A long time reader recently suggested I do a post on the various cars I’ve used on road trips. That’s not a bad idea and I’m thinking about it. This blog does have a series of posts on some of the hardware I’ve used in making and documenting the trips (My Gear) and another on the software (My Apps). There is also a series on vehicles I’ve owned (My Wheels). That series, however, is not just about cars used on documented road trips. In fact, not one vehicle from those trips has yet appeared. But it’s close. The series is just two chapters away from featuring the car used on my first documented trip in 1999. The 31 My Wheels chapters published so far have been spread over 65 months which suggests that it will be well over a year before the seven owned cars used in documented trips get their chapters. So maybe it makes sense to do a single post with a brief mention of each of the seven. Maybe not. That’s what I’m thinking about.
Regardless of whether or not I do a post on those road trip cars, that suggestion did lead directly to this post. Technically, it wasn’t the suggestion itself that triggered this post; It was the conversation that followed.
When I mentioned it, I learned that the fellow who suggested the car post wasn’t aware that the “Prev” and “Next” buttons on the journal’s daily pages usually reflect the car I’m driving on the trip. I wasn’t overly surprised; It’s rather subtle and has never been spelled out anywhere. But it reminded me of another long time feature that another long time reader had been unaware of until quite recently. This particular reader didn’t realize or had forgotten that a map is part of each trip journal. That’s really easy to understand on the multi-day trips since the map button appears on the trip cover page and not on the daily pages that are the subject of RSS entries and most email notifications. So here we go, with “Five Things You Might Not Know about DennyGibson.com”.
Prev & Next Buttons
All daily pages for multi-day trips have text links for the previous and next day with buttons made of left and right facing vehicles above them. That has been true from the very beginning. That first trip was made in a red Corvette convertible and that’s what formed the buttons. They were static on that first trip but started “popping” when the cursor hovered over them on the second multi-day trip and they had done that ever since.
It’s possible that the concept of the buttons exactly matching the car used on the trip wasn’t yet firmly established, but I think I just intentionally broke from it for the third and fourth multi-day trips. That third multi-day trip was a retrace of one my great-grandparents had made in a Model T. I couldn’t get a suitable picture of the car they actually drove but I did get one of a Model T they owned later and which an uncle owns now. The next trip requiring buttons involved a caravan of Corvettes of every year and I used a picture of the inaugural 1953 model. For the 2004 Tiger Cruise with my sailor son on the USS Enterprise, I used a silhouette of the aircraft carrier. For a couple of Amtrak trips, I used a picture of a toy train. For rental cars, I’ve mostly used generic sedans although I did use a red Jeep, which matched two of the three cars I rented, on the 2017 Hawaii trip. Other than that, those buttons have accurately shown the model and color of the car being driven if not the actual car.
Locator Maps
Although a locator map wasn’t initially part of a trip journal, I did start doing it fairly early on then retrofitted one to journals already posted. A small button shaped like the contiguous US accesses the maps. For multi-day trips, the button is at the top of the cover page next to the trip title. For single day trips, it’s next to the trip title on the only page there is. The general model is a map of the route “zoomed” to fill the available space sitting atop a map of the US with a red rectangle marking the area involved.
To date, DeLorme Street Atlas has been used to produce these maps. With Street Atlas no longer supported, how long that will continue is naturally in question. I do own the final (2015) version of Street Atlas and the resolution of locator maps is not at a level to be affected by minor undocumented changes in the real world. I expect locator maps to continue to be part of future journals although it’s quite possible the tools used to produce them, and therefore their appearance, will change.
The most recent journal has a second map button. For my full length drive of the Jefferson Highway, I imported my planned route to Google Maps and made it available. A big advantage of this over the static locator map images is the ability to zoom and otherwise interact with the map to see details as well as the high level overview. A big disadvantage is that it makes a feature of DennyGibson.com dependent on the functioning of another website. While this is something I try to avoid, it’s not the first. For example, the site search feature utilizes Google’s search capabilities. The Jefferson Highway map was shared with very little manual intervention so it’s possible, but not guaranteed, that I will continue the practice.
Trip Collage
The journals of all completed trips are available through either a list or a collage of photos. Both are accessed under “Done Deeds-All Trips”. I’m mentioning the collage here because it is a personal favorite and something I’ve received almost no feedback on. The collage consists of a single thumbnail from every completed trip. The images are displayed in chronological order and clicking on one leads to the associated journal. I’ve said that one of the reasons this website exists is to eventually feed me my own memories. The collage already does that to some degree which probably explains why I like it while others aren’t so impressed.
Random
A “Random” selection is also available under “Done Deeds-All Trips”. Clicking it presents a single picture from the collage which can be clicked to get to the associated journal. It’s useful when you are really really bored.
FAQ
A link to the Frequently Asked Questions page appears on the site’s home page so maybe it’s not all that subtle. But there are lots of other letters on that page so I’ll grab this chance to mention it. It’s a little like a larger version of this post with the obvious exception that everything in this post answered an unasked question while only part of the FAQ page does that.