WILL TODAY BE THE DAY?

One of the aspects of writing a blog that remains interesting to me is watching the statistics tracking visits and page views. Possibly today or tomorrow, I should reach the 10,000th visitor to my site. As I type, I’m sitting at 21 visits short of that new plateau. Averaging 26 visits per day, I may get there there before the midnight hour.

(Will today see the 10,000th visitor?*)

I’ve remarked frequently to friends that writing the blog helps to keep me motivated to ride and, hopefully, to find new and interesting cycling related materials that are of interest to my readers. Through the time that I’ve been publishing this blog, I’ve tried to work hard to utilize technology to make this a more interesting reading experience. I’ve also tried to be vigilant in improving my writing skills that were first nurtured by my parents, especially my mother Ila Jean, a published author herself.

Jim Artis, at Cycling Experiences, has been instrumental in providing tips and suggestions to make my blog a more interesting experience. For that, I am extremely grateful. In addition to helpful suggestions, Jim was one of the first to offer up a listing on his blog-roll. Others that were similarly gracious in the early days were Kent “Mountain Turtle” Peterson at Kent’s Bike Blog, Dave Moulton down in the low country of South Carolina, and Alan at EcoVelo. More recently, Tracy Wilkins, The Springfield Cyclist- an award winning blogger, along with Ted Rogers at BikingInLa have been kind enough and interested enough to grant me listings on their sites and to link to my stories. I am also indebted to them for their virtual hospitalities. In the “world is a small place”category, I even discovered that one of my colleagues, albeit in another county, is a successful blogger himself focusing on ultra-light cycling touring. The VeloHobo is yet another established blogger to whom I owe a big thanks. Unknowingly, I’ve been corresponding with Jack, The VeloHobo, for several years around work related matters!

All of the blogs that I mention above have their own unique points of view on the world of cycling. Our styles of writing are different and our focus is different. I hope you’ll take a moment to visit them again or for a first time in the unlikely event that you haven’t already seen their sites. Please tell them Zeke said THANK YOU!

I fully realize that 10,000 visits is small potatoes compared to larger, more successful blogging endeavors such as Cycling Experiences that just reached the 200,000 page view plateau earlier this month. Still, those authors had their first 10k at some point. Just as when I reached 5k visits, I wanted to mention the approach of what has been my next goal of 10k visits.

Of course, links, cross-links, and references do no good if there are no readers. So, really, the BIG THANKS goes to those folks, who have visited the site – some by accident, some intentionally… The biggest thanks goes to those readers, who stick around and read one or more pages. Hopefully, you find something of enough interest in my stories to come back for more…

Until later,

- Zeke

 

 

 

*Note: data above is as of 10:43 EDT 10/31/2010)