Not dead; still riding

Well hey. Umm, so.

Thanks to Leon for reminding me this blog exists. I hadn’t forgotten, really, but I’d certainly let it lie fallow. Quite a lot happened, too, in the biking sense, and in a small way I feel a little bad about it. But let’s review.

When I last wrote it was October - October 4th, to be precise. Right then I’d clocked up 186.9 miles total on the bike since I bought it. As of today I’ve amassed 461.7 miles, so 274.8 more miles than last time I checked. So yeah. Still riding.

Truth is I kind of got bored writing about the same ride almost every day, but after I got out of the habit of posting, I just figured I didn’t need to post. When I read back over some of these entries though, I can see that there’s a style of writing here that I don’t normally do. So, perhaps not such a bad idea for me to continue to post, on occasion.

Last six months though, in a choppy, stream-of-consciousness sentence: puncture, pump, winter, New Year’s resolutions, new lights, night riding, broken spokes, new wheels, Undercliff Walk, biking partner (occasional).

Oh, and I didn’t enter the London to Brighton bike ride this year. I’m so not ready. Next year? Maybe.

Reading all that back I know there were definitely tales to tell, so I promise I’ll try and tell them a bit more often. Just don’t expect a daily version of the same “I biked to Hove and back for 30 minutes of exercise” story… ta.

So, uh, like - what happened to July?

The observant among you - and as there’s probably only one of you, I’ll assume you’re observant for the sake of argument - have probably noticed there was a great big honking gap here between me buying the bike and then, apparently, blogging about riding it. So the question is, what happened in July (that stopped me blogging)?

The easy answer is “I got a bike”, ha ha. Truthfully that had something to do with it, but not very much really. I was biking all over the shop during July, getting acquainted with Brighton’s roads and seafronts… but not blogging. I think the honest truth is I got intimidated, clammed up, and just didn’t force myself to get on with it and get down my thoughts.

As you can see, I’m now trying to change that. Nothing like writing posts about why you’re not blogging to get you motivated to blog again.

So, what do I have to get written down? Let’s see:

1. The rest of the story of Buying the Bike, currently entitled ‘Nigel looks after me’
2. The Tale of The First Bike Ride (This one, I really should have gotten down on the day… thank God I did notes)
3. Something about my favourite routes
4. A classic ‘whinge’ post about ‘being a biker’ (so I can pretend to be part of the ‘in’ crowd)

And I think that’ll do for now. Other things I want to do, in no particular order:

• Take my digital camera out and get some snaps during a ride
• Figure out a way to show my most frequent routes (dull though they are)

And that’ll do for now.

WordPress, baby, WordPress

I switched.

Okay, I didn’t make that switch - not yet, at least - but I left Blogspot behind when I discovered this morning that WordPress also does free blogs. Which, considering the competition, is some fine news.

(Incidentally, the process was incredibly painless (importing was snap!) and the WordPress interface is much nicer than Blogger’s; although to be fair they’re in Beta for a new Blogger, no doubt spurred on by their perpetually-in-Beta-owners.)

Anyway. I have told myself that I need to keep this thing up to date, and that’s what I’m going to do, starting… now. WordPress is just an extra incentive.