat ray or Lars?

antokelly

its on video i'll watch it but i couldn't be bothere reading a blog.sorry

Machka 

I'm just the opposite. If it is on video, I probably won't watch ... partly because the quality of most cycling videos I've seen has been pretty poor and/or for some reason they choose to show the most boring stuff.

mm718

If you are going to write a thoughtful journal I think crazyguyonabike is the best place for it to be. Not only can you share it with friends and family but also the cycling community. If your journal entries are picture-heavy quick and dirty dispatches from the road maybe one of the other platforms above would be better.

My plan is to write about 30 minutes a day but no editing, captioning, uploading and then finish the journal at home after the trip. While on the trip (on hotel nights) I will clean up a couple of posts a week for family and friends and post those to a blog other than crazyguy.

andrewclaus

I have a friend who lives near a popular ACA route. He routinely checks CGOAB for cyclists passing by his house and goes out to meet them and offer support. So keeping a real-time journal can have some advantages.

And if you don't want that kind of possible stalking, it's easy enough to delay your entries by a week or so.

Dave Cutter

I love reading the tours/adventures on Crazy Guy on a Bike

But I use my Facebook account. Partly because most of my friends and relatives use it.

I try to post a "cycling event" of some sort about once every week or two in the summer months... just to remind my peers that we older folks can remain active. And hopefully to advocate for cycling. I call it event cycling. And I am also trying to remember to enjoy where I ride... and not just enjoy bicycling.

I can take a picture on video right on my phone and (as long as I have a couple bars) upload directly to Facebook along with a narrative. I am also (new this season) using a GPS cycling app... that tracks every inch on my route. Ascending, descending, miles, speeds, map... everything. When I complete my ride.. it emails me stats and a on-line link of the ride. I copy those emails to a on-line folder... (everything is) backed up on the cloud.

antokelly

I'm pretty useless when it comes to reading in one ear out the other ,but a good video or film i can get stuck into watch it a hundred times for instance this gem i know its not the usual but when guys are making a video of there tour they should watch well made films and interesting people.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dahG...NBmXg&index=29

tarwheel 

I found the Crazy Guy site to be very helpful when planning my tour along the GAP-C&O Canal trails last year. The various journals that I read helped me decide what towns to stay in, where to eat and generally what to expect. Some of the cyclists do go overboard on the level of details in their journals, but I guess some people like that. I personally find nice photos to be most helpful.

I posted a journal with lots of photos of my trip on the Crazy Guy site, and a much more abbreviated version on Facebook. FB is a really nice way to share photos and experiences if you are concise. Flickr is great if you just want to share photos.

pdlamb

Keeping a decent blog on your trip is a time commitment. I usually have to dedicate 30-60 minutes a day to keep one on a netbook. (You can keep it in a word processing document when there's no 'net connectivity.) I try to interleave a paragraph or two of story between each picture; the combination of text and pictures makes a blog much more engaging. It only takes maybe 15 minutes a day to write things down in a physical journal, but I usually lose the context of many of the pictures I'd like to integrate into the story.

The benefit to the author is that a blog helps you remember details about a trip that would otherwise soon be forgotten. The detriment to keeping a good blog is that, as I mentioned, it's a time commitment, and if you're traveling with other people, they may not appreciate the time, and your attention to the blog, it takes.

Please, if you do blog about a ride, do NOT string together a dozen pictures with no stories or captions each day. Without any context, they're meaningful to nobody but you, the photographer.

My blog was re-hosted at https://pdlamb.wordpress.com. There are benefits to using a commercial site, as opposed to a personal web site, even if the owner offers to share.

mrv 

howdy - a question: Is anyone concerned about posting live on blogs or CGOAB?
My concern, as with telling people where you ARE, is someone will know where you ain't - like you ain't at home! My last name is really easy to search, and I think I'm the only one in my state. So I'm planning on using CGOAB to post a journal after the fact. My map does not pinpoint my house for the blog, but close enough that if my name is on the blog, it's not rocket surgery to figure things out.

Let me know what you think!

NeilGunton

I've been running crazyguyonabike for 15 years, and nobody has ever informed me that their house was robbed while they were away on tour. I've never even heard of that happening at all, let alone having it happen due to the author of a journal publicising the fact that they weren't home.

That said, I can completely understand the fear. I think that there might be a couple of reasons for why I haven't heard about such things happening. First, although crazyguyonabike seems like a "big" website, it's not big like craigslist or facebook. Yes, "a lot" of people use it every day - at least, I think they do (I see maybe 150,000 page requests on an average day). I don't track individual users, though, so it's hard to say how many people that equates to. But actually, I don't think it's really that many compared to "real" socal media sites. So my intuition is that the site hasn't managed to gain the attention of the mainstream predators that might frequent much larger sites that get millions of hits per day.

Second, it's maybe just not that attractive as a way to find out if nobody is home. A thief wouldn't know from a blog that you don't have friends, family or neighbors looking after your house while you're away. They would still have to case the joint, to make sure that nobody is there. I think most thefts of that sort are most often opportunistic, rather than being planned out with Pink Panther level of sophistication. If you are someone who is very well off and has many valuables in their home that are worth stealing, then you're probably better not telling the world that you're away - but then again, if you're such a person, then you probably have a good alarm system already, and people to look after the house for you while you're away etc. The average person, like you and me, probably just isn't worth the trouble. Most thieves are after stuff they can just grab and run with and sell for their next drug fix, I don't get the impression they are carefully researching houses to target on the internet. If they were that sophisticated and together then they wouldn't be in this place in their life, and also they probably wouldn't be targeting you and me.

From past chats with local police, my impression has been that most house thefts happen because someone left a gate or garage door open. They are crimes of opportunity, made on the spur of the moment (or, maybe, cruising the neighborhood, but still - not particularly pre-planned).

At least, that's just my intuition. I could be entirely wrong. But the fact remains that in 15 years, nobody has written to me complaining that their home was robbed while they were out on the road, and blaming it on the fact that the whole world knew they were away due to the journal. I'm not being careful with words there - nobody has told me their house was robbed while on tour, period.

Could it happen? Of course. If you are concerned about security, then you shouldn't post your exact address online. You could also adopt a pseudonym for the duration of the trip if you're concerned about cross-referencing with social media via your name. And another option, unless you have friends and family who want to follow your trip in real time, is to simply post the journal after the trip is over. lthough I have the greatest respect for those who can compose witty narratives from the road on a daily basis, I tend to be flat out exhausted in my tent or motel bed, with writing being the last thing on my mind. Just make sure to keep detailed notes of what happened that day in a private journal (because otherwise you'll forget all the little details that make a journal great), but it doesn't have to be witty because it's not public. Then use that to compose the public journal later on.

You can also increase the security of your home while you're away by doing some basic stuff like having a neighbor make sure your yard and/or porch doesn't accumulate newspapers or other commercial debris that would make it clear to anyone passing that there's nobody home. Also, you can have someone park their car in your driveway, put timers on lights that are visible from the road, etc. Lots of ways to make it non-obvious that there's nobody home.

If you are concerned about your personal security on the road, then you can post to the real live journal, but just keep the most recent few days private, so nobody knows exactly where you are currently. Operational security can take many forms, whatever makes you comfortable given your situation.

Neil

NeilGunton

One more thing I would note, since people have already brought up crazyguyonabike, is that there is an email upate option for journals. This can be useful for composing your updates offline, and then just hitting "send" all in one go when you finally get to wifi.

https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/webs...ailing_updates

Also, you can send short text message updates, just to say that you're still alive or "here I am" etc:

https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/webs...p/#sms_updates

Finally, I plan to develop an app for Android and iOS that will make it easier for people using smartphones and tablets to do updates from the road. While I still think that the website is sufficient for most tasks, and most smartphones have decent browsers these days, there are some important hardware features (such as location) which are available to an app. Also, an app would enable offline composition of updates, which could be sent when you get to wifi (like email, but hopefully nicer to use and with more specialized features). I envisage things like a simple "here I am!" button, which would add your location automatically to a pre-selected map on the site, for example, as well as a way to find other cyclists in your current area (entirely opt-in, of course). But that's for the future. My to-do list is perpetually unfinished, but this is just to say that the site is still under active development, and I do have plans for more and better features down the line.

Neil

tarwheel 

Neil, I might be wrong, but I always assumed that most people posted journals on Crazy Guy after their trips were completed, not while riding on a tour. That's certainly what I have done. I've got too much to do on a bike tour to worry about finding a wifi connection, writing a trip report, posting photos, etc. Of course, there are some people who post on the site while they are in the midst of a prolonged tour, but it would be a simple matter to leave out information identifying your home town.

NeilGunton

You can see all the tours in progress here:

https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/...octype=journal

As you can see, quite a few people posting as they go! Of course not all manage daily updates, or anything close to that. And, increasingly, some people tend to post only pics, but I can't legislate style.

Yes, I think on my next trip (assuming I ever get the chance to do another tour), I might well just keep notes and write it all up later. It's easy to keep notes - you can do that in any paper notebook, or small tablet etc. While there is something to be said for posting immediately due to the fresher nature of the thoughts and impressions, there's also nothing wrong with digesting it properly and posting later on through the lens of time. This can give it a different perspective. For example, my 1998 journal was posted way after the fact, 2 years in fact, based on my daily diary entries. So while I could remember most all that happened, two things happened: First, I was probably able to put a more humorous face on the bad experiences (since I wasn't currently in the middle of them), and second, I probably didn't express many of the little things that happened on those days, which didn't make it into the diary. So, there's pros and cons to each approach, I think, but basically whatever suits your style.

Yes, of course, though I think people are also rightly concerned these days about cross-linking names with social media like Facebook, which often reveals over time more information about yourself online than many realize. Something else that I intend to implement on crazyguyonabike and topicwise is multiple, possibly anonymous profiles, linked to the same account, so that people can be more private about their real name if they want/need that. Of course I would also put in safeguards against sockpuppet shenanigans, but people can already do that sort of thing, so nothing new there. I think allowing people to have multiple "anonymous" profiles will allow them to be private about their identity when they want, while also participating publicly. Then when the trip is over, you could always link the journal back to your "real" profile. You could link your profiles together either publicly, or keep the links private. This was discussed recently:

Bicycle Touring: Forum: Website: #11869: "Real names, revisited", posted by George Garber*(ggarber) on Mon 9 Mar 2015 11:54 (US/Pacific)

Neil

mrv 

@NeilGunton - thanks so much for your thoughtful reply. I was speaking more broadly of posting on the internet, but used crazyguy because we're on a cycling forum.
Second - THANKS so much for crazyguyonabike! I've not become a paying member there (yet), and what you offer for free is simply excellent. I'll do my best to quit being a schlub and make a donation before I post my journal.
Cheers!

Machka 

First of all, it's rare I start a tour from home. The opening entry is often at an airport somewhere.

Secondly, I usually post a few days after we've been somewhere, and we're long gone.

Thirdly, I rarely talk about a planned itinerary except in very general terms ... this is mainly because I don't know our planned itinerary. We usually make plans about where to go a day or two before we go there. I might email family about that, but I'm not posting it.


So if a random person were trying to locate us ... that person would not have an easy job of it. We might be within cycling distance of our last post. Or we might have hopped a plane, train, or ferry and be some distance away.

mrv 

if more of us could document our trips like this: Unclipped
... there'd be a LOT more people reading bike-blogs....
- recommend going to her first blog and reading how she rode a free bike from London to Spain before passing the bike along to someone else: #freeLEJOG: What Happened To Tegan Phillips & Charlie The No-Budget Touring Bike? | Tom Allen?s Bike Trip