Still Growing

Submitted by Anonymous Hitchhiker on 29 April 2011 - 9:16am

Regardless of the silence we've had for nearly a year now, Random Roads is still growing! We released a couple of more stories that had been submitted before and new submissions are very welcome.

The printed magazine is still pending. We will still be working on this, one day for sure you can have a printed copy in your hands! The plans for now are first to migrate the website to the lastest Drupal release and to redesign the website.

Part of this is to make it easier to work on the website from the back-end, with a clearer distinction of material that has been submitted and material that has been 'accepted' and edited.

Get on the e-maillist if you want to be involved!

Free Fall Travel & Nomadic Culture

Submitted by Anonymous Hitchhiker on 7 June 2010 - 4:00pm

Hitchhiking isn't the only form of traveling that we cover at Random Roads. We rather talk about the broader concept of being nomadic and "Free Fall Travel", a way of traveling by which you "let go".

Hitchhiking is an obviously an example of Free Fall travel, but also long-term cycling and walking or horse-riding and sailing can be considered as such: being on the road, not having a fixed home, and not knowing where you will be tomorrow.

In more general terms, Random Roads covers all forms of traveling that are part of ou "nomadic culture", a culture of people who leave behind their "fixed home" and are set for a nomadic journey which - as many nomads out there believe - can bring them further than anything else at that moment in their lives.

And that is what Random Roads mostly wants to be: a magazine -online as well as offline- that is born out of the culture of nomadic traveling, and which also can be seen as a representation of that same culture.

For more information, see the draft manifesto which was a result of a Random Roads Gathering in January 2009 when the community decided how to move ahead.

Get Ready For A Pre-Release!

Submitted by Anonymous Hitchhiker on 26 May 2010 - 4:16pm

Random Roads Magazine is an online magazine but - maybe even more important - will have a printed edition also, which hopefully will end up hitchhiking across many countries and places. With so much great content that we now have - and that with very little promotion(!) - we are finally ready to make the printed edition happen!

At this moment Mark is working on a pre-release for Random Roads of 16 pages that we hope to offer to you very soon. With that pre-release we will also be better able to get the funds together to print the first issue (more about this later).

While working on making this pre-release ready, some changes and more features have been added on the website also. One of the nicest is an author info-block on the top-right of each separate article and postcard entry. The block gives you the profile photo, travel-experience and bio of the author.

This information will also be used in the printed edition, so if you haven't updated your "about section" yet, head over to your profile and make some changes!

Bringing Blogs Together

Submitted by Anonymous Hitchhiker on 12 May 2010 - 11:23am

There is quite some writing about hitchhiking and other forms of independent traveling, especially on blogs. However, these are not easy to aggregate: some people have special travel-blogs, while others again are only writing about hitchhiking now and then.

There have been some attempts at bringing them together, most notably the planet-function at Hitchwiki. But as you can see there, we have a lot of unrelated content.

On Random Roads we wanted to have a good aggregation for a long time already. Not only to have a nice working portal for hitchhiking blogs, but also to be able to scout for good stories.

Therefore I am happy to announce a new page where we are bringing the blogs together, see http://randomroads.org/hitchhiking-blogs

So far the blogs are mostly about hitchhiking, but soon we also want to add more blogs of people who are into also other forms of independent traveling and nomadic lifestyle. And if you know one or two, feel free to add them.

New Feature: Postcards

Submitted by Anonymous Hitchhiker on 25 April 2010 - 4:07pm

Since recently we have a new feature on Random Roads: Postcards. The idea is simple: pick a good photo that you took and tell us the story that goes with it. To add a postcard, login and go to Share Postcard.

All postcards come together in a special page: http://randomroads.org/postcard

I also have been working the past week on making the website better readable. You can see there is more space for content and less clutter in the sidebar. One of the additions is also the the bar with photos on the top, as well as the bar with videos at the bottom.

I look forward to more of your comments and further suggestions to improve the website.

First Publication Coming Soon

Submitted by Anonymous Hitchhiker on 9 April 2010 - 10:53am

We're coming closer to our first print publication. Ever since we started almost 1,5 years ago, progress has been steady but we are now at the stage where we actually can really move further.

So far we have more than 20 articles that have been selected for the first issue. As soon as we have the selection finished, they will be send to our designer and then fingers crossed we will have our first edition in print ready soon after.

There is still work to be done though. We hope to have ready a couple of more articles before that time, such as an article on the hitchgathering 789 and 6810, as well as an editorial, and more photo-reports.

Currently we are also enabling better photo-reports and a new section on postcards. If you haven't submitted your article yet, there is still some time left, but it won't take forever anymore.