Ok, ok, I am back from two weeks on the road. And I know that you all are just dying to hear(read) all about it! Note that the groaners who know me all too well are now headed for the door, en mass, and have wedged themselves into the door frame like the Three Stooges of old. Of course, I kept a finely detailed journel and can relate every exciting scintilla of nothingness for the whole time. I got the idea for doing this while reading some of James Joyce's works. Already the culture of this blog is knee deep by just dropping Joyce's name. So. How was this journal compiled?
What with today's modern digital technology, it is fairly easy to keep trip notes. A rider could phone home and leave him/herself voice messages every time the spirit moved him/her. A rider's phone my allow texting and photography to be sent to a safe place for later retrieval and compilation. Slide shows are now an easy thing to put together if a rider is digitally adept. Never before has it been so easy and so much fun to have a ride report with pix and even video of even the most mundane of trips. Doing the 'ride to work' commute is good practice for developing journalistic skills. Thus, a rider will have some ability in hand when heading out on the annual bike vacation trip or the annual fall 'color ride' trip.
I have nearly zero digital skills and did this year's big bike trip journal the old fashioned way. I got a small wire bound notebook and a pen and stuffed them in a self-sealing baggie in case of rain and packed it in my tankbag. The note book got dragged out at gas stops and scenic stops and any other opportunity to make a few notes on the minutia of the moment. And speaking of minutia, what kind of stuff was collected in my note book, you ask?
Well, stop to consider for a moment what you want your journal to do for you besides collecting dust on you bookshelf or take up space in your memento box in the attic. Naturally, you will want the very best moments and the very worst moments noted for all time. One of the best moments of this trip was sleeping under the stars in the FREE Pierre, S.D. city park campground when the weather was sooo good that I didn't get up at my usual 5:30am 'get moving time'. But, instead, I rolled over and slept in untill 7am esconced in glorious cozy sleeping bag luxury with just enough breeze to keep the bugs off me. Noting that on the morning of the day before turning a wheel allowed my memory to not have to remember what happened and when. After three exciting days on the road, I might have forgotten how good that morning was.
Another thing my journel lets me do is keep track of data/info that other people might want to ask about. So I record my daily start/stop mileages and my daily start/stop times. My gas receipts have mileages and GPS info logged on them as the fuel is purchased. These receipts go into a 'safe' that is in reality just a self-sealing baggie. Some GPSs will keep a route marker or trail that helps keep track of where you were for the day, or the whole trip.
I don't have a camera anymore. The recent digital ones that I have tried are not bike-friendly. I like to shoot from the bike while at speed. And the digital cameras are not easy to use with a bike glove and left hand only. My biker budds on this trip took some pix and sent me digital copies. The pix are very nice but very mundane like the vast majority of vacation pix. They didn't get the shots of me riding the wild buffalo or wrestling the dall sheep off the craggy mountain nor leaping my luggage laden bike across the mountain river gorge. Nor did they snap pix of me crashing the dirt bike several times before finally scaling the near verticle cliff (read: gentle grassy hillside).
The best part of keeping bike trip notes is pulling them together at the end of the ride and making a nice ride report for yourself and anyone interested enough to bother to read it. Don't try for a finished product while out on the road. Just keep enough scribblings to remind you of how much fun and trouble you had. Wax eloquent in oration and writings when you get home.
May your ride reports (journals) accumulate like fine bottles of beverage or savings bonds or something equally worthwhile to your spirit.
ibafran
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Tags: motorcycle trip info
