Bicycle Touring 101: Keeping a journal

Pen and paper.
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When I go on a tour I now keep a journal of my adventure but this wasn't always the case. I started keeping a journal after my first tour when I realized that people were genuinely interested in my travels and as time passed the details were beginning to get fuzzy in my mind.

The solution for me was to start keeping a journal. There are many different ways to keep a journal and I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each type on the remainder of this page.

Before I get started I should mention a secondary reason for keeping a journal. It's been mentioned on previous pages that a tour can occassionally be mentally taxing. On those rare days it is nice to be able to go back and read through your old journal entries or view the pictures you took on past days. Both add to the sense of accomplishment and remembered pleasure of a tour.

Historiically and currently many people keep a journal using an old fashioned pen and paper. This method has several advantages including being cost-effective (read cheap) and very versatile since it's easy to have the stuff within easy reach at all times no matter where you are.

Without careful protection of the notepad it was possible for a rain storm to make the journal a soggy mess.

I also found that when writing up my journal entries I would typically put things in point form leaving the proper forming of sentences until later. Of course the later is also part of the problem since I produced a web journal from the written journal later on meaning that I made the effort twice (not that this in itself is bad since it gave me a chance to relive the tour again).

Even with the other methods that I will discuss in the next few sections taking along a notepad and a pen are still a good idea. There will be times on the road when you just want to jot down a quick note or someone's email address and for this pen and paper are usually the fastest and easiest way to do this.

This is a pocketmail device in it's open position. In the background is a standard CD to provide a perspective on it's size. I used this device during my Round Lake Huron tour to send/receive email including updates to my online journal.
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Another way to keep a journal is to set up a website on the internet and upload your journal entries to it.

If you are not comfortable with creating a website or using a web page editor fear not! There are some excellent web sites that have already gone a long way towards doing most of the work for you.

An example of these sites is www.crazyguyonabike.com. This is a web site that features a constantly growing collection of tour reports from people all over the world. This is a non-commerical site that was originally created by Neil Gunton to help him to record his 1998 tour across the United States. Since then he has worked hard to create tools that make it much easier for other people to create their web journals easily and without cost (since he has offered the use of his website free to the public at considerable cost to himself).

Creating a journal on this site is very easy. Register as a new user and select the option to create a new journal. Creating pages comes down to clicking a button. Add your text to text boxes and import your pictures using very easy to use controls.

When you are all done you click another button to publish your work of art to share it with others. Included with your journal is a guestbook giving other people the option to ask questions, provide words of encouragement and of course thank you for sharing your journal with them.

I handed out "Touring Cards" during my Round Lake Huron tour. This gave people an easy way to follow my tour and saved me from forgetting to send postcards or emails later. A nice feature was the tie in to my guestbook. Anyone who signed the guestbook received a reply from me!
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You can of course create your online journal following your tour. This is how I setup my Round Lake Erie tour on crazyguyonabike.

Another option is to setup your web site before your tour with basic things like your introduction and other pre-tour type pages. Once you are on tour you can add new pages while on the road by stopping in at internet cafe's and public libraries. This gives you the ability to add an interactive flavour to your journal and let's people really follow along with you on your travels.

I did this for my Round Lake Huron tour and I found that it really added to the adventure. However I didn't use public libraries or internet cafe's to update my journal. Instead I used something called a pocketmail device to send emails to the website. These emails were interpreted and converted to new web pages detailing my journal entries. I will mention the pocketmail device in later section on this page.

Some people would rather create their own website and pages manually instead. There are numerous websites out there that have this kind of setup. The disadvantage is that you have to do all the work yourself usually using an html editor and some photo editing software at the very least.

What you gain is complete freedom to setup your website the way you like it rather then in accordance with a template or rules.

A variation of this approach is to bring a notebook along on tour, create your webpages and upload them periodically.

Keeping a Journal