Over the past few months I’ve been thinking about how to grow the longdaysafaris.com community and share more of the things I’m passionate about. So I’ve made a few changes that I’d like to share with you.
First, I’ve launched a TikTok account as well as a TikTok Seller account on TikTok. The goal is to create short videos related to the things many of us enjoy—travel, cycling, farming life, and the occasional story from the road.
Alongside the videos, I’ve also started putting items up for sale through the platform. At the moment, I’m beginning with print-on-demand T-shirts, some of which are inspired by farming life and cycling culture. These are two passions of mine, and it seemed like a natural place to start. Here are two links to my first print on demanad T-shirts. At this stage they are only available on tikTok in the USA:
Cycle tourist https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP9Re7MN8rkpq-oMMyB/
Freedom cycling https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP9Re7wUaXj4F-uzRFe/
Over time I plan to expand into other items and ideas related to:
Another interesting development has been the impact on this blog. Since setting up the TikTok accounts, the traffic to LongDaySafaris has more than doubled. That tells me there is real interest out there, and it has motivated me to begin posting more regularly again.
But I’d like this site to grow with the help of the people who read it.
What topics would you like me to write about?
Some ideas might include:
If there’s something you’d like to know more about, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message. Your feedback will help guide future posts.
Another change in my life is that I now live in the United States. That has given me a different perspective on travel and logistics, especially for people planning trips abroad. Because of this, I hope I can be even more helpful to international travelers planning trips to Africa—whether it’s understanding the realities of travel, preparing properly, or simply knowing what to expect.
LongDaySafaris started as a place to share experiences from the road. Going forward, I hope it becomes even more of a community for people interested in adventure, cycling, farming life, and travel.
Thanks for reading and for being part of the journey. Here are a few photos to wet your thirst.
Just finished a tour with my Dad so have called it Tour de Dad. I did 500 km and my Dad did 315 km. Very proud of my 76 year old Dad. I will make a page for this tour. I have already begun with the video. We landed up cutting the tour short as his circulation in his legs was giving him a hard time up the hills. Never the less he did an outstanding attempt for somebody of his age.
There were people along the way that thought we were doing it for a charity. However it was just a good father and son outing. Why do we need to do this type of thing for charity? Time to get out of your chairs and do it for yourself. For those of you who are not out riding your bicycles, it is now time to start.
Then there were wonderful people who stopped and give motivation along the way. It is nice to find good people out in the world. Gives you hope for the future of our world. There are people out there that are driven by more than just money. They have good hearts.
As always we learned things along the road. We are suffering from electrical load shedding in South Africa at the moment. As there is not enough generation capacity to cope with demand. It feels as the government has not been putting in enough energy as they should to correct this problem. However we found km after km of new road surface that had been laid to help the trucks that transport coal to the power stations. Then the volume of trucks transporting coal was impossible to count. There was a steady stream of trucks all the way from Balmoral to Volksrust. The amount of money that must be paid to keep this stream running is beyond my comprehension.
Pay a visit to my Bicycle trips page. Tour de Dad is now under construction.
I got this on face book and thought this is exactly what I have seen in Africa. Rest of the world thinks they have the answers for Africa but they do not look at their own problems. I have seen happier children with less psychological problems and drug problems in the rural areas where I have cycled. The children are far more active and have less health problem. I realize they have a higher death rate in ages younger than 5 years however this is only because they do not have access to health care and are exposed to tropical diseases.
Take a look at my new page for thoughts.
Long day safaris 