Trip Reports - where's the good stuff?
 

Thanks to Grant and Susan and the team, Horizons Unlimited has become the best online resource for two-wheeled travel - most helpful, most informative, most relevant. 'Thread on the HUBB' has even entered the conversational lexicon of adventure motorcycling. 'How do you know that?' Thread on the HUBB. 'Where did you meet them?' Thread on the HUBB. Sociable, too - I've met and made life-long friends here.

So - helpful, relevant, social. But I feel it's missing something. People come here, use the site as a resource to answer the questions that really can't be answered anywhere else, but have a tendency to post elsewhere when it comes to the good stuff - the actual ride reports. It feels like we do all hard work, but someone else gets the benefits. We eat our greens and another site gets the ice cream pudding. And that doesn't seem right.

So Grant - any chance of setting up a ride reports section? I know we have the travellers' tales, but boy, are they awkward to navigate. I never got the hang of the art of reading backwards and upside-down, and I know that a lot of others also struggle with their layout. Is there a technical issue or financial constraint that prevents us from running ride reports in the easy on the eye style of advrider? Is it simply money and bandwith?

Suerte, Dan Walsh

Thanks for the nice comments Dan, much appreciated!

And good and interesting point on ride reports.

As for the big question:

Partly money and bandwidth, but mostly no one ever told me they didn't like the blogs!

Bandwidth is getting up there, we will be paying significantly more in about 6 months than we are now (we're pushing 200gb a month now, and more than that will co$t.) The other guys have their own in house server and a big organization subsidizing the bills, with no bandwidth restrictions/cost that matters.

We could do ride reports in the HUBB, but I've never liked what it does/looks like, so the plan is to have better blogging software, and make it easier for anyone to have an instant blog, to use as a ride report. I take note of the ordering comment :)

Tip on that - just go to the menu on the right, and click archives for a full index. Yes it's in reverse order, as that is the blog "standard" - for better or worse. You're supposed to read every day, and therefore want to read the "latest" now. Perhaps it should be reversed top chronological for Travellers Stories - comments? :helpsmilie:

So I guess the question now is, should we just do ride reports in a Forum, or wait for the trick blog software.

NOTE:

The plan in progress, and coming, albeit far slower than I'd like, is to have:

1. Everyone gets a personal page to do with as they like - within reason of course!
2. Blogs - available to all, more sophisticated full blogging, perfect for trip reports.

Perhaps the blogs are too much for short ride reports? Do you WANT to post short ride reports - or only long ones? Where's the line? What do YOU guys want / expect? Do you want to be able to just post a thread in a Ride Reports forum? Should there be restrictions?

Let me know, as you know I always listen and do what I can - but I need to know what's wanted. I have my own big list of wants, and I hope you'll like it all, but you need to tell me too.

Grant

A couple of pennies worth
 

I have wondered about this topic in the past and thanks to Dan for raising it therefore - I believe that a very important factor in this discussion is the use of photos. Everyone has a digital camera nowadays and the best of the short ride reports include plenty of these; in turn, such threads tend to be very popular - as a random sample, the 5th post here goes to a thread with about 200 posts at present:-

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...-4-weeks-31201
(4 weeks - is that long or short?)

As for short Vs long; let the punters decide - if, as Dan suggests, there is a section called ride reports (there could be some sort of advice in the "notes" about "short" if you really want it), then those who post can stick stuff in there or start a "full-on" blog.
I guess "ride reports" should be based on regions of the world - now where did I get that idea??! :rolleyes2:

Personally, I can live with reading upside down, right to left or whatever, but such reports must have pics included.

"That other site" is good in some respects, particularly for the photographic content, but it is not as truly global as this one IMO and it does contain some material which is frankly childish.

Finally, a few months ago I recall something from Grant along the lines that this site is not only for RTW riders but long-distance riding; are you content with going down this futher road?

thanks for the excellent comments!

taking it all on board...

As for the "long distance riders" - depends on your definition - mine is someone not going around the world - but "just" a continent, which is much more common and doable for the average person.

If your definition of "long distance riding" is Iron Butt stuff - while I'm not personally interested, and in fact think it's dangerous and not to be encouraged, if people want to talk about it, that's ok, no arguments from me.

I don't like the upside down reading on the blogs so if you could change that, that would be great and I agree that pictures makes the reading much more interesting.
A personal page for everyone would be great.
If I had a personal homepage, I could use it for some highlights of my trips and add a link to my own website with trip reports. When can I get it............

Ride Reports allow for much greater interaction.
I enjoy the Blogs too, and view them as travelers' trip logs.

Vanilla or chocolate? Or a mix...:)

I'm currently writing up our US trip "report", and would love to have a place for it here.

You're welcome to post it on the Travellers Stories page - if you want I'll set up a blog asap for you, and you can enter it in there. It's easy and straightforward! :)

Just go to the blog request page here.

Blogs or threads for Travellers Stories and Ride Reports?
 

Any more ideas, opinions on this??

Well, you asked for more thoughts
 

I certainly did not have in mind the Iron Butt approach when referring to long distance riding. The definitions, or lack of, don't really matter.
I think that the question comes down to those who want to write up some aspect of a ride after they have returned from such (a short trip?) and those who want to use a blog while on the road.
The former would benefit greatly from a clearly defined place for them to be and greater structure in filing them; based on continent, country, type of trip perhaps (view ruins/scenery, charity ride, whatever). These can be cross-referenced to recommendations for accommodation, repair shops etc as appropriate. This should end up as a "database" of trips that will provide improved knowledge about areas for riding; so often the same questions arise over and over again about, for instance, the UK. The longer distance riders and RTWs can look at these to get ideas of what to do when in a particular area.

There you go, Merry Christmas!

Short trip report
 

Here's a great example of a short trip report (all of 3 weeks); I can't imagine anyone would want to search out internet cafs to keep a blog along the way - I'm just grateful that he found the time to write about it after getting home:-

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...an-syria-32109

(No pics however!)

Of course, this can stay where it is, in the Middle East forum, or it could............

Short trip reports would be spot on!
 

Dave gives a some good points

I posted a thread a while back:
http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...n-europe-31463

From my perspective, I've just moved to Europe (though I've traveled a fair bit around but by plane train or bus) And it's good to get some recomendations about great places to ride on the weekends and for slightly longer trips. I know there is BestBikingRoads.com Motorcycle Travel, Motorcycle Touring, Motorcycle Routes, Motorcycle Roads, Motorcycle GPS, GPS Motorcycle Rides, Motorbike Roads but as Grant has mentioned in other threads; It's ideal not to rely on other websites, and if we can keep more stuff "inhouse" the better.
If it was organised in a regional sense ( Nth, Sth England, Western Switzerland etc) it would be great from a plannig perspective. Wether that be short rides or trans hemisphire trips. To be able to think "right i want to ride through southern France....." and to be able incorporate sections of it or particular road in tto would be great.

And for people to share... If you're on a ride and discover a tucked away road etc, it would take five seconds to add a post with a google earth/GPS reference (or something similar) just like this one from BMWMartin:

Rossfeld Road
I was visiting the Eagles nest at Berchtesgaden in September 2007 and while in the parking area was directed to the Rossfeld Road by a German tour guide.

Basically a private road over a mountain. You pay 3 euros at the tollbooth at either end then just enjoy a 15 kilometre ride with every type of bend imaginable:funmeteryes:. Lots of bikers, one or two cars and the very rare coach.
The locals pay once then ride between the tolls several times. Cafe at top is a mecca for bikers with superb views.

From berchtesgaden follow signs to Obersalzberg then Rossfeld. Sorry no phots maybe someone else has some?




It doesn't have to be a corner-by-corner discription just a flag that there's something worth a look.

What do you guys and girls think? would this be useful / interesting to you?

Steve.

BestBikingRoads.com - I'm one of you lot :)
 

Hi there,

Obviously I'm completely impartial, but as BestBikingRoads.com is my site and I'm a regular reader on HU I just wanted to say that BBR is the result of about 4 years hard work on my part and I'm working on improvements all the time, it's just starting to get to be someway decent and usable.

I completely understand if you guys want to do your own road trips and routes feature on HU (I really admire Grant for what he has achieved with HU and his round the world trips) but don't write me off so easily :)

That's it, I'll go back to lurking now!

David

I'm not a fan of reverse order blogs either ... in fact .... I hardly ever read them.

Copyright of HUBB posts and blogs
 

Just to clarify the copyright situation on the site to respond to mollydog:

"Those writing books or making movies may not like the idea that all their precious words/ pics are now public domain and can be copied and re-used .... or that technically (I think) Grant OWNS the material (correct me here Grant) once it's posted on HIS website, and I believe he can reproduce/sell as he sees fit. Not sure on legalities here."

This is a common misconception - Posting something on the web does NOT affect the author's copyright in any way, and individuals can't just reuse stuff on the web without respecting copyright. Just because it's posted on the web does NOT make it Public Domain - the copyright is still the authors, and may NOT be reproduced without permission of the author! The only small exception is "Fair use;" when a magazine / reporter / author of any kind excerpts a paragraph or two from an original copyrighted work (basically everything written) to use in for instance a review of a book.

You may NEVER copy text from another website or any source anywhere and post it without permission from the author.

You may also NEVER copy a photo from another website or any source anywhere and post it without permission from the author.

If you look at the bottom of every page on the site (yeah, sometimes that's a looonnnggg way down ;-), you'll find this line:

"All text and photographs are Copyright © Grant and Susan Johnson, 1987- 2008, or their respective authors. All Rights Reserved."

When you sign up for the HUBB or to post info anywhere on the site, including blogs, you agree not to post any copyrighted material unless the copyright is owned by you or by the HUBB.

Just to be clear - HU doesn't OWN the contents of HUBB posts or blogs, but we do excerpt from the HUBB, from blogs, from e-mail and from other sites (with permission) for the e-zine, for example. These are always attributed to the original author and a link to their blog provided, and comes under Fair Use rules, and / or we have full permission.

Yes, we're fussy about Copyright, and hope you will be too.

Cheers
Grant and Susan