#100DaysOfBulletJournalIdeas: 7 - Adventure Mapping in your Bullet Journal
/Welcome to Day 7 of my #100DaysofBulletJournalIdeas Project!
Day 7: Adventure Map
Adventure Map
One of my passions lately is cycling, I love love love it!
One of my goals last year was to get a bike because I missed the joy of riding around and feeling the wind in my face with nothing pushing me forward but the strength of my legs. I searched around and around until I found this gorgeousness, and decided she was the one. I immediately fell in love with her bright and cheery yellow demeanor (also comes in teal and navy) and leather-like details. Have I mentioned that yellow is my favorite color?
Fun little side story: Growing up, my favorite color was blue-green according to a memory I remember from when I was a teenager looking at a drawing from when I was a kid where I wrote that "my favorite color is blue-green!" scrawled in Crayolas. I later learned that blue-green is also know as turquoise or teal. I still love teal, it's probably my favorite color after yellow (I also recently realized I have several different shades of teal nail polish). Who doesn't like teal, though? It's flattering and goes well with pretty much everything. I'm not exactly sure when yellow took first place, but its bright cheeriness always makes me smile.
Back to what I was saying, this beauty right here is my noble steed. I call her Donna:
According to the description on Amazon, Donna is a "step-through aluminum city frame 7-speed hybrid touring, urban commuting, and cruiser bike with matching full fenders, and 26” wheels." Quite the mouthful. Anyways, my sweetie got her for me for my birthday last year because he knew how much I wanted a bike. It was really sweet of him to get it for me. Not long after, he ended up getting his own from a local bike shop and we've been exploring our beautiful city of San Diego ever since with all sorts of bike rides.
Lately we've gotten very into cycling and as a result have been pedaling our hearts out. Recently, we pedaled more miles than we ever have before by cruising through Highway 101 in the span of a lovely sunny afternoon where we passed several cities for a total of 26 miles round-trip. It also resulted in the one of the most ridiculous sunburns I have ever had, but I digress.
We keep track of our rides with Strava because data is exciting and it's always fun to see the map of the ride, the fastest speed we went, how long the ride was, and other fun metrics that our data-loving selves enjoy seeing. There's also a neat little feature to add photos you took during the trek that you can add, making it our adventure photo album by default.
Anywho, we were cycling and enjoying the gloriously sunny day when we saw a flyer announcing the San Diego Century happening in May. The options are to pick 33, 67, or 105 miles. The furthest we've done (yep, there's going to be a lot of 'we' in this article, he's my cycling adventure buddy) is 26 miles with that last long ride, so 33 would be a greater accomplishment!
Due to this new shared goal to ride the San Diego Century (what is even the appropriate lingo for this?), we've been looking into exploring longer routes nearby in order to train before the event. This is where I got the idea that I'd love to have a map of all the different bike routes that I can highlight as we complete them in my Bullet Journal, so I set aside this two-page spread to add a San Diego bike map in some form. I found this pretty nifty one with useful information about different bike paths making it a valuable resource to create our own adventures!
I'm sure we could do the 33 miles, no sweat...well actually with a lot of sweat, but I also want to try for the 67 miles. I'm sure that with a few more long rides we could work our way up to it.
With that said, I've come to the realization that my beautiful Donna is no longer enough for me. I make that thing go, as a pro bicyclist who caught up to me after I zoomed past him and his cycling buddies for about a mile or so said to me. That was kind of a proud moment for me.
I hadn't thought too much about what I wanted in a bike other than to just cruise around the city when I first looked into it last year. Living in San Diego, I thought that would be enough. But those longer rides with those long stretches of road on Highway 101 have made me realize that I have a need for speed and I love giving my all and even though I surely do that with my sweet cruiser, her near 40 pounds of weight are not the funnest to lug up the inclines of streets.
I love her, she is my beautiful bike that has accompanied me on many wonderful rides, but with my interest in cycling growing, I have come to realize that I need something a bit more. Lighter, faster, easier to carry. More gears. Something that I can ride in those kinds of cycling events that will allow me the most amount of enjoyment. She's a sweet bike, but the time has come to upgrade.
You get the tools for the level that you're at or least how interested you are in something, and then when you realize where you want to go you either update or upgrade your tools to get you to where you want to be.
The time has come for me to start looking into a new bike for the next level I want to be in terms of cycling. That's part of life. It's like with a good pair of shoes, you get the size you are with a bit of wiggle room to allow you to grow. The moment they no longer serve their purpose in the way you need them to, it's time to step into something that will. For me, I need a lighter bike with more gears and I also want it to be beautiful. Price is also a factor to consider. I'm sure there's another wonderful bike out there just for me, just like how I found my sweet cruiser-hybrid, Donna.
As for the Adventure Map in my Bullet Journal, I'm still tinkering with how exactly I want to add a map in there, whether to draw one, print out a map, or transfer a map onto the pages in some clever way. I will update this post once I decide on the best route to take! ;)
P.S. If you're new to the Bullet Journal®, I recommend checking out BulletJournal.com, it was invented by Ryder Carroll - he's an awesome human that walks you through how to set up your own Bullet Journal with his handy tutorial video that you can check out here!
P.P.S. Adding a map to your Bullet Journal is something I've seen a few other Bullet Journalists do for their own fun reasons. I love how versatile the Bullet Journal is!
