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