Tips for creating an interesting bicycle touring journal

A journal can be fun to write and to read!
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Some people write a journal strictly for their own personal use. Often they want to have a way to help them remember the tour in great detail at a later date. Perhaps they will record their distance, the people they met and other pieces of information that are important to them.

Other bicycle tourists enjoy keeping the information for themselves but also sharing their touring adventure with as many people as care to read about it. There are several web sites on the web with Crazyguyonabike.com being perhaps the one most often mentioned when it comes to bicycle touring journals.

I confess that I am in the second group of journal writers. I derive a great deal of pleasure sharing my touring experiences with others including my friends, co-workers and anyone else who manages to stumble upon my journals. A secondary effect of writing a journal is that I usually do so at the end of each touring day so I have the opportunity to think about the major events of the day just before I go to sleep. This leaves my mind fresh and my body ready to take on the coming day.

Originally I had intended to write an article containing some suggestions for creating a bicycle touring related journal that people enjoy reading. Since I still have some work to do to master the craft I was overjoyed to discover that Carsten Hoefer had already taken on this important subject.

As a fan of a journal he wrote called "Visiting Dracula" I was quite happy to read what he had to say especially when I discovered that he used numerous examples from other crazyguyonabike.com journals to illustrate his points. I am going to list the high points in this article but I encourage you to visit the original and read his suggestions in greater detail.

Carsten made the following suggestions for improving a bicycle touring journal:

Put yourself in the readers seat

When writing your journal think about the people who will be reading it and try to give them the background information that will make it both enjoyable and useful to them.

Consider what you want to write about

It's your journal after all so write about the things that matter to you. If you don't care about the distance you've travelled then don't focus on that. Instead focus on the things that mattered to you during the course of your adventure.

Some suggestions about what you could write about in your journal

Carsten mentions scenery, people and food as three areas that you might want to consider discussing in your journal. He points out that all three are typically of interest to people and quite possibly might be an important part of your bicycle touring experience.

The difficult beginning

The beginning of any journal can be quite difficult to get started so once again he's provided some interesting examples from journals actually on Crazyguyonabike.com.

Spelling and Grammar

Since spelling and grammar are the structure of communication in any language it's no surprise that he mentions their importance.

Crasten's article appears to be a living document so over time I believe that it is likely to continue to grow with even more helpful suggestions. One additional suggestion was mentioned in the article's guestbook and that was to simply read lots of books. After reading a number of books your understanding of grammar, spelling and different ways to phrase things would likely be useful to you when writing as well. This suggestion is another excellent one that I also agree with completely.

To read Carsten's suggestions in greater detail please refer to A Styling Guide for Touring Cyclists by Carsten Hoefer.

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