We managed to get a lot of the trip onto this blog. There are some great posts that tell parts of the story.

But like an iceberg, there is way more under the surface than what you can see on top.

I have 50 pages of notes about what we did in Peru and afterwards, and most of that never made it online. The challenges of using the technology we had (mobile devices won’t replace real computers anytime soon!), plus the huge time challenges we faced throughout the trip, meant it was hard enough to keep the notes up to date every few days, let alone make cogent posts to the blog on a regular basis.

Since we got back, I’ve been faced with the challenge of what to do with 50 pages of notes. We also have a detailed accounting of all the money we spent (we had to budget carefully for five months, and know if we were on track or not). As the one year anniversary of our departure approached, I got an idea about what to do with all this information, locked up in inaccessible files.

Medium.com is a new website created by some of the same people behind Twitter.com. But instead of focusing on tiny bits of content the way Twitter does, Medium.com is all about producing long articles, and including images with them, in a way that really shows off the text and the visuals. I thought I’d make space on Medium.com to recount the trip, one day at a time, so there would be a simple outlet for all the stories that were missed, that we don’t want to forget.

One of the neat things about Medium.com, is that if you create an account and login (you need to setup a Twitter account to do that), you can then comment on specific lines and paragraphs of the articles. The comments don’t just end up at the bottom of the article in a big mess. It’s like lots of people being able to annotate the margins of a book, at the same time, and have conversations that way about the text. Very cool.

Really, this an exercise for posterity, and my own satisfaction. But if you enjoyed hearing about our adventures, and want to get the complete story, then check in every once in a while on Medium.com to read the daily posts. I can guarantee, there are going to be some good ones that no one has heard yet.

A note about the spending figures: we recorded what we spent in local currency, and then did a rough conversion to Canadian dollars, since our budget was in Canadian dollars. In the Medium.com posts, all the spending figures are in Canadian dollars, to make them easier to understand.

Besides Medium.com, we’re working on a few other things to remember the trip:

• There are The Henry’s, our record of the best of the best during The Big Trip, covering 40 or so categories and hundreds of honourable mentions.
• There will be a series of about 20 interactive slideshows on Prezi.com.
• Plus I’d like to make one more slideshow to showcase just the modes of transport.
• There are tons of videos that I still don’t have a good way to sort out, but maybe they’ll make an appearance embedded in the Medium.com posts.

We also plan on getting about eight hardcover photobooks printed with the best pictures from the trip. We have finished preparing and ordering ten (not eight) hard cover photobooks. They are 40 pages each and should look pretty stunning. Among the thousands of photos we took, there are some pretty great shots. If you ever come over for drinks, you can flip through them.

If you don’t want to wait, you can actually browse a really low res version online! Click the pictures to view the preview versions of the books:

If you want to pony up the money, you can even order your own copy from the company that’s printing them. Clever service!

Anyway, until we see you in person to thumb through the real books, I hope you enjoy revisiting our adventures one day at a time on Medium.com.