Trip report Sept and Oct 2026
TL;DR: just need a place to keep the notes..
Classic picture entering Poland:
Dino
Moto in the Cloud.
and more cloudy
very cloud:
Wednesday, 21 October 2026
Saturday, 6 December 2025
Motorcycle Photo Collection.
As per Title...
Once, a while ago, I documented my ideal room for "work on the road".
Now, as I'm getting sentimental, and I need better documentation of my "time on the road". Hence this collection of notes and pictures.
The routes between 2016 and 2024 were "logged and mapped" by myadventure.bike. but that app + webstite have stopped.
I've got the maps saved (link)
And here is a short set of pictures
In my first few years on the motorcycle: I had to do The Classics (some passes I had already done by car as well...)
Here was the Transfagarasan in 2014..
And I had to ride it to Paris.
And Rome
That first motorcycle did just over 180.000 km before it was truly exhausted...
Moto nr 2 did similar expeditions..
I once tried to take a picutuire of an "open" boder-crossing, when a german couple "in rente" parked brutally in front of me becasue they wanted a quick-foto of the same ...
And of course I visited Zeljava Airbase in ex-Yugoslavia...
That 2nd motorcycle also did over 160.000 km, and collected a lot of vignettas..
Motorcycle nr 3... some would consider this the first "Proper Touring" moto..
(Yes, I also visited the Shipka Monument, I know it is an issue in Bulgaria...)
And the famous french Viaduc de Milau
Moto nr 3: collected Vignettas and another 163.000 Kilometers...
Motorcycle nr 4:
Slovenia near Kranj, the view of Mangart.
Good Memories!
(after nr 4 got stolen in Milano, I've remained moto-less for a while...)
But I hope to be Back Soon.
Friday, 20 December 2024
Location History, how to keep it online as souvenirs?
TL;DR: Google will remove "location history" form the web-version of maps. But I like browsing my own Location-History for memories, souvenirs. I would like to find some alternative.
Background:
Since I started using Android, Google has kept track of my Location. I was aware of that. If I didnt want to be tracked, I switched off "location" on the phone. I'm also aware that the Telcos and other clever tech-app companies can always find me, or at least find my approximate location from the cell-tower location anyway.
I Use it occasionally. I kind of Like to see where I was. Sometimes use it to re-find a good B+B that I remember from years ago. Sometimes to refesh my memory on "what I did on a given date/time". Or to find how exactly I went from A to B over those nice roads that I remember from way-back.
Example:
This was a memorable trip through Beautiful Areas of Spain and Portugal. And maps allows me to zoom in nicely on "which road...?" etc..
This Will Disappear... ?
Google keeps warning me...
When I am logged into google, my location-history is currently (Dec 2024) still web-brows-able on google-maps, from any browser where I log in. But this capability will be removed by May 2025. After that my location will _only_ be kept on my device. This makes me a) more dependent on my device, and b) unable to browse via Web...
Hence the Question...
What are the Alternatives ?
I've used many "tracking" apps already. The main disadvantages are :
1. You need to Actively use the app: Switch it on, Upload regularly, manage privacy, save/publish (daily) maps etc...
2. The Vendor/maintainer of the app may discontinue it.. and then you loose.. (Or have to start managing your gpx-files and your own maps..).
I've got a collection of maps and memories on this blog already. But as a Lazy Person I dont want to spent too much time maintaining it.
And even blogger may disappear one day, so I need to think of an alternative here as well..
Suggestions Welcome.
Monday, 7 October 2024
Tracking Oct 2023. POUG - HROUG - ITOUG
For this trip, I'm trying to use ramblr, but the first day failed. I will try to add a trip of a map-of-trip every day.
02 Nov 2024
Used the "Route National" to enjoy riding through rural France. Stayed in a "hotel-paid-by-points" just across the border in Germany, near Luxembourg.
01 Nov 2024
Crossed into France. I had forgotten my moto-boots in Geneva so had to go back to pick those up, even if I dont have a moto at the moment. I entered France via Gex (Jura) and slept in Lons-le-Saunier. Beautiful tour to drive in Excellent weather. And next to the hotel was a "famous" french restaurant that served Excellent Ribs. Yummi!
31 Oct 2024
Moved to another friend near Lausanne, and he arranged an evening with five database-geeks and some partners having pizza. Great Evening.
30 Oct 2024
Crossed into Switzerland throught the Tunnel du Grand Staint-Bernard and stayed with friends in Geneva. Really enjoyed the drive, And it was Great meeting old friends.
29 Oct 2024
Finally got a car (they changed it 3x when they realized it would go all the way to The Hague...). Getting out of Milano with only half-functioning navi was interesting, but I drove it to Aosta. Found the Best B and B so far on this trip, and gave it a 10/10 review.
28 Oct 2024
Filed report with Police (that took some waiting in queue, and my italian improved a lot trying to read their mandatory DIY-terminal. Insurance finally found wheels but so late in the day I accepted their suggestion to wait until tomorrow. The complicating factor for a rental agency is: car will be returned in The Hague, not Italy. I changed to a cheaper hotel and got lucky: the restaurant opposite did a Really Good Steak.
27 Octy 2024
Ai. After breakfast: no moto. Stolen. Police (long line, please come back tomorrow). Insurance (helpful, but what can they do, at least they promised replacement-transport). Lots of Paper + phonecalls. Partner had to leave for airport by 12:00, and I was left alone, while Insurance was trying to find replacement-wheels (which would be a car...). Had a good Curry, which was only 200m from hotel (thx to google-maps).
25, 26 Oct 2024
Touristing in Milano. Dumo, Brera, Castle. Excellent food every day.
24 Oct 2024
ItOUG tech-day; Interesting presentions. Mine went Well, which is always a relief. Evening meal wat Good too.
23 Oct 2024
Just rode the moto into Milano, for sport I avoided tolls, which made it a lot more "interesting" and the phone-based BMW-navi-app failed a few times in city centere. It took me all morning... But by 1500, I met up with my partner, and went to speaker-dinner. Excellent day, Good Meal.
22 Oct 2024
Entering Italy from Nova Gorica. Approaching Milano for ItOUG meeting..
Found a Really nice hotel at S Pellegrino to sit down an tweak my ppt+demo
21 Oct 2024
Morning at Abakus office (Iskratel), and afternoon to move towards Nova Gorica for dinner with Jure. Via small roads, of course. Slovenia is a Very Good moto-country... Dinner was at a known-good location and a long chat with Jure.
20 Oct 2024
Moved towards Kranj, staying off toll-roads, and staying at a Gostisce where I know the Food is good...
19 Oct 2024
Checked out and did a very short ride over small roads in Istria Beautiful. I know some of those roads from earlier visits to the ares. Really nice to ride there. But after 3 intense days I need to recover. Small B+B with nice view.
16 Oct 2024:
From Naklo to Rovinj, but not using "toll roads". The result is a Very Good Ride. Checked in early at hotel and now for 3 days of Conference + party.
15 Oct 2024:
Celje to Kranj, via small, winding and interesting Roads. Slovenia is a Very Good motorcycling country. Lunch at Abakus.
14 Oct 2024:
A cold start (4C), and Excellent riding first hrs. One appointment got cancelled, so I decided to go all-in, and "sprint" into Slovenia.
Tomorrow Lunch at Abakus, they are Always There with Coffee and food and a Desk with Wifi when I pass through the area.
13 Oct 2024:.
Marathon around Poznan made getting out of town a bit difficult
Weather was Showery - Sunny - Showery - Sunny. Raingear was sufficient. Traffic was generally Light (for a Sunday?)
Found the last hotel before CZ border which had good Restaurant reviews, but... Resto was Closed when I wanted to go eat.. grrr. Writing this while hungry.. will go out to find place to eat.
11-12 Oct: POUG, Good as Ever.
10 Oct 2024: Nice 2ndary roads to Poznan - Was a Good Ride.
Got there on time, parking was a slight hassle (hotel makes a huuuge profit on parking, even on a moto that does not occupy a parking-space....)
09 Oct 2024: Was a Really Good Ride. And a "known good" hotel in Olesnice, very Sovjet-style but Good, including good Restaurant.
Link to ramblr-trip 08 Oct 2024
This recording also failed. ramblr doesnt work well in combi with the bmw-navi-app (which is Required if you want to navigate... ). In fact, it seems Nothing works in combi with the bmw-app.
So... here is another google-maps with the approx route.
link to ramblr-trip 07 Oct 2024.
The map from google-location-history is better:
Thursday, 26 September 2024
Motorcycle Trips Saved
The site with my beloved routes is off the air. Shame...
I can write a long story as to the features that I Want in a Trip-Tracker, but that has to wait. There are some posts on ADV Rider dot Com Where I asked around for a good tracker-app. And at some point in 2026, thx to Sjaak Lukassen I found MyAdventure dot Bike.
It was Perfect !
Until the team behind the app stopped it. The guys had out-grown the need for the tracking-system. And it had never been a financial success, more of a hobby for them. I did get several good lunches and dinners out of them whenever I passed through Bulgaria though. As an IT-(database-)person and a passionate moto-rider, I was the tester who opened the most tickets. :-).
Now, on closing the site, the team behind My-Adventure dot Bike was kind enough to send me all the raw-data which the app had uploaded from my phone.
The raw-data was readable, usable. With Python I could load it into a database, and with SQL I could extract and format it to KML-files, I was able to re-construct the routes on google-maps.
I took the generated KML-files for my dearest routes, and uploaded them onto mymaps dot google dot com. I also saved the raw data (GPS-logs) and an Oracle exp of my data stored in proper tables, in case I want to re-use it at some time.
The maps are a little more primitive than the original ones from my-adventure, and they lack the comments and photos. But they still allow me to check where I was on what dates. And the memories are right there.
Before these mapped trips, there were several memorable ones in 2014 and 2015 as well. Those are documenten in some of the blogs and in my "location history". You'd have to ask my friends...
Here are the links to my maps-per-year, from 2016 to 2024.
First routes logged were in 2016: Spring, Summer and several Autumn trips. Some smaller ones like Lille.
In 2017, there were two Spring trips, a visit to St Petersburg, a POUG in Krakow, and a lot of autumn-activity.
In 2018, I repeated approximately the 2017-rounds.
2019 was a Very Busy year.
But also the year where my old S3 died, which split the RDD-trip in to two part. Rushing form AOUG, to CH, to RDD, and down to Bulgaria and back via Slovenia. I met a Lot of ppl on that trip, notably one Employee who was on working remotely without informing his employer (no FB pictures please..). End of 2019 also had the first big PG conference, in Warsaw.
With Covid in 2020, a lot got cancelled, I did only two trips and less extensive trips. But it was still a memorable year. By July I Urgently had to get out of the apartment, hence Urgent Round Trip. And notably POUG Stubbornly and Succesfully did a Conference in September with "distance", e.g. only 1 in every 4 seats was used.
In 2021 I did some catchup and I finally took my first "Selfie at Black Sea". POUG was Good as always. and the HROUG had a Great Party with Fireworks. The detour to Avignon, Barcelona and Lisbon was a Good Ride, but was mapped wrongly as soon the coordinates got W of Greenwich.
For 2022, the spring tour was one of my longest. I went to Ukr border in Romania and returned via .. The Autumn-trip was POUG, PG-day Vienna, visits to friends and an exceptionally early DOAG that year. The final trip was for HR and visiting frieds in Balkan and CH. The ride through CH was exceptionally Good because of the weather that week.
Disaster struck in 2023, I had to abandon the Spring-trip and on return I was taken straight to hospital. But I tried to catch up in Autumn by visiting HROUG, POUG and DOAG.
Last trip on My-Adv was in 2024: two conferences, RoOUG and MakeIT, and some good rides in between.
And there we are. In 2024, my-adv dot bike was discontinued, and I need to look for another trip-loggin app. Polarsteps is ok, but not quite as good for "what I want". Keep looking.
History ?
I hope I can keep those trips on the internet. Mainly so I can view and research them myself. And to help my Memory when I want to recall "when was I there, what did it look like again"... The photos are in my own archive and are also good to relate to the dates and places.
And Maybe, some day, my Kids or my future Grandkids can have a look here as well...
Saturday, 25 November 2023
Beware of snow on roads
TL;DR: when in doubt, dont ride the motorcycle.
Warning: Don't do this yourself (unless you are from Poland and own a KTM, YKWYA).
Sometimes I gamble.
And today I rode head-on into a (narrow) snowfront. I was Lucky, it worked out OK. But it was Scary as Hell.
The Morning-View: (I forgot to screen-shot the weather-radar..)
Due to a lot of accumulated fatigue, I had a Really Good Night Sleep. But wake-up was a bit of a cruel surprise. After checking the parking (view of the moto) and the weather-forecast and weather-radar, I had to make decision. Visiting the eldest daughter would bring me straight into the higher part of the Belgian Ardennes, with big risk of snow and mostly un-cleared roads. I decided to sprint N-E first, where the snowfront looked narrower on the radar, and I would be on Autobahn or other good, hopefully clean-slushed roads.
Also, this early in season, the frost is not yet "in the ground", and as proof there were still puddles of water on the parking so most of the falling snow would melt on hitting the road. And given sufficiently busy roads (and not too much snow) any falling snow would get "slushed away" quickly. Ambient temperature had just risen from -0.5C to +1.5C, which I considered a good sign. If I choose my route carefully, N-Easterly, I could probably pop through that oncoming snowfront. (I have done similar things before, but not in the Eiffel area of Germany)
Screenshot of the actual route:
The funny sling to NE you see in the route is me trying to find the narrowest part of the snowfront.
I was "lucky".. As soon as I hit the Autobahn North, snow started seriously dribbling down: I was hitting that "front", and expecting (hoping) it would be narrow and not too intense.
The first snow was ok-ish, it wasnt too thick and it melted on touchdown. Temperature quickly dropped from +2.0C to 0C.
But soon the snow turned out to be composed of rather Thick, Fluffy, Sticky and Abundant. And it stuck on the areas where there was little or no traffic. This being Germany, a lot of the cars took the all-snow left-lane, to overtake the slow trucks (and the idiot-motorcyle). Cars have 4 wheels and boast about winter-tyres and driving skills... But on Two Wheels, I have to be a little more careful.
In very little time, I was confined to what remained of the "black asphalt", cleaned up by the fairly busy traffic in the right-lane. Getting off onto a P(arking) or an Autohof (service-area) was not an attractive option: all exit-ramps were covered in white... Temperature had dropped to -0.5C. I was trying to calmly stay in the right-lane, traffic doing 60km/h, which is unusually slow for a level Autobahn, but felt a lot safer compared to the faster-going, white lane on the left.
So for about 30min I followed trucks + slowfolks. Feeling more+more "slush" remaining in my lane, and trying to apply the "ride loose, trust the moto" theory. Hoping this snow-front would be as narrow as I had ... gambled.
Alas, no pictures because stopping wasn't an option...
I started slowly to Despair when my lane-options became reduced to two rather narrow "truck ruts" (effectively one rut, bcse I was not going to risk to "change-lanes"). Trying not to panic. That snowfront had seemed so narrow and innocent on the weather-map...
Again, I was Lucky.
Temp was going up to 1.5C... The snowflakes became smaller, and more wet. And quite suddenly the snow turned into rain, and the road got back to a reassuringly wet, black asphalt.
For the rest of the ride, I had the luxury of feeling Cold and I was slowly getting wet from repeated fairly heavy (rain)showers (water always enters somewhere...). In the clear-sky moments between the showers, I saw several rainbows (should have taken more pictures).
For tonight, I'm staying with family in NL, and tomorrow "normal service will resume" from The Hague.
Moral of the Story, like an ambitious young manger once said in a meeting:
Hope is Not a Strategy.
(dont ever use the word "hope" when talking to (aspiring)managers, you'll get cut-off at ankles with that quip ...)
Sunday, 23 July 2023
Sleeping (or not) in Hotels
TL;DR: Proud Saboteur of Hotel Appliances here. I want some advice searching through photos.
Trigger for this post was a critical tweet from Connor McDonnald about the challenge of sleeping in hotel rooms.
Luxury and other hotels have tendency to put lots of gadgets, electronics and appliances in the room with (bleeping) lights and (whirring) motors and (clicking) relays, all of which can keep you awake.
In the late 90s and in the 00s I've spent a lot of time on/near airports with regular jetlag on top of all the inconveniences. Never a bad sleeper, I seem to be ok with outside noises or lights. But what Really Gets me is the little Internal noises of aircos and minibar.
If I need to I will pull the plug from the wall, and I tend to proudly tweet it out like:
Number of Days Since Last Sabotage of Noisy Fridge: 0
Accompanied by a picture of the wall-plug in question, laying idle. I have a good number of those pictures by now and like certain other photo-subjects, I would like to make a collage of them, just for fun.
Another subject would be: hotel-TV's used as computer-monitor.
Or hotel-desks of dubieus usage (like super-uncomfortable chairs... ). Lots of trivial but kinda-funny topics you encounter and photograph while travelling.
Here arises the problem: my photos are stored in subdirs per month, and to find all photos of a certain topic, I have to use my own "Eyeball-Mark-I" to sift through those galleries, which is time consuming. And... I tend to abandon those ideas...
Hence my Question:
Does there exist software that can inspect and label my photos with keywords, or that I can request to search my galleries for certain topics ?
In the example of unplugged fridges: Find me all photos with a loose powerplug... (or with a fridge).
Note that I would prefer not to upload my pic to some cloud-tool, but keep them on my own harddisk.
Suggestions Anyone ?
And if not exist yet: who would be interested in building such a tool ?
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