The cast:
- Tracksterman: Grumpy bloke who lives in a tent in the wild places of Scotland (and sometimes China)
- Ben Hunter: Appears to be a fairly normal person who wants to climb 282 Scottish mountains in winter
- Mark Beaumont: Fast round the world cyclist
- Alastair Humphreys: Slow round the world cyclist
The background:
Ben Hunter wants to attempt the challenge of tackling 282 of Scotland’s highest peaks in winter. This is no mean feat. He seeks sponsorship to help fund the project. Various articles appear online about his goal. He postpones the trip because “a major sponsor went into administration”. He postpones the trip “to next winter”.
Tracksterman writes a blog post about this, citing various concerns. Most of them are not relevant to my piece. The ones that are relevant revolve whether you should / must have a “track record [to] attract sponsorship”, the “emerging trend for beardy adventurers whose main skill lies in self promotion and blagging free stuff” and “lots of media fanfare and free stuff without actually doing anything”.
What it has to do with me:
Very little! Except that I get mentioned for cycling round the world “with lots of enthusiasm, a few quid in his back pocket, and not much else.” I met Tracksterman (aka Pete) when cycling through Xinjiang. He’s a nice guy (despite his grumpy online mien) and I really like his blog (despite his grumpiness!).
And what has it to do with Mark? Nothing except a nonsensical side-swipe at him for not cycling round the world “properly”.
The questions / points that interest me from this include:
- How much of your expedition plan should you divulge in public before the event begins or before you are 100% certain it is going to happen?
- Is announcing you are going to do something and then failing to start any better or worse than announcing you are going to do something and then failing to finish?
- Is the reward of free gear and (VERY rarely) cash sponsorship worth the seemingly inevitable resentment that it generates (in terms of “selling out”, “self whoring” or “boasting and exaggerating”)?
- Once you stick your head above the parapet prepare to get shot! Mark Beaumont is a really nice guy. He cycled round the world really fast, broke a world record, got on TV and subsequently sold more books than I can ever hope to sell. The price he pays for all this success is occasional mean jibes on the internet (and this absurdly offensive hate campaign). It’s nothing more than tall poppy syndrome.
- Whilst there are obvious advantages to getting sponsored, and there are trips that can only happen with sponsorship, there are also reasons why nobody should blog their first expedition and why we should still do trips even if nobody ever knew what we were doing.
- Why does virtually everyone feel the need to blog about their adventures now? Tracksterman is a good case-in-point. It is a blog primarily about his desire to get away from the world. So why share it with the world? (I am glad he does, by the way). His blog is not designed for interaction or community. You cannot comment on posts or drop him an email. What is the point of his blog and the time it takes to produce?
Plenty of food for thought…
That’s a fair old ‘heavy’ blog post Alastair!!! Need to come back and read it several times over. Good one, thanks. (Reckon you might get a lot of feedback!).
Damn, forgot to press the ‘notify re follow up comments’ button. Done now!
I’m going to blog my first trip. It won’t break records or even new ground. It’s western, well travelled and challenging only because of my budget (5 euros a day?!) and the time of year. Reasons? I love to write. I think I’m good at crafting a sentence but weak at telling a story. What a chance to practice. And it’s winter. That’s fifteen hours of darkness in a human condom for a tent. What the hell else am I going to do?
Good post. Interesting to see how many of your followers on this blog and comments and from kinda ‘wannabe’ adventurers/explorers and I don’t mean that in a horrid way.
I would think everybody does things for different reasons. If all you want to do is break a record, you probably don’t care about where you do it. I’m sure nobody in the Tour de France looks at the pretty French countryside and if Baumgartner jumped from space for the view he probably wouldn’t have done it above an empty desert. Mark Beaumont wanted a record, Alastair wanted a good adventue; both got what they wanted. Reading Mark’s book about the America’s I’d say he was looking for more of an adventure and was fed up with the telvision at some times. On the other side; breaking records and making big statements sells better. I guess the grass is always greener on the other site…
I guess there’s as many reasons as there are people for blogging / publishing about their lives and thoughts. But in the end the main reason is probably that every human at some point just wants to say: hey, look at me, I did this!
And really, why not?
Why would you not want people to blog about their adventures? As someone that’s been trying to do that for years, I would want people to see what I’m doing and, potentially, be inspired. After all, you do the same, don’t you?
I don’t really want people not to blog. Of course not! What I want is for people to think WHY they are blogging and check whether that adds to or detracts from their experience.
I just posted this comment on “nobody should blog their first expedition” but now see it is more relevant here!
This is very interesting Al…
I love my memories of my first expeditions,many of them with you, where we didn’t have to faff around with blogs, or what people thought of us… whether we were sleeping in weird places, dying our hair with henna, jumping in rivers… the thought “this will look cool on facebook/my blog, etc” never crossed our minds… sadly, these days, for me, I think it does.
On Cycling Home From Siberia – I wrote a monthly blog, really for friends and family, and it helped get me places to stay with friends of friends, and ultimately got me a publisher, etc, though that was not the intention. In a way, I started that blog because I wanted to take on my fear of writing, which I think is perhaps a good reason to write one.
My more recent expeditions – especially the Walking Home From Mongolia – was nauseatingly full of self-promotion, blogging, etc… though I suppose it was a professional expedition. I was well paid for a weekly column in a newspaper, which was a big hassle to write, and took up half of my day off each week, but also paid the rent whilst I was away. We also raised almost 50k GBP for charity through the expedition, and I guess much of this was probably helped by all the social media stuff. We also had a commission from Nat Geo, so were filming the heck out of it, which obviously changed the experience hugely. (Have you got any blogs about whether it is good to film an expedition? I’ll be interested to see how you find filming Oman)
However, now that I am writing this expedition up as a book, my memories of having to deal with all the self-promotion before/during the expedition are fairly sad ones, and I do wonder to what extent ones actual experience/story is changed, by over promoting/documenting the trip. I think you get a much better experience, and will probably write a better book, if you don’t bother filming/blogging/tweeting the thing as it goes. But if you are wanting to maximise it for professional purposes, then I guess you need to use all these media – write and film and blog and tweet, etc, even though each one of these will detract from the experience, and from each other… I guess that is the price we pay by making a living from expeditions.
I do feel sad when I meet or hear from someone on their first expedition, who is thinking lots and lots about the book/show/publicity they will get from the trip, rather than just meandering their way across a continent or two for the experience.
Hmmm.
Is it possible to photograph, film and write about a journey for the spirit that should drive all good writing, photography and filmmaking, and then deal with the ‘business’ end of things afterwards? I hope so.
I’ve a mixed relationship with Twitter and Facebook, though. I’ve never ‘live-tweeted’ a journey, and have no interest in doing so. The best way I can describe the blogs I write from the road is that they’re a way of making sense of my own life-story as it happens. For that reason, I would write them even if nobody read them but my Mum.
That honesty has attracted a fair-sized readership, but not a big one. And I am sure that were I to ‘professionalise’ it all, I’d get far more visitors, far more free stuff for my trips, and far more exposure about them. But I don’t find size and scale to be motivators in line with my priorities, which is why that hasn’t happened (and why I’m permanently skint).
Ultimately, I think, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Mistakes are made and hopefully learnt from. And we all move on. (And let’s not forget that this field attracts big egos – which is probably why it all sometimes seems so dramatic!)
I disagree with you here:
I believe that keepin’ it real is the best route to long-term success (though perhaps not instant).
Great post,
I’m currently on my first big bicycle tour and I’ve travelling around Europe for 9 months. I have been tweeting as I go mostly so friends and family know I’m safe while travelling and can keep in touch as I travel.
I recently started blogging about my trip as well, the reason I started the blog was mainly so I could have a decent record of what I’ve done on this journey. Having this record in public means others can hopefully be inspired to do their own trips the same way I was when reading blogs before heading out the door.
I limit my writing to days when I have some time to spare and something to say. I don’t have a commitment to write so it leaves me free to do it when it suites me. I keep a small personal dairy as well which I can look back on when it comes to writing a fully blog post.
As with everything in life it’s all about moderation, don’t place such a big emphasis on writing that it spoils your experience of the journey.
Scott
My blog helped me to be myself and accept myself- which was one of the major things i achieved on my expedition. It helped because i had to write with one voice to all my audiences and i learned to write what i truely thought rather than what i thought i should think. I had some really good feedback about that and one or two people said it inspired them to do things they thought they couldnt. both great reasons i reckon.
Good reasons, I agree.
I prefer not to tell the next adventure publicly until I really have to. That’s just because it leaves me much more time than if I had to explain everybody that asked what I’m up to. It’s much easier to just say it’s still a secret.
I guess I’ve always told about my expeditions. And always completed them. And always written about them too. My detailed journals from every night of a trip are something I’m incredibly grateful to have for myself, even if I wasn’t mining them to write for the public. But if I wasn’t writing a book, would I have been dedicated enough to write every night, even after the most difficult day on a difficult journey? And those are the reflections I’m most thankful I have.
But starting as an adventurer before social media existed helped calm the craziness, I think. It’s easier to add (or decide not to) extra communication pieces to a journey when you have a basic comfort about how to plan and execute expeditions, even if you still are pushing your own limits. New adventurers have it harder now than it was even a few years ago.
Yes – I think beginning trips before the era of having to Tweet everything that happens is a good education.
I blog for various reasons:
To tell my mates about the world
To publicise in some tiny way facets of the world i think people should hear about
To motivate me to write / film and get better at them
It’s the first step towards being paid to do what i love…
which is currently to become a right little jungle boy. I’ve lived with the Matses, been healed (often) by a herbalist and been one of the hosts of a traditional indigenous fiesta. As soon as i get together the funds, I’m going to go back, to: learn how / live like the Matses lived when uncontacted (40 years ago); start an apprenticeship with the herbalist; learn to lead songs at traditional fiestas. These are genuinely plans rather than hopes.
Check it out:
http://www.wordsofwander.wordpress.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_i6i29W8vo&feature=plcp
Paddy Le Flufy, The Accountant Adventurer
ps Gad self-promotion feels wierd; hope it ain’t too rude here…