Lost in Space

Somewhere between 'tossing toilet paper' and 'writing Greek wills' -- both topics on which I wrote this fall -- it appears our Travelnwrite became lost in space.

Lost in space, blogosphere-style, that is.

Lost in space - or the blogosphere

While I've been sitting in Greece writing blogs and pondering a recent drop in readership, apparently many of you were wondering if I had quit writing because the posts weren't arriving in your inbox as they had been.

Lost in space - blogosphere-style.

Space the final frontier or it is the blogosphere

I have to admit that it took until this week for the lightbulb to go off in this old boomer brain and realize something was seriously amiss. Those of you receiving the blog posts by email hadn't received any for weeks.  I'd been busy having fun with October houseguests, completing olive harvest and then jetting off to Hungary. . .so, I wasn't paying attention as I should have been to stats and other things that blog writers monitor.

Let me stop here for a moment to say, that one of the best parts of writing a blog is having so many friends as readers.  On the flip side, over the years many who began as readers of the blog have, over the years, become good friends.

And after having three reader/friends in a short period of time write us to ask about our well being as they hadn't gotten blog posts, I finally figured out there was a major malfunction going on. Thanks to those who wrote ~ you know who you are!

As a result you are now reading a 'test post'' as I've done some troubleshooting to see if I can fix the 'feed' (blog lingo for the distribution of emails to those who signed up to get them as emails).

Getting lost in space

Stop! Something is wrong - the light bulb went off

Looking back, our disappearance from the inboxes seems to eerily coincide with an unreal few but frustrating weeks when I found myself unable to get into the inner workings of my blog. In order to pay the annual fee I pay for use of the title, Travelnwrite, I had to get into my Google account.  If you don't pay by the deadline you lose your rights to your title and access to your blog.

You ever tried to reach a human at Google?

Through some miracle, I stumbled upon a real human named Matey.  All I had to do was to convince him that I really was me, author of Travelnwrite for the last decade. He and I talked on the phone and wrote numerous emails to each other on nearly a daily basis for several weeks.

But I couldn't find the documentation I needed to prove I was me. In the end I had to complete a security test - it took three tries before I provided what they were looking for (I won't bore you with details but let's say it was right up there with applying for a Greek residency permit on the high blood pressure barometer.)

Lost in space 

Finally just days before the title was set to expire, I convinced Matey and the Google Security Team (who'd become involved along the way) that I was me.
I got into my account.
I paid.
The domain Travelnwrite renewed.
I sighed with relief.
I began writing posts again. . .

They just didn't get emailed.

Today we will see if the distribution is working.

Hoping the lost in space has been found

In addition to emailing posts, we have some who follow the blog in their readers and I post them on my FB page as well as the Travelnwrite FB page.  So for those who've already read these, please bear with me while I provide links to those who didn't get them. Click the highlighted link for the article.

Heading to the olive press - another harvest in the history book

In November I told you about this year's olive harvest at The Stone House on the Hill.

Then I wrote about being Hungary for adventure and heading to Budapest.

Yes! Me at a Christmas Market - Budapest

And of the joy in finally getting to visit a 
European Christmas Market

Budapest Noir - the city's darker side

Last week I looked at the dark side of that wonderful city in
Budapest Noir

I am signing off this post with a huge thanks to all of you who take the time to read Travelnwrite. Your time and interest means a lot! Let us hear from you if you have found this one in your inbox.

As always wishes for safe travels to you and yours ~

Hawaii: When Travel Writer Meets Travel Reader

The note, sent in response to the post I’d written about Ko Olina, O’ahu, was short:

“We are also at KO.

I would like to meet you.

(signed) Louise”

One thing I’ve learned about blogging is that we don’t really know who – if anyone -- reads the posts we’ve written - unless they make a comment or send an email.

At times it is kind of like feeling as if you might be talking to yourself.

Some bloggers live by ‘stats’ but even those numbers don’t tell us if what we write is really being read.

We also know the numbers of ‘subscribers’ - those who sign up to receive the posts as emails  – and if we dig deep enough,we also know their email addresses. (Rest assured, I seldom do that.)

In the case of TravelnWrite subscribers, the majority are people we don’t know. People like Louise. So to say I was thrilled that 1) someone was reading the blog and 2) wanted to meet me, sent me ‘over the moon’.

In this case – the weird part is --Louise and I had already been together earlier in the week at a Ko Olina owners’ “Meet and Greet” that she had organized.

In fact, I’d  taken photos and written about the event on the owners’ Facebook page.

But ‘that Louise’ and I didn’t have an opportunity to chat . . . so I was guessing, when I wrote her back asking if she might be the same person. She was one and the same!

A few hours after exchanging emails, we met at poolside; chatting as if we had known each other for a long time.  We talked travel, and Hawaii and timeshares. . .and about the blog, of course.

She isn’t quite sure who recommended it to her, but she’s been a TravelnWrite reader since last September and had ‘come along ’via the blog on our South Pacific adventure.

Louise (pictured left) and her husband left Ko Olina for their California home a couple weeks before us, as they have another trip coming up.  But Louise and I have stayed in touch and will continue to do so until our paths again cross ‘same time next year’ at Ko Olina.  


Mahalo Louise, for sending that note!  And a big  mahalo to who ever recommended our blog to her!

We love meeting members of the TravelnWrite community, so let us know if we turn up somewhere near you.  Just drop us a note: travelnwrite@msn.com

If you've not subscribed and want to do so, just fill in your email address in the box to the right of this post, then reply when Feedburner sends a confirmation email to your email address. It is free and as simple as that!

And recommend us to a friend of yours. . .just look at what might happen if you do!  Thanks for the time you spent here today – we’ll be back soon with more Tales from Somewhere in the Pacific.

(In case you are wondering, I have Louise’s permission to use her photo and tell you the tale of how we met.)

TravelnWrite: What a Trip!

I took a European hike then a bike ride through a scenic part of Canada and wrapped up my travels sipping a chilled rose during a shopping tour in Provence.

What a trip! 

And the best part was I completed it before I finished my morning coffee in Kirkland. I’d armchair-traveled through the “blogosphere”.

We had no idea of the travel adventures to be found in that techno-world until we began publishing TravelnWrite three years ago this month.

We began TravelnWrite to keep a handful of family and friends updated on our travels. . .well, that was the idea anyway.  Back then we didn’t really understand what a blog was – some sort of a bulk email thing or such. (I just learned that one in six people in the world write blogs of some sort. Statistics show most fall by the wayside in the first couple of years . . . but here we are: still traveling ‘n’ writing.)


What a trip! 
And now, three years and 450 posts later, our blog readership has far surpassed our wildest expectations.  Okay, so in truth, we didn’t have ‘blog growth projections’ when we started it. 


ClustrMaps (that map on the right column of our home page) shows that we’ve had more than 13,700 visits from more than 120 countries. And our page views have topped 63,000 meaning someone out there – other than that original handful of family and friends - is reading TravelnWrite. 

So a toast of thanks to you all! We are glad you’ve stopped by and hope our tips and tales will keep you coming back often.

What a trip!  
As we’ve learned the last few years, ‘the blog’ -- once considered a hobbyist activity -- has evolved to be a valid on line tool not just an electronic diary; the source of sound advice and information on an infinite number of topics, including our favorite, travel.

We’ve discovered other travel enthusiasts in the blogosphere, people who are specialists in particular travel techniques and/or destinations. That trip I described above was taken by reading the blogs listed below. These are some of our favorites and I’ve included links to them.

Go ahead. Click a link. Expand your blogosphere armchair travels. . . there’s a whole new world out there waiting to be explored! 

* Hike Bike Travel  for outdoor and adventure travel inspiration written by avid traveler, Leigh McAdams, in Canada.

* Inside Journeys for an insiders guide to Jamaica (and other places as well) written by Marcia Mayne , who lives there.

* Paris Movie Walks and Easy Hiker Michael Schuermann He and his wife, Marlys, discovered hiking in their 40’s and are sharing some of their favorite European finds with readers in the Easy Hiker blog and Paris Movie Walks, as the name implies points out sites in Paris that you've seen in movies filmed there (he has a guide book of the same title which you can find on our Amazon carousel.)

* Lost in Arles by Heather Robinson an American who lives in Arles, France will take you on magical journeys through Provence.

* Budget Travelers Sandbox  is the creator of Travel Photo Thursday – a blogosphere event we wouldn’t miss each week. It’s written by Nancie McKinnon, a Canadian who teaches in Daejon, Korea and travels the world five months a year.

How about you?  Have any travel blogs you'd like to recommend? If so, please send an email or leave a comment below.


Hope you’ll come back later this week when we’ll have some money-saving travel tips on Travel Tip Tuesday, a new Washington State destination on Wednesday and a photo essay on Travel Photo Thursday.