Category: Rants
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Why The SLSC Is A Life-Saver For Touring Cyclists, Plus Some Notes On The WarmShowers Controversy
I crossed The Entrance Bridge, leaving the previous day’s mishaps behind me, and pushed north, following off-highway trails through forest fringes. Finally the New South Wales Coast Cycle Trail began to offer what it had promised, taking me far from the Pacific Highway and brokering a tightly-negotiated route along the various barrier islands and reefs that were smeared along the coastline. I bounced between placid seawater lagoons and the omnipresent Pacific surf, stopping mid-morning for coffee at a shipping-container kiosk on the southern point of Catherine Hill Bay. Freewheeling down past the beach, the waves looked so inviting that I couldn’t… Continue reading →
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Is The Touring Bike Slowly Dying Out?
While recently updating the all-time most-read post on this blog, “What’s The Best Touring Bike?”, I realised something. Every year, the list of touring bikes seems to get shorter. First we lost bikes that were relatively obscure. A good example is the Revolution Country Traveller, built by the Edinburgh Bicycle Co-operative. This was a fantastic value entry-level tourer, retailing for under £500 and earning great praise. But it was limited in its distribution to EBC’s handful of locations in northern Britain, and I’m guessing it can’t have made much of a profit for just how cheap it was. But then, a… Continue reading →
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A Rather Open Update-Rant on the Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Janapar
No, I’m not selling anything. I know almost everyone who reads this blog has seen Janapar now. I’d just like to share a selection of the more interesting, challenging and downright bizarre things that have happened since we released the film one year ago. The first thing that happened, at 9am on November 27th 2012, was that most of you bought Janapar and watched it. We received a lot of fantastic feedback and took a strong first step towards paying off the (considerable) costs of the film (no, we haven’t finished doing that yet). The second thing that happened, a few days… Continue reading →
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How To Make A Living As An Adventurer
I received the following email the other day: I am a little bit confused as to what exactly you do for a living. I know that you are an adventurer, but I don’t get where you get your ‘everyday money’. Sponsorship is one thing for a trip, but if you don’t have a 9–5 job, where do you get the daily money from? It’s a good question. But what exactly might my correspondee think ‘adventurer’ actually means? Types of ‘Adventurer’ (or Explorer, or Expeditioner) (Warning: one or more of the following stereotypes may be considered offensive.) Continue reading →
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Why I Won’t Be ‘Live-Tweeting’ My Next Expedition
This post was borne of a heated debate I recently had with a couple of friends. It arose from a remark along the lines of “I don’t have time to read your blog, but I do have time to read Twitter updates, so you should be ‘live-Tweeting’ your trips because more people like me will know what you’re up to”. Well, I won’t be ‘live-Tweeting’ my future trips; not for my friend, nor anyone else. And here’s why. Tweets, by their nature, are free-floating snippets of information. Each one inhabits a single drop in an ocean of content. In any given… Continue reading →
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Why Backpacking Is Great (And Other Myths)
I wrote this horribly opinionated, elitist, provocational polemic last year, and have been wondering what to do with it ever since. There may be nuggets of truth in there somewhere, but please don’t take it too seriously! Continue reading →