Miles2go

Hello everyone.

With the New Year comes a new and exciting website for the Fully Loaded Touring – Photo Gallery. The new website www.loadtouringbikes.com was developed to bring additional features to this worldwide page and to better align the identity of the gallery to what the original purpose was for this gift to the cycling world.

The new features include but are not limited to the following:

My ability to post preview photographs of the new bikes being added to the gallery, right on the homepage.

The ability for anyone to post comments on preview photos and other content on the homepage.

On a broader scale, I’ve taken this opportunity to realign the name of the website to mirror my original intent and to rewrite the submission guidelines to reflect this.

In short the philosophy is:

This homepage and gallery of high quality images, pays tribute to the loaded touring bicycle and the fantastic places these bikes take us.

Submissions are already rolling in and it's going to be fun seeing these pages go from 11 Million hits with 360 images to 20 Million hits and what will likely be over 400 new, high quality photographs in 2012.

www.loadedtouringbikes.com

Tune in.

Bekologist

where's the 'lightly loaded' section for UL riders?

Miles2go

You've had a lot of time to learn how to create that website. It never happened? Did you look at the submission guidelines for this new page? Just curious.

Bekologist

yes, i did look at your submission guidelines.

Snide isn't that flattering, really.

fietsbob

Been wondering where it went , so All those people asking if anyone has ridden a fixie on tour
A link to #350, the guy riding an old fashioned high wheeler can be shown.. image/130501563


the you-guys-should thing is a common statement.
Bekolgist might step up his game and start a website on that topic, of his own..

Bekologist

yeah, that's why i asked where the UL section was on the 'loaded touring bikes' website was.

In case you two hadn't noticed, UL bike touring and bikepacking is a growing style of touring. a website dedicated to loaded touring bikes is going to miss a lot of great variety in setups, and a lot of potentially great scenery in the background, limiting their pictures to what the website owner thinks looks like loaded enough for a bike tour.

It's kind of funny, too - most of those bikes at the loaded touring site look nearly identical. So similar in setup it's uncanny.

Miles2go

LOL. You call my joking, snide behavior and reply with nothing more than the same. A tired story at that. Your post reads just as it should, useless complaining.

In case you hadn't noticed, there are websites that represent ultra-lite touring. According your viewpoint, such UL touring sites "miss a lot of great variety in setups, and a lot of potentially great...yada yada." Hmmm, that sounds very familiar. You'd better straighten them out Bekologist. Most of those UL touring bikes must look "nearly identical. So similar in setup it's uncanny."

azesty

Bit like how all the palegic fish have the same sort of fins?

z

VT_Speed_TR

Ok, so I checked out the site, nice home page, but very hard to figure out navigation. I see there's a search option, so I select the search. Brings up a page that is clearly not part of the same style as the homepage, but WTH, give it a shot. type in Salsa and I get lots of thumbnails of Salsa girl dancers, jars of salsa,......

I don't know what's up, but you need to do some work on your navigation and search.

Miles2go

So now salsa dancers are bad? I kid.

Thank you for the feedback! The Pbase image hosting side of this project has be fantastic and in all of these years, you're the first that has mentioned something like this. That said, I get what you're saying and I'll certainly look into the possibility of adding some instruction at the top of the gallery. For searching, simply use the "current page" searching function of your browser. Find on page, edit, find, etc.

sth

Thanks for gettin' back at it. As a PBase user the top bar "search" function wasn't confusing but I can see how it would confuse some. My long time beef with PBase is that the only way to move to the next pic is with "next" button at the top or bottom. I wish they would incorporate keyboard control.

Great work though. For those that think it should include this or that, fly at it and make your own site.

nun

Glad to see some development of the site. It's a good way to see lots of touring set ups. I see your new submission guidelines don't require 4x panniers anymore. I hope that you'll include all those that carry a shelter, sleeping gear and cooking gear on your site.

Mardmakarm

Conglatulation for new website, this really useful for study how to load my bike in long trip.

xilios

Glad to see the site is up again.

wiiiim

great idea actually, just poorly executed
by reading the submission guidelines, seeing how all images are branded with your website (while these are clearly not your property), no credit or link to the source and reading your responses here.. I don't think you're heading in the right direction either

VT_Speed_TR

After viewing the site again, as a first time viewer, here's what I'd want to see if the site were to be useful,

It appears that each photo has 3 attributes, Location (state or country), Bicycle manufacturer, bicycle model

A a minimum you need a filter/search function that allows the user to select photos based on those criteria. Other options could be by date submitted, date photo was taken, and perhaps random.

Scanning through all the photos is just not a good user interface, so hopefully you'll be able to include some form of filtering.

staehpj1

Just personal preference, but I'd rather see more bikes like this:
or this

Both are set up for self supported camping and cooking touring long distances. Am I correct in assuming that they would be rejected based on how they are loaded? If so, the requirement for "fully loaded" (overloaded IMO) puts me off. It is your site so you can obviously do as you please, but I'd rather not use the site or have my bikes on it in this format. How would I go about getting my picture from my first tour in 2007 (#245) removed from the site?

indyfabz

Man. I'm no UL packer myself, but some of those configurations do look awfully loaded, at least for trips in non-remote places. E.g.:

https://www.pbase.com/canyonlands/image/61183702
https://www.pbase.com/canyonlands/image/57860676

Erick L

It's a guitar on the back. You can read about his trip here. It's one of my favorite bike diary.

Miles2go

Submissions are flying along again and full notification of the new site is far from being complete.

With regards to this thread. First off, thanks for the compliments and secondly, as always there's a bit of armchair quarterbacking going on here.

I'll add for the sake of example and educating at least part of the touring public: Images are labeled with the site url so if a photograph is taken, viewers of the taken property can identify the rightful location that the owner submitted it to. These and other things I won't discuss are done solely with then intent of protecting the wishes of those hoping to see their photographs hosted on the most viewed touring bike specific website in the world.

Enjoy viewing the GALLERY.


I'll probably post a few additional bikes tonight.

Bekologist

...maybe it should be called the "OVER loaded touring gallery!

Just kidding, zen master.

Ekdog

Lovely site! Great idea! I'm not sure why some of the folks here are bashing you.

One thing I miss on the site is the ability to read more about the owners of some of these lovely bikes. Too bad they can't include a link to their blogs, websites, CGOB journals, etc.

DW_Thomas

Actually, as a PBase user myself, I know it is possible to add quite a bit of text in a "Caption" field under each photo and that field can include a URL. PBase search functions can be a bit wonky. It is possible to set keywords for each photo, and perhaps create a link to do a Google search with the option to limit it to this specific gallery page. I don't recall the notation, but I believe it's possible.

antokelly

yeah looks good to me enjoyed drooling over all those loaded bikes.

Miles2go

It's nothing new. There are many forum examples of such behavior. Neil, the creator of Crazyguyonabike came under such unjust criticism in a touring forum we used to belong to that he felt he was forced to leave.

It takes a certain lack of insight to take on some of these positions. Perfect example (if there aren't enough in the thread already), one person who posted in this thread just asked to have his bike photograph removed from the gallery because "I just don't share your aesthetic with regard to touring bikes and do not want to be associated with it." As if rider's identities are even known. The image had been viewed over 26,000 times and it's fellow tourers at a loss, not me or my "aesthetic".

Funny/sad thing is that this person never even tried submitting a photo of of a bike being used in his new found UL touring style to see if I'd post it. Dependent upon the quality of photography, some of the more equipped UL rides will make it into the gallery under the new guidelines.