On it's last leg?

Not sure what to make of this blog anymore. Maybe it's the winter months keeping me off the bike? At the same time, there's lots of other stuff going on I could be blogging about. Skiing, running, my search for new hiking/camping gear. The thing is, I have no desire to post here anymore. That desire has been gone for over a year now.

I remember back in the early days of this blog. I kept posting and posting. I had no stat-counter widgets installed and had no idea if anyone ever even read this thing. Then, I got a comment. Hoky smokes a comment! Someone has read this at least once! The early days of bike blogging were exciting. I started to feel connected to a community of cycling bloggers and really, I still do.

I remember always thinking about whatever I happened to be doing at the time. Is this a good blog post? Should I be taking some pictures? I'd even start drafting up the post in my head. Setting the flavour of the post and working on the wording. Serious? Humorous? Educational? I was really excited to blog here and thought about it all the time. Then I started a few other blogs. A blog for my house renovation in Rockyford, which I deleted about 2years ago. A blog dedicated to bicycle maintenance which only lived for about 6 months even through it did have a bit of readership. There's the 12hrs blog which I still find interesting and enjoy. The thing I like about that blog is that others contribute from different parts of the world. It makes it interesting.

I've met some great people and made some really good friends both in person and 'online' via this blog. Smudgemo in Berkley and I met up for Pints during a business trip I took to Oakland. He's a great guy, and I consider him a friend. I've met up with Vik for lunch a few times when he lived in Calgary, we got together for a few rides (recumbent cruise in the prairie and a fixie ramble through downtown Calgary) and I even bought a bike from him. Another great person I've met in real life thanks to this blog. The Drumheller Mail found my blog somehow and offered me a spot to blog for them. I didn't take it, but all this is to say that blogging has been a great experience for me.

Then I started photo-blogging. Now, there is a big difference between the photo-blog world and the bike-blog world. Photo bloggers typically share a few snaps from their recent shoots and are geared more towards impressing their clients and aimed at attracting new ones. They seem to serve more a business/advertising function and that's fine, it's what they're for. Bike blogs seems to have more of an honest approach to them. It's not 'uncool' to leave comments and congratulations for the interesting things going on in the blog posts of other bike bloggers. Photo-blogs typically don't have this. There seems to be a feeling that it's uncool for one photographer to comment "excellent images, those are great" on another photographers blog post. Does leaving that kind of comment somehow make the commenting photographer 'less good' than the photographer who is posting? It not true, but seems to be the case. And I think it's a shame. The sense of camaraderie and friendship is far greater in the bicycle blogging world than the photo blogging world. I'd like to see that change.

Recently I've discovered the tumbler blog, which is all the rage right now. I really like the simplicity of it. It's far less involved than blogger and typically tumblr blog posts are very short and sweet. Many are simply one picture. My tumblr blog is for the most part random snap shots taken with my iPhone. Again, there's no real interaction with other folks reading, but there's also very little effort put into a post. My tumblr posts are published on my facebook and twitter feeds. I get a lot of visits to my tumblr blog (an average of 60-100 unique visitors per day) but again, not interaction. It's more of a one-way conversation. Thinking of it, I kind of wonder if the whole facebook thing has caused me to come to this place of not taking the interest in my bike blog the way I used to.

There have been some great bike bloggers I've followed who have thought about shutting down their blogs and some who have. I flirt with the idea all the time. The interface with blogger is really bugging me. I'm not sure if there's a way around it, but I find that only being able to upload 5 photos at a time is a real PITA. Blogger inserts my images and mixes up the order that I want them to appear all the time. It drives me nuts. Maybe there's a better way to upload to a blogger blog, but I don't know if it.

All this to say that I'm going to be leaving this blog alone for a while. I've already started, but this is more of an official notice. While I still can't come to a place to kill it completely, I'm going to resolve that I wont' be posting much here anymore. Maybe later on in time I'll get re-inspired to blog here more often, and I'm sure that the odd post will pop up once and a while, but all this is just short of pulling the plug completely. I'll still leave this blog here, and I'm keeping my blogger account mostly just so I can continue to comment on the other bicycle blogs that I enjoy. They all show up in my google reader and I enjoy reading them as much as I always have. It's just the feed from this blog wont' be showing up in other's RSS feeds nearly as much.

I'll still be blogging my regular old goings-on on my tumbr blog, and of course my photo blogs here and here, and for the most part, that's where you'll find me.

For the past 5 years it's been a great ride, I've enjoyed it, and appreciate all who have read, commented, taught and encouraged me via Jerome's bikes. Thank you, take care and God bless.

Cheers,

Jeremy

Another instalment of 12hrs happened on Saturday

While participation wasn't very high, it's still fun to know that I'm documenting my day, the same time others are in other parts of the world are documenting theirs. The cool part is coming together on the blog and seeing how the same day looked to other people in their own little part of the world.

I'd like to get another one organized with even more people in a few months. If you're interested in taking part, let me know and I can hook you up to be a contributor.

Check it out here: http://12hoursinphotos.blogspot.com/

Winter

It's been a hard winter this year. All of those "bad parts of winter" seem to have happened to me this year.

• I was stranded in a small town I was shooting a wedding in with now way to get home, had to spend the night. I was only 30kms from my house.
• A few days later I hit black ice while driving and wound up in the ditch.
• And this week, the furnace in our Rockyford house quit. The pipes burst. And we had some flooding.

Seriously, what's up?! Most winters are so-so, some cold, some snow but nothing major. This year it's been intense. I've got 7 feet of snow piled up on the front lawn.

There is a part of me that loves this weather though. Some years we'll get a little snow, but mostly just brown dead grass and muddy roads to stare at. This year has been white. And white is nice to look at. We seem to get a nasty cold front bringing temps in the minus twenties, followed by a few days of above freezing. Cycled on and off, over and over.

Right now I'm spending my days driving out to Rockyford, checking on how the dehumidifier is doing it's job, driving back and going about my typical business. Rockyford is a house that we used to live in, and then rented out as when we bought our new house in Strathmore. We haven't had tenants in it since August, and as such, no one noticed the temperature going down inside as the furnace was dying. And, snap. There goes a water line.

On the upside though, this winter has been one that I've been outside more than any other. With my new found interest in nordic skiing, some warm days for cycling and running, I've been outside in the beautiful winter a lot. And by beautiful, I mean gorgeous. This year has brought more picturesque scenes of perfectly smooth snow covered fields and tress that are all white with snow than any winter in recent memory. It's amazing. It's funny how a winter can bring the worst and the best of it's season all at the same time.

My direction: forget about the minor inconveniences of winter and focus on the awesomeness of this season. Winter, I'll take it!

Downhill Skiing

Last Thursday, a buddy Brad and I took the day off for some downhill skiing. We met a bunch of other friends at the hill, Mt. Norquay, and ripped hard all day long. It was a busy day at the hill, so we skied most of the day on the North American Chair. It services double black diamond runs, which were amazing. Not very busy, super steep and lots of powder. We rode hard all day long, and by the end of the day, our legs were mush. A good day on the slopes indeed.

I've only downhill skied once in the last 17 years prior to this trip. I started skiing when I was 4 and switched to snowboarding when I was 14. I decided to go back to the skis because teaching kids to ski when you're on a board is way more difficult than when you're on skis. Oddly though, I haven't skied with the kids yet (other than watch them while they're in lessons). After my 15 year hiatus, the old grove of skiing comes back fairly quickly.

I feel so lucky living 1.5 hrs from this

Brad and I were bush-whacking, and all of a sudden he disappeared. He didn't see this 25' drop in time. no injuries though:) (he right below my ski tips - 25' down)

view from the top of the North American Chair

here's a little video of a few of my attempts at jumping

A far cry from Monday

Today's skiing brought sunshine, soft sticky snow and 3 above freezing. One wool cycling jersey and a very thin shell and I was just right for hard efforts. Even rockin a new Walz cycling cap just for kicks.

Tomorrow I'll be hitting mountains for some downhill skiing. Hope this warm weather holds:)

Sent from my iPhone

"If you don't like the weather, wait a few minutes"

This is a familiar phrase to those of us who live in Southern Alberta. It seems true all year long. Summer days can bring wild sweeps of temperature readings in just a few short hours as in winter. Maybe more noticeable in winter, and often more appreciated.

Last week on Thursday morning, I headed out for a quick gravel grinder before having a "photog-nerd-fest-lunch with a bunch of great Calgary photographers. It was 7C (44F) when I headed out. Then, on Friday, snow and cold blew in. Monday I went for a ski behind my house, and it was -27C (-16F) when I left the house mid afternoon. Now, today, we're expected to warm up to above freezing again. Crazy.

With the warm spell we had last week, XC skiing wasn't an option, as we had lost a lot of snow. A single speed 29er serves well to get you outside and seeing things. It was muddy and much like the riding of spring.

gravel slop

With a hearty dump of snow and cold temps over the weekend, back to skiing again. It makes for a fun change up for sure.

I still find I make the mistake of over-dressing when I'm out skiing in the extreme cold. I had a balaclava on, and ended up taking that off right away, unzipping my coat half way and opening up the arm-pit vents. Sweating at -30 can be dangerous, it's a delicate mix of not getting tingly cold, and not over-heating. Being outside for an hour and a half, I came in with sweat-drenched gear. Fine if I'm right behind my house, but I'd hate to end up like this while out on a ski trail somewhere. The dialling-in continues.

With the old ski tracks melted away, and 10" of new snow, I had to set some new tracks for myself. The first few laps were a slow slog, but now they're ready for some faster skiing. Here's a quick video of me setting some new tracks. Most of the time my ski tips remained hidden under the white stuff.