The internet is a rabbit hole, which is its blessing and its curse. You stumble across a link, and fall headlong into a world you never knew existed. A new reality opens up; hours disappear.

It can begin with a simple Google Alert that points to an article in the Taranaki Daily News, headquartered in New Plymouth, New Zealand. Right there, you have a problem because you’re kind of curious where New Plymouth is. If you make the mistake of looking for it on Google Earth, you can kiss goodbye about a half hour as you check out the Taranaki region on the west coast of the North Island, famous for 2518-meter Mount Taranaki, in the shadow of which New Plymouth is situated. (Mount Taranaki is surrounded by the weirdly circular Egmont National Park, which is fascinating to look at, by the way. And New Plymouth has been voted the “Top City” in New Zealand, according to Wikipedia.)

See. That’s how it starts, even before you read the article (“Blokes on Bikes”) about three 60-something guys biking through Vietnam and Laos. Eventually, you settle into the text and discover an excellent piece of travel writing. Excellent not because it conveys a deep sensation of riding through lush rice paddies or along vast expanses of pristine shoreline, but because of its practicality. This is how it is done, author Richard Wood explains, and this is why you do it.

So, a flash of curiosity followed by a couple of clicks: it’s possible to fly roundtrip to Ho Chi Minh City for less than $1,400. Not cheap, but doable.

Back to the story, which ends with a seemingly innocuous link to Wood’s journal at www.crazyguyonabike.com, which sounds like it’s probably Wood’s personal website. It is not.

Twenty years ago, when the internet was getting its legs and people were using Mosaic as a browser, there was a lot of talk that the internet would allow a free and open exchange of information among like-minded souls around the world. Crazyguyonabike is what those people had in mind. It is a not-particularly attractive “free, independent website for hosting bicycle touring journals, forums and resources.” It was created in 2000 by programmer and cyclist Neil Gunton, and you can spend another 20 minutes learning about him on the site. (He’s a lifelong vegetarian.)

Then you go back to the home page and…whoa. As of this writing, the site contains more than 6,500 journals and articles and almost a million photos, documenting cycling trips on every continent except Antarctica. Has someone biked through Mali? Yes. Burma? Yes. You can read about cycling the Atacama Desert in Chile (“the driest place on Earth”) and about one person’s 2011 trip from Cairo to Capetown (with a layover in Dead Camel Desert Camp in Sudan).

If you start clicking, you will lose hours and you’re never going to get them back. Sorry. But it will be time well spent. These journals are fascinating, beautiful, informative. Boots-on-the-ground…or, better, tires-on-the-ground accounts of where to go, what to do, and a lots about the people.

Some of the material is old, but many of the trips are in process and being updated. Over the past day or two, for example, there are posts from Thailand, Iceland, Chile and elsewhere. These are postcards from the road, which explains why a programmer like Gunton, with all these photos at his disposal, didn’t come up with a prettier and graphically complicated site: “the design is deceptively simple and non-flashy, which makes it fast and easy to use on slow connections and portable computers” while stopping off at an internet cafe in Ulan Bator or Chengdu.

A number of these journals are from retirees. A number aren’t. There are special sections for biking in winter and traveling with kids, but nothing for seniors. If you’re looking for age-related articles and journals that might steer you toward a bit less exertion and adventure, you can search for “seniors” but you won’t find what you’re looking for. You will find John Bell’s journal, “A senior citizen’s ride from Bogota to Quito.” And it turns out to be just what you’re looking for.

Sam Barkley’s photo of biking through Pakistan (August 24-26, 2009) from A Honeymoon to Remember, A Newlywed Test of Physical and Relationship Endurance, by Erin Arnold Barkley and Sam Barkley, via crazyguyonabike.com.