Documenting and recording your tours
 

So I am pretty sure everyone knows about crazyguyonabike. How else do long distance touring cyclist document and record their travels? Facebook?Twitter? Tumblr? Instagram? Personal website or blog?

My website: http://www.machka.net/

My photo collections: http://www.flickr.com/photos/machka-bb/collections/

^^^ Nice, do you make money off the ads on your site?

Thanks ... and no.

In theory I could make a little bit, but I don't get that much traffic, and my ads are limited and relatively unobtrusive. If I had more spare time, I'd like to do more with my site (more and varied articles etc.) because I enjoy creating and putting it together.

My father makes a bit of money off the ads on his sites, but then he puts a lot of time and effort into it all.

I created my own website to hold my journals and expanded it to include lots of information about bike touring from all over the world. To me, a journal is not only a record of my personal tour, but also an opportunity to let people see photos of road conditions, views, and to hear about where stores and campgrounds exist.

I don't have ads on my site as they clutter things up, I doubt I'd make much money, and it doesn't cost much to run the site. These days, I'd rather not expose my visitors to the ad purveyors data collection schemes, either.

My site is biketouringtips.com.

I created my own blog, and subsequently my own website (that's currently still under construction). I use Flickr to store my photos, as well as uploading images with my blog/website posts. I also have a Twitter account associated with my blogging.

Here's my site: http://jackonabike.ca/
Here's my Flickr Photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/101079298@N05/
Here's my Twitter Feed: https://twitter.com/cyclingwithjack

I'm slowly improving my camera skills - so you'll have to ignore the odd finger or two! :P I was using my cell phone camera, that's my excuse!

I'm also toying with the idea of setting up a Facebook page, but that'll be something for the future.

I have a bus, loaded with a crew of three camera-persons and two screenwriters. They follow me around and record everything I do. I have a website, book and movie deals and my own reality TV show. My rides are greatly anticipated and followed. If you google "bike tour" you get me. Whenever you buy any bicycle accessory I get $.02 commission, so I have made $64milllion this year!

OK, back to reality:I use my Garmin 810 GPS to capture my route, upload to Garmin Connect and post it to Facebook with pictures and ride notes every night while touring so my family and friends can see what I am up to. I'd like to do more, but I'd rather ride.

In my spare time I keep a simple site created with frontpage just to post our tours and a little bit of information. I've been asked to put some comercials on it but refused its just for family and friends of touring.
It's fun and brings back many beautiful memories on some winter evenings :-)
Maybe someday I might take some more time to improve it a bit.

I created my own blog on Wordpress (which will always be a work in progress). My posts on my blog are automatically posted to my facebook and twitter accounts.
My blog is about how I am going about starting to tour from scratch and what I have bought and done so far, a chronicle of my homework if you will.

I don't have an online presence for any pictures yet but may in the future when I actually start taking some touring type pictures. Most of my blog followers are family although I do have two strangers who I don't know yet. :)

My Blog: Nullarbor and Beyond
My Facebook Page: Nullarbor and Beyond
My Twitter Feed: https://twitter.com/FXST01

An 80 yo lady friend(keep pedaling Ethel) and WS host of Missoula, touring recently in Spain, posted her experiences/pictures to FB. Quick, simple, effective.

The FB audience is pretty much limited to friends and famly. CG has a huge advantage in the readership department, and in allowing extraction of the brilliant prose/pics to hard copy for future generations to marvel. Digital data has a few hundred years to go before proving itself in the durability arena.

I'm so sorry that I'm not better at preserving stories and pictures from my tours, even though my latest ones are generally only a couple of days long. The few that I HAVE documented really bring back great memories all these years later.

Documenting and recording is one thing. If you are putting it all on the web, you are broadcasting. I don't want the interruption that such an approach would require to do it well enough to be worthwhile.

Too lazy to do any of this. I really need to motivate myself to get around to building a website..... Facebook works for now.

Blogger. I find CGOAB too restrictive.

http://gonefishinnz.blogspot.com.au/

http://cycleinnz.blogspot.com.au/

http://cycleintas.blogspot.com.au/

http://wheelswhisper.blogspot.com.au/

I usually annotate my map: "Here be dragons". Keeping a notebook or diary is a good idea. Pencil and paper is fine.
Is there an online map annotation system. Can google maps be personalised to illustrate your journey?

Speaking of technology, I picked up an old Psion Series 3a at a garage sale this morning. It is the perfect touring electronic accessory.

That would be great! I have seen one mapping program that allowed users to illustrate the map with key features, but it was designed for Grade 4 students, it was rather cumbersome, and I don't know what it was called.

Absolutely! I wrote an iPhone/iPad app to do this called TrackMyTour. Here's a tour I did last year with the app: http://trackmytour.com/WFscz