Speaking of Challenges
A new month, a new challenge? But that question wasn’t the real reason for this post.
In the wake of being asked to remove all my posts from the cgoab site, I have been thinking about what to do with the many journals that have only been published there and no where else. Jeff over at Cycleblaze offered to transfer any touring journals I have to the Cycleblaze collection. I am very thankful for that. Some were already there, but not all.
I have other journals, the coffeeneuring challenges from 2017 and 2018 for example, which would be completely out of context on Cycleblaze. I didn’t want to lose the journals or just have them exist as zip files on my hard drive, so I have been recreating them on my own website. It’s been a wearisome job of copying and pasting, setting up links, editing and re-formatting photos. This also led to the necessity of reorganizing my website. I’m not finished but for the time being I have spent enough hours at the computer.
When I revisited my earlier coffeeneuring challenge journals, I saw how the first challenge got me into cycling again. Until then I had been touring, but at home I limited my riding to shopping and errands around town. The March 2017 Challenge changed that. Furthermore, I got to know a lot of nice people there! You know who you are. It was such a good idea to create Cycle365 as a new home for our day rides and challenges.
I guess I just wanted to say thank you to all of you for keeping Cycle365 alive and active.
Suzanne
I'm a US born ex-pat, having lived most of my adult life in Munich, Germany. Cycling and photography are my favorite things.
21 response to "Speaking of Challenges"
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Suzanne, thanks for posting the link to your March 2017 challenge. I really enjoyed both the photos and your writing. So thank you for putting in the work to recreate it on your site. As a relative latecomer to Cycle365, this has all gotten me very curious about how it (Cycle365) came to be. In the meantime, I agree, I like our active little community.
Cycle365 originated 3 years ago when we were ejected from CrazyGuy. We were among the early rejectees, for reasons not worth going into – it was very similar to the recent experiences of so many others.
When we left, CycleBlaze was just in its infancy and we were more or less part of a beta test group to help shake out the new application. Fun fact: we were rewarded for being early adapters: that’s Rachael cycling down the west coast of Crete at the top of the Forum page.
We migrated all of our older journals from CrazyGuy to CycleBlaze, but as we’ve just been discussing there was no place for day rides, or for the type of content that was posted on the Bicycle Life page of that old site. As Suzanne indicates, we had a nice little virtual community going there, not unlike what we have here on Cycle365. We (Rachael, primarily) built Cycle365 in the hopes that we could sustain that group in a new location. All of the initial contributors came from Bicycle Life. The Navigator supplied our new name for us.
Thanks for the history lesson Scott. I knew some of the Cycleblaze story, having communicated a few times with Jeff a few years ago. I hadn’t heard about the tie-in with Cycle365 however. I’m just happy to be a small part of both communities.
And we are happy to have you!
I love reading your journals and posts and greatly appreciate all your encouraging posts on our journals. It will be great to have you on Cycleblaze!
Thanks, Bob, glad you enjoyed my little blast from the past.
I am totally out of the loop of what has continued to be happening on CG. I never did much there but lurk and read. I posted only a few times, so I feel no loss of anything. I have no understanding of why he (CG that he is) has asked you (Suzanne) to remove your posts! If that happened to me, I would not have the first idea of how to transfers anything. In fact, I have a few posts on a WP account that I stopped using, and do not know how to get them over to my other site.
Anyway, it sounds like CG continues on.
Back in 2018 I left Neil’s site voluntarily – after receiving an aggressive email from him. Now just a few weeks ago he informed me (and many others) that he was deleting my account since I was publishing on “that hostile site” CycleBlaze. He did give me time to download my journals as zip files which contain all my texts and photos. Fair enough since I was actually using his site but not interested in contributing in any way. Too bad that things went that way. CGOAB is probably one of the largest collections of bicycle journals.
Oh, how did it get to be a new month already! I feel remiss. Thanks for the reminder.
And, of course, thank you for following us over to Cycle365 three years ago! It wouldn’t be the same without you.
Aw shucks, thanks.
Sorry to hear you too have been ejected from CG.
I have one, count ’em ONE journal on BL — I must be under the radar — so far.
Great photo of you and the snail!
Thanks, Rich! I think only contributors to CycleBlaze have been banned from cgoab.
I’m so glad to see your rides and vicariously journey around Germany and further afield through you. I empathize with your pain, as I do remember the long, painful process of cut and paste into my website. I was lucky, though, in that I was creating a new site and could design out a day rides menu to start.
I voluntarily jumped from the sinking ship in 2017, but I’d been thinking about it for about 18 months prior due to requests from family/friends for something that was mobile phone friendly and that would send notifications, as well as not feeling that the ship was all that stable and my content not necessarily safe or in my control. I hope all of the tech stuff is complete before the better weather comes for you and you want to be outside instead of on the computer!
Thanks, Em! Yes, it would have been easier if I had designed my website better in the beginning and not made all those drop down menus within drop down menus. That wasn’t very user friendly. Changing that is time consuming and boring and I have to really concentrate to get the new links going to the right places! Now that I have the new content on the site, I can go back and reorganize the existing pages.
I’ll be trying to sort out my internet accounts soon, so I’m very interested to see what you’re doing Suzanne. Looks like you’ve purchased a domain name which I’ve heard might be expensive. I’m setting up a Blog Spot account to put all my old posts and maybe photos and videos. I’ve just finished doing my cycling clubs latest newsletter as I’m the editor, so I’ve now some time to sort this out. I’m reluctant to say much more as this is a public site.
Hi Led,
Yes, I did purchase a domain name. I use Weebly, a free platform for the first year. If I got it straight, I think I now pay 30€ for two years for the domain and 120€ for two years for the site. So it’s 75€ a year which I am willing to pay. I enjoy having a place for my journals etc. I doubt if I ever have any visitors except when I link to Cyclelife. 🙂
Those old Bicycle Life days were some good times and I’m glad most of us are now gathered here. There are a couple people I miss. Anybody remember Daniel Metrick? He was hilarious.) I’m glad you are able to reproduce your work on your personal website. When I got my e-mail of rejection from Neil, I went to the website and deleted my account immediately. Perhaps it was a rash move, but defiant just the same.
By the way, I printed Neil’s e-mail and I’m thinking of putting it in a frame and hanging it proudly in the Greg Room.
What a rebel you are! Sounds like you’ve been brushing up on your Camus.
Greg, the Cycleblaze Guy, Jeff, said he could probably get it for you. You put a lot of effort into your cooking show, I’d give it a try.
Thanks, Led. Coincidentally, I have been thinking about reviving the “Chef G Cooking Channel.” I had a lot of fun with that. I was hoping to find a new venue for such a thing, but the talk about personal websites on this thread has gotten me to thinking of creating my own website. One thing I know for sure is that I won’t be calling myself “The Top Chef of Topicwise” anymore.
Sad to say, once I got The Boot, there is only one long-abandoned entry left on Topicwise Cooking. Anyway, I think I can re-create many of those posts since I still have most of the pictures and videos and some crude notes. I’ve also got some ideas for new food stories and recipes. I’ll keep you posted.
Yes, I remember Daniel Mettrick. He had a tremendous sense of humor, I loved what he wrote. I just checked and saw that his last coffeeneuring challenge was Nov 2018, “Where has the coffee bean?”