Motorcycle Explorer August 2015 Issue 7 | Page 26

Three time author and MEM columnist Graham Field gives us some insights on putting fingers to keys in the world of trip blogging. PEN TO PAPER B e it a book, blog, website, journal, status update or a 140 character tweet, riding off generally resorts in reporting back from the road, with varying degrees of detail, coherence and regularity. I have met many travellers whose blogs have got the better of them, as they adopt the worldly wanderer lifestyle the logging of their new status becomes the bane of their journey. Although in jest I’ve heard it said ‘we have to stop doing so much, the task of reporting it all is daunting.’ My reply is ‘then don’t’ It’s probably true that once a trip goes past a three week holiday there is a need to slow the pace and stay put for a while. To remove the panniers and take a few ride outs from a place you can call base camp. There is a comfort in familiarising yourself with local facilities, doing a little bike maintenance and equipment repair, and of course update friends, family and followers as to your latest exploits. Stopping is an important part of the journey, assessing, reflecting, processing and planning the next bit. The obsessive blogger who craves, chronological coverage of their story so far often agonises to a point of frustration. There hasn’t been the time, the memories are muddled, place names forgotten. In an effort to record all that has gone their account becomes an ‘and then, and then, and then’ torrent of names and half remembered days. It’s like being sat next to a raved out reveller on a plane back from Ibiza who just needs someone to talk at they come down from their class A holiday. There is as little joy in reading such relentless ramblings as there is in writing them. Chronicles of cohesion is not necessary for the sake of a complete account. And I’ve seen this compulsion of listing previous experiences occur at the cost of missing what’s happening right now beyond the laptop. Consider the hand written letter, the biro on wafer thin light blue airmail paper, a letter of love from abroad, expressing the feelings of a single significant experience . Better to skip to an antidote which can be recalled and written with a passion than to list a stream of non events like the literal equivalent of unedited GoPro footage. So what you have to decide is, much like a diary, are you writing for yourself or for everyone else. Is it to jog your memory, refresh your recall in years to come, or is it an account of your mile by mile view of the world as you pass through it, so all who come across it can experience it through your eyes. There is only one blog I read, my little escapism into someone else’s journey, which is not like anything I have ever done. Also the qualities of the person in question are ones I wish I had. So for me it’s not just learning about the environment she’s transversing it’s also about her open and receptive attitude which always attracts good people. That in turn for me reminds and restores my faith in a world that, if we got our impression solely from the media we would never dare venture out into.