Crazyguyonabike

[Thehairs1970]

Freedom of speech. Hmm. Nothing is free. Everything has a price. If you want people to be allowed to say what they want then you will pay by the consequences that the speech may create.

Proud boys not racist? You say we have to prove it. If it looks like sounds like, looks like etc, I would say it is their place to prove they aren’t. I haven’t seen any photos of black members, are there? You say they seem like reasonable people. Reasonable people with extreme views are the most dangerous as few can believe they would do anything extreme.

[Bice]

Well, he is obviously well beyond being a libertarian, open-source software intellectual and partial in this near-lunatic cultural war in the US.

I am not sure the right and cycling has a large following, and certainly not among some of these fatsos.

I did read of some leftist members of the East London Cycling Club bicycling to Spain to fight in the Civil War in the Thirties under the slogan: 'We have nothing to lose but our chains'.

[nsew]

A few of the National Clarion CC cycled off to fight fascism in Spain.

https://clarioncc.org/about-the-nationa ... n/history/

“One thing people tend to remember about the early Clarion cycling clubs is the propaganda activity of putting socialist stickers on cows and other convenient places”

[djb]

for those interested in reading about why the owner of crazyguy has his views on Google:

https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/forum/b ... ted=0&v=2X

Looking at this and other postings he's made I think the guy has views that I don't share.
Having said that, the journals posted don't reflect him but are a place for people to share their journey and not about him.

I never knew of the site owners' views until now. Will it stop me looking at CGOAB? No I don't think so, it's a good site to go to on wet winter days.

I agree that his site is really about the trip journals, and was and still is a great resource for information about bike touring in the location of your interest.

[pq]

I use CGOAB to host journals. Most other journals on there are, to me, very uninteresting but there are some real gems, especially for unusual destinations. However I stopped using it for anything else long ago, partly becasue I find the owner completely insufferable and becasue it's so US-centric. Nothing wrong with the latter of course, that's where the site is based and where most of its users come from but that doesn't interest me. I didn't know about his politics but it does explain why I found him so difficult and unpleasant to deal with.

[Mike_Ayling]

I use CGOAB to host journals. Most other journals on there are, to me, very uninteresting but there are some real gems, especially for unusual destinations. However I stopped using it for anything else long ago, partly becasue I find the owner completely insufferable and because it's so US-centric. Nothing wrong with the latter of course, that's where the site is based and where most of its users come from but that doesn't interest me. I didn't know about his politics but it does explain why I found him so difficult and unpleasant to deal with.

Don't disagree with your opinion of Neil but atm he is being Mr nice guy because he is trying to find ways to increase the donations he requires to run the site and pay himself wages.

Mike

[pq]

Something I do remember from the distant past when I did frequent the site is the owner blowing vast amounts of cash on wildly expensive, multiple tourers he never rode (and other things too I think), then almost in the same breath pleading poverty. It's none of my business how he runs his financial affairs, but I used to reckon there was a difference between being in poverty becasue of a lack of income and running out of money becasue you waste vast amounts of it. I used to donate an annual amount becasue I appreciated having my journals hosted but stopped a long time ago.

[matt2matt2002]

Something I do remember from the distant past when I did frequent the site is the owner blowing vast amounts of cash on wildly expensive, multiple tourers he never rode (and other things too I think), then almost in the same breath pleading poverty. It's none of my business how he runs his financial affairs, but I used to reckon there was a difference between being in poverty becasue of a lack of income and running out of money becasue you waste vast amounts of it. I used to donate an annual amount becasue I appreciated having my journals hosted but stopped a long time ago.

That about sums up my own opinion.
I used the site/ journals to help plan my tours abroad. Yes, there are quite a few ' look at me ' kind of journals but also a few gems.

Re Neil's character, I've been very frustrated over the years. I've seen some dark sides as well as truly kind.
I guess we all have dimensions....

Lately I've dipped into the site less frequently. I can't be drawn into his political views/ opinions.
A shame since the site is a pretty good source of tour data.

[elPedro666]

Top of the list on Ecosia [emoji106]

I'm a trendy consumer. Just look at my CLT-L09 using hovercraft full of eels.

[Mike_Ayling]

Gunton is a cunning *******. He has introduced a system of stars to be attached to the names of people who post to the site based on the amount that they have donated in the past twelve months, different colour stars denoting different amounts donated. This shames those who do not denote unless they have the hides of rhinos!

Mike

[wheelyhappy99]

In my view there's plenty of tediously detailed journals, but also a few with genuinely useful information about the area/place that would help plan tours. Even rarer, some journals include background historic/cultural/sightseeing nformation, sometimes more detailed or localised than guidebooks.
Useful as it may be, the cultural and political outlook of the owner are likely to be sufficiently repellent to many people that they wouldn't contribute to keeping it going. Much the same approach as people who avoid using Amazon because they don't pay UK taxes based on UK sales.

[HughPerson]

I do enjoy reading old journals, though I definitely agree it's necessary to sort the wheat from the chaff as mentioned. I find the search facilities pretty rudimentary - while it's useful to be able to narrow down by locale in practice only a minority of journals get correctly tagged, and the locales themselves are ... a little counter-intuitive.

That said, and even politics aside, I've been thoroughly repelled by the proprietor's behavior over the last few years. In his latest funding drive he talks about everything, drags politics into it (of course) but doesn't mention bikes or touring once. My suspicion is his pool of active users/donors is now pretty limited, and while he might get a temporary boost in funds from the cunning **** Mike describes - anyone who's going to donate quickly will, then it will dry up again.

I know this has been asked a few times of reddit etc, but wondering if there are any good equivalents? Maybe "journalling" is just going out of fashion?

[pq]

I'm sure there are equivalent sites out there and they may well look nicer and have better functionality - CGOAB is looking very dated now. But my journals are there because I wanted an audience, and no-one gets close to CGOAB. My more popular journals have been read hundreds of thousands of times and have helped a lot of people, just as I have been helped by what other people have written. I could pull my journals in protest at what the owner says but I can't see that would achieve anything meaningful. Conversely, one of my journals is the only detailed write-up on the internet (other than probably a bunch of chinese ones which I can neither search for nor understand) of a classic route which has been closed to (non-chinese) cyclists for a very long time and is unlikely to re-open. As such it's a bit of a classic and is widely referred to. Moving it so no-one can find it would be a shame.

[HughPerson]

Yeah pq, I can't argue with any of that - like you say, pulling journals down in protest wouldn't really benefit anyone, it'd be cutting off your nose to spite your face, and I definitely value those unique and detailed write-ups of unusual areas.

Given quite a few long-term users were unceremoniously kicked off recently, it's not like it would worry Neil much anyway. And he doesn't seem too bothered with attracting new users/readers (as pulling the site off Google and a hyperactive blocker indicate). So I wonder whether the big readership/exposure you describe is going to be the same in the future? Presumably it's already seen a big drop-off - there seem quite a lot of people in the "community" on reddit etc. that never have heard of it, or are surprised it's still going.

[pq]

I had no idea he'd been kicking people off, but then, I don't participate at all in any sort of discussion there. I also had no idea that all this sort of thing had moved to reddit, but I can't really do expedition touring these days so it's not really something I'm bothered about engaging with.

But I do remember thinking that running the site hadn't done Neil any good - it had gone to his head years ago, I can only imagine what he's like now. Maybe I should take copies of all my stuff. I'd hate to lose it all if he throws his toys out of the pram. As I recall, there's some sort of facility on the site for doing that.

All very sad really. It should be a great site.