Glossing

A thread over at bikeforums asks whether journals of bicycle tours "gloss over the bad bits", or skip the less enjoyable aspects of the trip. I have to admit that I don't generally get the time to read as many as I would like these days. I have, however, written a few of them, so I do have some input on this topic.

Personally, I filter what should or shouldn't be included on the basis of what sticks in my mind. There are so many things that go through my head on every ride that it's ridiculous. Sometimes they're thoughts that have absolutely no relevance to the ride itself at all. Often on a bike tour (particularly in the less interesting stretches), I'll be riding along thinking about how I'm going to deal with something else going on in my life at the time -- seeing that particular issue from a new perspective and coming up with ways to deal with it. The point of all this is to illustrate just how many things go through my mind during a trip.

Often some of the emotions I was feeling at a particular time of the day will have disappeared completely by the time I get around to writing about them. Sure, I can jog my memory pretty quickly by looking at the map (or simply starting the process of recording the day's events) and thinking of where I've just ridden, but that isn't going to bring back every thought from the last six hours. Consequently, I take the view that if a particular emotion doesn't come flooding back at that point, perhaps it wasn't in my head all that strongly to begin with.

I don't believe that I skip over the bad things, but then I'm also a great believer in an old business expression: "Things are never as good or as bad as they seem". Often something that I thought was the end of the world a little earlier will appear as something that wasn't so bad after all by the end of the day. A classic example was snapping my pannier rack in New Zealand last year. I actually thought for a few horrible moments that my tour was, if not over, then certainly seriously impeded. By the time I came around to publishing this in an online journal (i.e. by the time I next had Internet Access to do it), I had put together an "emergency" repair which had managed to last over 200km.

Sure I could write about the uncertainty of the repair at the time (and I did). However, at the time I was feeling those emotions, I was too busy trying to find a solution, so I'm not sure it would have come out the same. Perhaps that's what happens to other people too. It's just a change in perspective about a particular event when reviewing it at the end of the day. Perhaps the subsequent reflection on the events of the day make them seem a little different. On the other hand, I guess it doesn't really explain those who write about what a wonderful journey they had before concluding "I will never do this again", but as I said at the start, I don't get around to reading that many journals these days.

Maybe one or two of the readers here have an opinion on some of my ride reports.

Oh yeah, the picture above is from somewhere near Little Nerang Dam earlier this week.