Privacy Policy

Last updated: November 5, 2026

Cycling Around America is Robert (Butch) Miller’s collection of rides, photographs, travel stories, and discoveries along the way. This page explains what information reaches us when you visit or get in touch, and how the services behind the site use it.

Information you choose to share

Messages: If you email or call, we receive the contact details and information you provide. We use them to respond, handle permission requests, and continue the conversation.

Comments: Where comments are available, WordPress collects your comment, name, email address, and any website address you enter, along with technical details such as your IP address and browser information for moderation and spam prevention. Approved comments and your display name may be public; your email address is not displayed as part of the comment. Please keep private information out of public comments. If an avatar is displayed through Gravatar, that service also processes information to provide it.

Subscriptions: If you choose to follow or subscribe through WordPress.com or Jetpack, that service processes your subscription details and delivers updates. You can manage the subscription or unsubscribe through its controls or email links.

Visits, cookies, and site statistics

Our hosting and security services process technical information such as IP addresses, browser details, requested pages, and request times to deliver the site, troubleshoot problems, and protect it from abuse.

We use Jetpack Stats to understand which stories people visit and how they find the site. Its provider, Automattic, processes visit and interaction data; the statistics we see are reports about site traffic rather than a list identifying individual readers.

WordPress and connected services may use cookies or similar technologies for preferences, sign-in features, statistics, and other functions. You can block or delete cookies through your browser, although some features may work differently. Blocking cookies does not necessarily stop every statistics request or connection to an outside service.

Optional CAA visitor counter

With your permission, our own first-party counter records visits to public pages to estimate new and returning browsers, page views, and popular stories. It uses a randomly generated recognition cookie (caa_vc_browser) lasting up to 12 months and a cookie remembering your analytics choice (caa_vc_choice) for up to 12 months. The recognition cookie includes a signed first-recorded time so a browser can remain recognizable after earlier visit records expire.

The counter stores a keyed, pseudonymous browser identifier, session identifier, public page number, and visit time. It does not store your name, email address, IP address, search terms, or full referring address. Visit records are retained for a rolling 90 days, automatically checked for deletion hourly, and excluded from reports as soon as they expire. We do not keep permanent historical traffic summaries from this counter. Existing hosting logs and backups have separate retention schedules.

You can accept or reject this optional counter using its visitor privacy controls. The Privacy settings link in the footer of public stories and pages lets you change your choice; rejecting turns off collection, deletes the recognition cookie, and requests removal of the counter’s retained records associated with that cookie. If record removal is temporarily unavailable, a notice explains this; those records remain subject to the 90-day retention limit. We honor Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals for this counter. Browser changes, blocked or deleted cookies, and people who decline tracking limit these estimates: they measure participating browsers, not identified people.

Google Analytics through Site Kit

With your permission, we also use Google Analytics, connected through Site Kit by Google, to understand traffic, returning browsers, and how people use our public stories and pages. The same Accept statistics and Reject statistics controls manage both our CAA counter and Google Analytics. A previous acceptance for the CAA counter alone does not authorize Google Analytics; we ask again before enabling both. Google’s analytics tag is not loaded until you accept, and it remains off when you reject or send a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal.

When enabled, Google receives analytics events and technical information needed to process them, such as browser and device information, page information, and the network information involved in connecting to its service. Google Analytics uses first-party cookies such as _ga and _ga_*; we configure their expiration for up to 12 months without extending it on each visit. Our explicitly configured page-view URLs omit query strings and fragments, and our referring-page parameter uses only the referring site’s origin. We do not enable advertising storage, advertising personalization, or Google signals through this integration.

Rejecting turns off further Google Analytics measurement in the current page, removes accessible first-party Google Analytics cookies for this site, and keeps its tag from loading on later pages while rejection is saved. It does not recall information already sent to Google. Google Analytics history and retention are separate from the CAA counter’s rolling 90-day records; those CAA deletion controls do not delete Google’s stored data. See Google’s privacy policy and how Google uses information from sites that use its services.

Jetpack’s independent statistics and other services remain separate from these combined CAA/Google analytics choices and are described elsewhere on this page.

Services, maps, and outside links

We use WordPress/Jetpack and Akismet services for features including image delivery, backups, security, statistics, and spam filtering. These providers process information needed for their services. See Automattic’s visitor privacy notice, its cookie policy, and Jetpack Stats privacy information.

Some stories contain embedded ride maps from Garmin or AllTrails. An embed can connect to its provider when the page loads, sending information such as your IP address and browser details. Links to Strava, YouTube, social networks, retailers, and other websites take you to services with their own privacy practices. Those services may process information in countries other than your own.

Sharing, retention, and security

We do not sell the messages or contact details you send us. Information may be processed by providers that operate and protect the site, or disclosed when required by law or reasonably necessary to address abuse or protect rights and safety.

Comments may remain with their discussion, and correspondence may be kept for follow-up and a record of requests or permissions. Hosting logs, statistics, spam records, and backups have their own retention schedules. Removing something from the live site may not immediately remove backup copies. We use security and backup tools, but no website or email system can promise absolute security.

Your choices and privacy requests

You can browse without posting a comment or subscribing. Depending on where you live and the law that applies, you may have rights to access, correct, or delete personal information. Contact us with enough detail to identify the information; we may need to verify that it concerns you, and some records may need to be retained.

If a CAA story or photograph raises a privacy concern, send the page link and identify the passage or image so we can review it with you. Please do not send sensitive documents unless we arrange a suitable way to handle them.

CAA is a general-audience travel site, not a service directed at children under 13. If you believe a child has provided personal information here, please contact us.

Contact and updates

For privacy questions or requests, contact Robert (Butch) Miller at cycling [at] millermediaandwebdesign [dot] com or Phone: three one six seven seven five eight five seven seven.

We’ll update this page when our practices change and show the revision date above.