Three Years of This

The anniversary of Scootin' da Valley passed quietly yesterday without fanfare nor celebration. It was a busy day with seeing my daughter off to California and attending a birthday party for a cousin, but even if it hadn't been there'd have been no horn blowing nor confetti throwing on this account. Except for a single precious soul, nobody in my "real life" knows about this blog at all. Only last week my younger daughter confessed that she and her older sister make fun of me in text messages when I'm in the same room with them. I won't be giving them any additional fodder to get them through the dry spells by letting them think that I fancy myself a writer of some sort. Neither would I want family, friends, nor acquaintances reading into any of the things I put here and thinking they've figured me out to any degree because they'd be bound to be wrong.

To be certain, those of us who blog, especially over the course of multiple years, could be thought to be a pretentious lot, and particularly so when the comments left in response to our writings are few and far between. Pretense aside, though, I continue to write here in spite of the frugal feedback and nothing to jump up and down about in the statistics counter, which bolsters my belief that essentially I write here for myself. Somehow sending the old thoughts down to the fingertips and then out into cyberspace fulfills some vague need in me. When I started this venture in June of '08 I didn't believe I'd last this long, and while I'm glad I stuck it out, I couldn't begin to tell you why I am.

I ride a scooter. Although I enjoy reading the blogs of the real bikers, and often find gems of helpful advice (I have a quote from one of them on my desk at school.) and important safety tips in their writings, I don't have anything by way of enlightenment to return.

I don't change my own oil and swap out scooter parts. You'll never find here one of those tutorials complete with photos that demonstrate how to replace a whatsahoozit or the proper way to fix one's own bobamadinkler.

I'm mildly funny, once or twice, on a good day, and only to certain persons. I savor the writings of guys like Riepe (who's every bit as good as O'Rourke et al in The National Lampoon in the late '70's), but I could never make somebody nearly spit out a cigar or mouthful of Jack Daniels with anything I pen.

I take pictures and lots of them, and the lucky shots I show here, but they're like photos in a family album taken by mommies quickly firing off those growing up moments and not well composed and demonstrative of masterful technique like the photographs of one of my favorite blog writing and scooter riding heroes, Steve Williams.

A local blog writing group has a link to me, but even there I don't quite fit in. They're highly political and have writing agendas driven by local politics. I vote somewhat reluctantly and the only politician about whom I was ever fired up was Richard Nixon - when I was in the sixth grade. And look at what my support got him!

So, I flounder at best in my efforts here, trying to carve out a niche in corundum with a plastic butter knife, but that's okay. And I truly mean it. This is not a pathetic attempt to get anybody to comment, "There, there, Joe. We love your blog!" It's just more of the same soul searching that I do on the scooter that somehow extends into what I write here. And maybe that's the tie-in that makes this a scooter blog to me when I'm not specifically writing about the BV or my experiences on it - pondering that one essence of self. Riding the bike and writing something here give me the same introspective satisfaction and there's nobody to please but me!

Will I be here in three more years? Probably. Will this have evolved into some profound showcase of amazing ability? Heck no! It'll be what it always has been, and is - I just don't know quite what that IS yet.