If a tree falls in the woods and nobody saw it fall, did it really fall?

If you rode to Ushuaia with your significant other as pilion but you did not start a Youtube channel over this, did it really happen?

This promotion of individuals is a sign of the times IMO.

In the age of social media people have shifted their views of what they are as idividuals and a lot of people are totaly fine viewing theselves and their experiences as a product.


In the end all that matters is what briought you true happiness. To me that hapiness was relaxing and sipping coffee for 4 days in Cusco and chatting with other travelers. To a guy in the next dorm it was spedning the same 4 days editing a video to upload to youtube.

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Alaska 2014: Hotel Budget ZeroXmas in Death Valley, New Year in Urique

Very subtly and well put, if I was to be brutally honest with a response to this post it would upset a certain type of person/ traveller. The love or lust for travel should remain so. The need or crave for attention is a very personal and individual requirement/necessity. Each to there own I guess.

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There’s power in numbers and strength in unity.
It’s a well done from me to anyone who promotes, my passion of, motorcycling however they do it.
I don’t want to do it myself and I might pick and choose what I watch or read but if someone spreads the word and the interest in motorcycles and travelling on motorcycles increases then they get my thanks.

If people make a living out of it well good luck to them - they’re not arms dealers

Some may remember motorcycling in the UK during the 80s. The powers that be were out to get us and a lot of hard work was done by a small amount of people to get our voices heard.
Divide and rule is so easy for politicians because people just like to judge others and slag them off.

I met a few of these travelers on the road, very modest and have extensive travel experience but keep mostly to themselves. These guys are usualy awesome to travel with and are a goldmine of information and good advice. They wont boast about anything but you start asking questions you quickly realize that they have are the real deal and they probably have a few books in them. Keep these guys in your contact list and give them some help if you can.

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Alaska 2014: Hotel Budget ZeroXmas in Death Valley, New Year in Urique

Very true, it takes all kinds and if other riders are motivated by the content that is being put out there it's a win-win for everybody. If you arent into that stuff, you just dont have to watch it.

I personaly enjoy a lot of content being put out there by youtubers and others.

Where I draw the line is the my personnal choice as to the level of promotion I am willing to put out there for my travels.

I have zero interest in making any money from traveling or any level of sponsorship for that matter.

Why? Well I have my reasons: First and foremost I travel for myself and to get away from obligations. When you start putting content out there you quickly realize that it is a lot of work. This is a job. I wrote a few ride reports on forums for short trips and let me tell you to put together a decent summary it's a lot of hours in the making. Making/editing videos I havent done but I am sure it's even more work. One reason I take time off to travel is to get away from work. If I am traveling and have to constantly be planning my days around filming and uploading and editing videos I feel like it will rob me from the very reasons that I travel. If you travel and create content as you go and do not feel this way, more power to you.

While I travel, the limit of what I am willing to do is upload photos on my FB profile and write up a quick summary. This takes 5 minutes at the hostel with a good wifi connection. Once the trip is over and I am home, if I have some free time I would not mind pulling some photos together and a narrative for a ride report or an article. Anything more than this, the ratio input/return is just not there for me.

And also I am not that guy. I am not the guy who films himself, in the middle of nowehere or in public places. I have never been and probably will never be. I should not use the word never but I am just not feeling it. I just want to travel slowly, relax, take lots of photos and be out there in the world without any expectations other that to eperience new things and have a good time.

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Alaska 2014: Hotel Budget ZeroXmas in Death Valley, New Year in Urique

On occasion we meet tourists who we think interesting and invite them back to our place. Mostly from the 'backpacker' crowd. A lot of what you say ties in to what they have told us.

My favourite tale was given by three young ones from Berlin. They'd had an encounter with some nasties. Following that they were in a cafe having breakfast when an older man asked what was up. They told him about the encounter and he decided to make it up for them. "We're not all like that". He went home and got his teenage kids and their friends He took them, tourists and teenagers, along a sealed road then a gravel road then a track then a walk through bush... down to a beach...and they were the only ones there.

Well worth keeping in mind I reckon.

We did most of our bike travelling in the 1980s and about the only thing around then was Jupiter's Travels, though I didn't know that until we were on the road and only read it after we'd returned, when to be honest I disliked the book. However, after coming across and ejoying Dreaming of Jupiter just a few years ago, I re-read the original too and found that I now do enjoy it.
In recent years we've predominantly travelled by sailing boat and nowadays there are an ever increasing number of you-tube vloggers amongst the cruising fleet. We've met many of them and become good friends with a few, despite which we've done little more than skip through an odd one or two of any of their videos; they're just not very interesting. However, for more than few, those videos are how/why they can afford to live the lifestyle that they do and believe me, they work seriously hard to produce them. A 'watchable' 20-30 minute you-tube video sounds to be over 20 hours of work, excluding the time that you've already lost/wasted in frigging about with the cameras whilst doing/fixing whatever's on the resulting video. I suspect the 'aggravation' factor on a motorbike must be even worse, as it's got to be a sight easier to dig out the go-pro and set up shots on a moving yacht rather than a moving bike?
Yes, there are a few 'hey, look at how cool I am' offerings, but the only ones of that type which remain successful/popular have a wife/girlfriend who looks exceptionally good in a bikini (their 'followers' are soon lost, but new ones will replace them) indeed, I know two who find and pay local nubile totty to play the part of 'crew'. The majority though are trying and generally succeed in producing a decent insight into the lifestyle (stylised/glamorised to a greater or lesser degree) and tens/hundreds of thousands of people enjoy watching them. But and it's probably the same 'but' as comes across here with regard to motorcycle travel-vloggers: Their target-audience is most definitely NOT other travellers - you don't have to have done much yourself to see through them - they're primarily producing videos to entertain people who through choice or circumstance want to 'travel' & 'adventure' vicariously. So, the makers earn a few £/$/€ - perhaps enough to make the difference between making this or the next trip and not, whilst the viewers are getting their 'adventure' fix and neither's doing any harm to the rest of the travellers.

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BobnLes