J.Higgins 

I was wondering - If I actually decide to do a tour of any length at all, what forum/group/place would be a good place to post all my experiences and photos?

indyfabz

With all your chatter, you had better. We already have enough folks in here who don't actually tour.

FBinNY 

I don't believe in posting tour logs, but it seems that "crazy man on a bike" (or something like that) is very popular with the daily trip log crowd.

J.Higgins 

Point taken. I'll be quiet now.

BlarneyHammer

I'm a big fan of PackJournal. Hardly anyone uses it yet, but it's got a bunch of cool features for cyclists:

It has a free app (Android only) that lets you write your journals, save them offline, and upload them later, whenever you have a connection.
The app remembers when and where you wrote your journal, and once you get them online, all your journals and photos appear on a map.
Good privacy controls - if you only want certain people to see your map/photos/journals, you can keep it that way.
You can set up mail drops on the site and resupply yourself online, while on the road.
You can customize your page with FAQ's, gear list, or whatever else you'd like as a primary page.
You can put a fundraiser right on your page and raise money for a good cause, without donors even having to leave your page or sign into an account or anything.
You can keep a small amount of fundraising to help you pay for the trip (donors are told this before donating), so you can essentially be paid to tour and blog.

It's all free.

Snuts

Damn, that's funny.

There has been evidence of Cabin fever though this winter.
Let's ride !



-Snuts-

saddlesores

why would you want to do that? post everything for the world to see?
perhaps i'm too old (or too wise) to want everything about my life public.

how about you make a nice short, concise trip report and post it right
here on this very forum.

i'd recommend machka's "your short tours 2017" thread,

mdilthey

Make sure you donate! That beautiful site costs more than the cost of living for a whole team of coders!

FBinNY 

As I mentioned, I don't post tour logs. Fact is I never read them either, so I'd never actually seen the site.

Now that I have, I gather you were being facetious.

However, I was impressed with the number and length of some of these logs, and marvel at the effort people go through to do this. For my part, my tours are recorded in my memory, and whatever doesn't stick doesn't matter to me.

mdilthey

The collections of tour logs are rich and beautiful. The funding tactics of the site are less than transparent. There was a big debate a while back about the site manager securing many thousands in donations without ever updating the site at all.

FBinNY 

OK, I'll add this to the long list of fights I don't have a dog in.

Happy Feet

I have nothing against other sites but for myself I'd rather create my own personal website to retain editorial control of content.
When you post on someone else's site they basically own your content and can profit from or delete it whenever they want. It becomes their journal, not yours. You are also limited to their layout style as well.

The upside of a personal website is that you control everything about it, which is great for a creative person. The downside is a bit of a learning curve and that exposure is limited to how much you promote it. For me that's an ok tradeoff as I want an online destination to direct some people to but to have the look be all my choice rather than having lots of random strangers reading about my stuff on someone elses platform.

Machka 

I have my own website and Flickr and Facebook.

That's good enough to let my parents, and anyone who cares, know what's going on.

Machka 

Thanks!

https://www.bikeforums.net/touring/10...ort-tours.html


And there's this one too for longer tours ...
https://www.bikeforums.net/touring/10...you-going.html

Flintshooter

Some people enjoy writing.
I am very thankful for the journals I kept during two long backpacking trips. While it's that your memory will retain a lot of it, your memory will eventually fade. I enjoy being able to sit down on a cold winter's day and relive the past through journals that were written when the memories were fresh.
Online journals are a great source of information to those who are planning trips.

J.Higgins 

Thanks, Flintshooter. In lieu of the snarky atmosphere in here, I'll keep my own journals. I don't have a facebook or anything else, so may as well write it for my own amusement later.

jefnvk

That's why I just revived my old travel Blogspot account. I wanted a written account of my trip for future memories, and because I had a few folks interested in detail that I didn't want to tell over and over again, and whether true or not there are enough dissenters and stories about the aforementioned popular blog site to put me off using it.

Machka 

I do enjoy writing about my travels ... it's almost like I'm living it twice. And I write it with my family in mind ... almost like I'm telling my parents what I'm seeing and doing.

What I post on Facebook are the brief highlights for close family and friends, if they're interested.

And Flickr is for the photos ... and again, I put my photos there for whoever. Anyone who cares.

Happy Feet

This last trip I discovered making an e book too, using blurb.ca (just as an example which worked well for me).

I actually keep a working written journal on the road, nothing fancy, then update to my blog when I can, and this time used that material later on to create an e book. That way I had the impressions of places etc... written down.

So now I have a hardcover coffee table book of my photos and thoughts as well as the blogsite. I'm pretty sure Ill be doing this for my trips now on.

DanBell

Isn't this your website? I thought I remembered you saying that before.

BlarneyHammer

Yeah, it is. I still recommend it. I'm sure CrazyGuyOnABike has been mentioned once or twice before as well.

Rob_E

To me, CrazyGuy has the numbers to make it the go-to place. Not as polished as some sites. The webmaster can be kind of a polarizing figure. And, as has been said, you don't have full control like you'd have on your own site. But it has a lot of users, and to me, that makes it very useful. Some people have questioned why you want to bother sharing your journal to begin with. For me, it's fun to read, it's fun to write, and it's informative. If I want to ride through an area, I often want to have some idea of what to expect. A Google search might bring up one or two personally-hosted journals, but CrazyGuy lets you drill down to anyone who has tagged a specific area, county, city, etc. When I started planning a trip to ride the GAP and C & O, it was pretty easy to pull up CrazyGuy journals of people who had done it. Somewhere recently in this forum you can find discussions of biking from Ohio to Pittsburgh: the potential trails, the river crossing in Stuebenville. Part of researching this route for me involved pulling up every journal that mentioned Stuebenville, so I was able to see what to expect in terms of hills and dealing with a river-crossing without a really bike-friendly route. Stuff like that makes https://www.crazyguyonabike.com a useful site, and often an entertaining one.

FBinNY 

I guess you mistook my saying I was impressed with trip logger efforts as some kind of sarcastic put down. It was nothing of the sort.

Though I don't log trips, that doesn't imply that I have any negative thoughts about folks who do. In fact I respect their ability to find the time and follow through involved in doing so.

Different approaches to touring are just different, but there's no value judgement involved. It's like some tour to see beautiful and dramatic landscape, while others for the food, people and culture.

Flintshooter

Yeah I guess I did.
My two longest journals will probably never be online because the most recent one was written in the summer and fall of 1980. They were the old fashioned kind - pen and paper.
However, there are a huge number of hikers who post AT hike journals each year and I really enjoy being able to hike along with them through their journals.

NeilGunton

If you want to talk about transparency, how about being open about the fact that you have an axe to grind given our previous interactions here. Unfortunately you went back and deleted your posts, so it's not possible in retrospect for people to see the enmity which you have previously expressed (and obviously still harbor). Generally the model here seems to be to disparage me at any opportunity, and then if I respond you pretend that you don't care and I'm being over-sensitive. So I have two unsavory choices: I can either ignore libelous remarks, and let others define me for people who might be new to bikeforums, or else I can attempt to respond, and get labeled as whatever. I know I should just ignore the trolls, but occasionally I feel like I need to make clear that this isn't some vague, distant entity that is being casually slandered here. It's a real person.

As for transparency with my funding tactics, I don't really see how I could be any more transparent. I make support of the site entirely voluntary, so there isn't any requirement for people to pay anything in order to use any of the features. I also post the donation totals right on the front page of the site for all to see. I guess some people feel that I should only accept donations for what can be strictly interpreted as "website expenses", which would seem to devalue my own time, skill and effort running the thing to zero, but unfortunately I don't exist suspended in a vaccuum. I guess some people also resent the fact that I'm making some sort of living through running a website like crazyguyonabike, but I can't help that. I do fundraisers, and ask people for donations... if you want to help, then great, if you don't, then don't. It's pretty simple, the only people who seem to have an issue are those who, like I said, have an axe to grind. They tend to come back and try to slander me with certain characterizations that I think are both untrue and unfair - calling me "less than transparent" would be laughable if it wasn't so offensive. It's pretty funny the flack you get for running a free service.

For people who aren't aware, I am a developer who develops and runs crazyguyonabike.com: Bicycle Touring: A place for bicycle tourists and their journals. With forums, classifieds, resources, journals and articles, it has a wide range of services relevant to tourists. It was developed from scratch by me, and I have been running it solo since 2000, so over 17 years now. The site now has over 12,000 bicycle touring journals and articles, and more than 2,300,000 pics. Despite some comments here, I am actively developing the site and regularly make updates and tweaks. Unlike other websites, I don't like doing complete site redesigns every year, and the interface has remained fairly constant over the last decade. I personally like some consistency in a website - you spend time getting to know the ins and outs, and it's frustrating for the user to have that constantly changing just to satisfy the ego of some designer. I know I never like it when websites completely rewrite all their code, because it always seems to end up with crappy new versions that look flashy but don't have all the features of the old version. So my development strategy is to try to keep the main interface as constant as possible, but there have been a lot of changes under the covers as the years have passed. I am working constantly to keep the site content relevant and up to date, both in terms of blocking spammers and other abusers, and also keeping the underlying software functional. The site is backed up to multiple geographical locations and backup servers.

In terms of functionality, you can email updates to your journal, and construct route maps on-site (this uses Google's Maps API). There are far too many little features to list here, but the main function of the site is the journals, and I try to make it easy to post, and easy to read. Most people find it intuitive, though as always there are some vocal detractors who try to make it sound like the site is "old" and out of date. I consciously keep the interface simple and non-flashy, since this appeals to me personally, and it also serves to keep the site fast and responsive even on slow connections and devices. It works even on old browsers.

I have big plans to expand the site's functionality, including a site-wide map browser and revamping the 'resources' section to be more like a wiki in terms of the community being able to keep individual fact-based entries up-to-date. Beyond that, I am also developing the site code to allow me to express topics beyond bicycle touring, via sister sites called topicwise.com, townwise.com and profilewise.com.

I have been called "polarizing", and I will allow that I can be opinionated and don't beat around the bush when dealing with people who I feel are being obnoxious. I have thrown people off the site, and some of those people end up here on bikeforums, which is why you'll see the odd disparaging remark from users here whenever crazyguyonabike comes up. These comments almost always come from people who are either disgruntled former users, or else they are failed bloggers or developers who somehow resent the fact that I am independent and run my own site on my own terms and make some kind of income from it, or else they just dislike the website design and try to run it down at any opportunity. This is the price of doing business on the internet, I guess, and while I try to generally ignore it, I find it necessary sometimes to try to "correct the record" (to use a term that has become somewhat tainted recently).

Anyway, for anyone who is unfamiliar with the site, I am just a regular guy who works from home developing a website that is free for all to use, and many thousands of people have found it useful over the years, and continue to do so. Please don't take the disparaging comments from a few vindictive people as any indication of what's really going on over there. I'm a real person and generally very approachable and responsive if you have questions or problems. Given my previous experiences here on bikeforums with the previously mentioned individuals, who tend to try to derail any such discussion (and then later blame me), I'll try to leave it there.

Neil