Author Archives: mrmakdeck

Where to Start Planning A World Tour

Posted on by

Lube a dubed and ready to ride into Victoria! #victoriafringefestival #victoria #bike #bicycle

A photo posted by Ira Cooper (@eachmile) on

 

And so the research starts….

 

 

So. What am I suppose to be researching? A good start so far. Maybe I will just Google Search “how to start planning a world tour”. Ah! There are lots of lovely resources on the Intermenets that will help you decide what should be your initial point of entry into figuring out what you need for a three-year tour, across a multitude of varying landscapes and diverse weather forecasts. Websites with a lot of varying opinions, conjectures, anecdotes, and pretty pictures of people researching the same stuff I am researching. That’s the great thing about not being the first person to ever attempt something of this magnitude: others have succeeded and failed before you. I can learn from their triumphs and mistakes.

 

I am realizing how the online community will not just impact my itinerary for this trip, but it will also be a large factor in how I approach this trip and what angle and theme it entails. A theme, you say? This isn’t an English literature assignment; this is a big trip, my good man. Well, I love English literature, so why not have a theme, maybe even a genre for this exploratory expedition. There will definitely be a narrative. I hope it’s something out of the fiction section, leaning towards the fantastical, suspenseful and sci-fi subgenres. The online community isn’t just delving into the blogs and websites that start becoming historical artifacts once they are published. It also doesn’t help build any sort of presence if I simply read and respond to five year old articles. I have to stay hip, in the know, up-to-date, radical reformer. This is something I realized all too late, when I tried to reach an audience through my own forum for itinerary suggestions. Forums are a thing of the past, old Ira. Social media is where it is at.

 

And so I emerse myself in Facebook, Instagram and Reddit. The results are immediate. People are telling me WHERE to start and as long as I am constantly posting, responding, liking, up-karmaing and retweeting, people are giving me megabyte sized portions of food for thought, especially via Sub-reddits around the subject of cycle touring. Asking people, “where should I start?” and “what knowledge should I have?” are great catalysts from dialogue with some veterans of world touring. A lovely supportive community I have discovered and am becoming familiar with.

 

Back to school. #ubc #Vancouver

A photo posted by Ira Cooper (@eachmile) on

In regards to my bicycle choice, I think I am going to build one from scratch. I believe that it is the only way I will REALLY know my bicycle and be able to attend to it’s needs as efficiently and as knowledgably as I can. It also forces me out of my comfort zone of purchasing something new, something unfinished, something that will depend on me putting it together and spending time with it. So far, the Facebook cycling touring group has offered several suggestions about which frame I should purchase and I am looking into each option. I am usually a steel frame guy, which someone suggested, but I am open to alternatives, as long as I can find good reason in why I would choose them for a frame that will inevitably take www (world wide whipping).

What do you think about these options thus far?

 

Salsa Vaya Frameset: http://salsacycles.com/bikes/vaya

 

ECR Frameset: http://surlybikes.com/bikes/ecr

 

920 Disc: http://www.trekbikes.com/ca/en/bikes/road/touring/920/920/

 

 

 

PS, Here is the bicycle touring forum that is AWESOME on Facebook. Where else should I look to post my questions about places to go and bike inquiries?

 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/542913795789287/

Finding A Voice – Out with the Forums, In With the Reddits (can you pluralize it like that, kids?)

Posted on by

Where are you, Mr. Cooper? Why haven’t you posted anything new? Well…because…I haven’t….The real reason is because I am still trying to figure out how to spread the holy gospel that this site exists and find a balance in my own life to keep posting, keep expanding and keep alive. What is alive? Alive involves a pinch of art, a pinch of socializing and pinch of school and WHOLE lot of cycling too and fro.

 

The world tour is still on and the new way I am accessing people to participate in building it’s itinerary is by ditching the forum and trying out the established thoroughfares of forum-like resources, such as Reddit. My issue though with this approach is how do I get people then to follow the site’s progress? How do a build a community? How do I get people to see the final journey of their suggestions?

 

Again, I need to keep abreast of technological trends and how social media is ideally utilized in my specific scenario. Why am I posting this? Because, I want this site and this trip, from start to finish, to be a dialogue, an interaction, a series of communications and cause and effects. I want you to see the large struggles and the minor hiccups and at the same time I want you to see the mountains and the river crossings.

 

For me, the travel part is easy. It’s the lead up that is my primary cause for concern. The online world is unfamiliar to me in this regard and I fear I shall leave on this trip with my own itinerary, on a trip that has little to do with a wider cause. And that’s not what I want to do. I do not just want to disappear for three years. I want to be your guinea pig. So let me.

 

Any suggestions are mucho appreciated, whatever they may be.

 

 

Thank you so so so so much already for everything.

What Do? How do?

Posted on by

Populate this blog. The big thing right now is to focus, focus….my mind digresses to the shiny lights left and right. It’s like a candy store and there is an ultimatum to choose in 5 seconds. I cannot do it. I get no candy. I am writing with indecision, with sidetrackedness, with digital pop ups. This site needs to populate. This dream needs to rise from ashen and cackles of madness, like the eggs in one basket Frankenstein. I need to risk more. I need to disfigure me. Drop school. Kill. Raise the bar. The glass. My own body from mediocrity and sleeping when I am suppose to. Curfew-ed. Oh no! Tell my folks. I will James Dean them. More coherency to follow.