Two years of blogging: Realizing my baby is ugly

Today marks two years since “Dave’s Bike Blog” started.

Having a blog is in some ways like having a child that demands constant attention. Like a real baby, conceiving it is the easy part. At first, it is fun, it sleeps mostly and you wake it up occasionally to feed it.

It gives its parent a great deal pride and feeling of accomplishment as it grows, but the hungry little bastard needs feeding all the time, and if it doesn’t like what you feed it, it will spit it back at you.

This past weekend I was left to wonder, “What the hell was I thinking?” I am realizing how difficult it is to keep coming up with interesting, and informative articles, two or three times a week. Especially when related to a single subject like the bicycle.

Last Friday’s fiasco was a wake up call for me. Okay, I agree the post was not one of my best. However, after spending hundreds of hours writing 183 articles over the last two years; I write one or two pieces that go against popular opinion and I am told, in no uncertain terms, to fuck off. (See my previous post.) Did I really deserve that?

I give free advice and comment for Cris’sake. It’s like going to a free concert and booing the act. If you don’t like the act, walk out, but don’t boo and tell the performer to fuck off. The guy making the comment says he is taking my blog off his RSS Feeder, like he’s canceling his subscription. WTF.

If I was like Bike Snob NYC who blogs under a pseudonym I could care less. However, I blog under my real name, so I take these comments as a personal attack, and I take it seriously. If you make a personal attack, at least have the balls to include your full name, and the city you live in, and not hide behind anonymity.

I allow anonymous posts because not everyone wants to go through the hassle of signing up for a Google account just to post a comment. It is not there for people to hide behind and hurl abuse, or to post multiple comments, giving the impression they come from different people.

I have always stayed away from politics and religion in my posts, and the biggest mistake I made last Friday was mentioning the “Feminist” issue. It was only meant as a way to lead into the story, which was a comment about, twenty-something young men, who care little about their appearance.

I grew up in and era when we wore suits, ties, and shined our shoes, when we went out on a date with a girl. It was a mark of respect for the girl we were taking out; it also showed respect for ourselves. Of course, this was in a time before God invented tennis shoes and the subsequent decline of civilization, as we know it.

I just put forward a point of view in the hope that it will stimulate thought; I fully realize that I am not going to change the world. You can take it as advice, you can take it any way you like; you don’t have to agree.

You can take it as an insult, leave, and not come back. But when you come to this blog, you are visiting me, not the other way around. Telling me to fuck off is like coming to a party at my house and telling me to leave.

I have put too much work into this baby to abandon it completely. My Stat Counter shows that I get around 500 to 600 hits a day, and the child is still growing. It has just reached the “Terrible Twos” so who knows what will happen in the next year. There will always be a win some, loose some situation with readers.

I’m sure there are some who will say I should lighten up, and grow a thicker skin; I have been told that many times. But this is who I am, my sensitivity to this kind of thing is part of my make up; without it I would be a person who had gone through life in some mundane job.

There would be no Dave Moulton who once built bicycle frames, and this blog would never have existed.

Lighten Up

My last post about the terminally hip fixie crowd was an attempt at humor. If a person tells a joke then has to explain it, it is not funny.

If a certain reader of my last post can’t tell it is satire without me labeling as such, then maybe you should get to know my style of writing before rushing to judgment.

If you think I am prejudiced against this or that cycling faction you are wrong, and the problem is not mine, but your inability to laugh at yourself.

There are people in this world who would kill us because we don’t hold their particular religious beliefs or values. We make fun of them, not because we are prejudiced, but because we see the absurdity, the humor in it.

My recent post, Womankind, and the website I was reviewing, Copenhagen Girls on Bikes, is still drawing criticism for being sexist and perverted when I intended it to be a tribute to the grace and beauty of women.

When a woman (or a man for that matter.) dresses in nice clothes, they are making the world, their environment, more beautiful.

However, I am not supposed to look and admire without the accusation of being some kind of pervert. Maybe women should dress in long black robes from head to toe, that way we wouldn’t be tempted to look.

And maybe the fixie crowd should not post pictures of their bikes and videos of their trackstand competitions on line; so the rest of us will not be tempted to make fun of them.

Label: This is a rant.

Bike Blog Block

Sitting at the keyboard
Staring at the screen,
A case of bike blog writer’s block
The worst I’ve ever seen.

The bicycle so simple
You push one pedal down,
The other one comes up again
And the wheels go round and round.

Have I reached the limit?
Is there any more to say?
Will it all come back again
If I wait another day?

I go on to Bike Forums
To try to find ideas
But they’re asking “If I shave my legs,
Will my wife think I’m queer?”

I struggle to find answers
To questions quite inane,
Like, "Do you still commute to work
If it looks like rain."

And on the vintage forum
Someone’s asking for advice,
On dating a Bottechia
I say, “Why not if she’s nice.”

I wonder if I write a blog
A post nobody finds,
Then did I really write it?
Is it only in my mind?

I know by now you’re asking
Has he really lost his marbles?
The longer I go on with this
The message becomes garbled.

Writing about nothing
And even make it rhyme,
Is really not that difficult
All it takes is time.

But to write exclusively about
A subject like a bike,
And try to keep it interesting
The stuff that people like.

Is really not that easy
And like my Momma said,
There will always be days like these
When there’s nothing in my head.

If by chance you are still reading
Maybe I’ve entertained,
I’ve made something out of nothing
And my posting’s not in vain.


Please check back again, after this it can only get better.

Lowcountry Bloggers

Last evening I had the pleasure of meeting some fellow Lowcountry Bloggers for the first time when we got together at the Madra Rua Irish Pub in North Charleston. I have made so many new friends by way of my blog and it was a rare delight to actually get to meet some of them.

I borrowed the picture of the gathering from Joan as mine didn’t turn out all that good. I may be many things, but photographer is not one of them. That’s me on the extreme left gently easing my lovely wife Kathy forward so I can get my smiling face in the picture.

Two people it was especially nice to meet were Vera and Heather as they have been known to post the occasional comment on my blog. With my blog aimed primarily at bike enthusiasts, it is rewarding when non-cyclists find my writing interesting enough to comment.

The thing that struck me about this group was there were no middle aged people there. There were the very young, the young, and then the older, young in spirit people like myself. So often these days, I find in a group like this I am probably the oldest in chronological years, but talking to Chuck a retired journalist and photographer, he echoed my sentiments exactly when he stated that one secret to staying young is “Don’t hang out with old people.”


The above picture taken by Chuck, shows me talking with fellow Englishman, Geoff who admitted he is not old enough to grow a decent mustache yet. In the foreground on the left are Notoriously Nice Mike, and Vera on the right seated next to me.

Two people there were not strangers; Janet and Jason I know from a local writer’s group. There was one other bike rider in attendance named JJ; he said he owned a Bianchi and was on the look out for one of my frames.

I had interesting conversations with George, Josh, and Eugene and many more I haven’t mentioned here. I can’t help feeling the circumference of my circle of friends just grew a little.

Happy Birthday Dear Bike Blog

Dave’s Bike Blog is one year old today, how time flies when you are having fun.

I have posted 45 blogs; that’s a little under one a week for the year. I started out slow, averaging only two or three new posts a month to begin with, but in recent months that has increased to as many as six to eight a month.

One of the reasons for the slow beginning; when I started I had three blogs going, which proved to be hard to keep up. As the Bike Blog seemed to have the most support, I dropped the other two and kept this one.

I have come to realize that in order for a blog to be successful and have a following the blogger needs to post something new on a regular basis, and try to keep it interesting. That can be a challenge.

My writings are of course aimed at the bike enthusiast, but I try to write in a way that a person outside the sport would find the piece interesting, informative and entertaining. So if you ever feel that I am “dumbing down” an article remember that there are some out there who are new to this wonderful pastime of ours.

I have always believed in writing in simple, uncomplicated terms anyway; some people can get way too technical about bicycles. The bicycle is one of the simplest and yet most efficient machines ever invented; you push one pedal down, and the other comes up. How can you get over technical on such a simple machine?

Why do I blog? Several reasons. Writing is what I do now and just as building a lot of bicycle frames improved my skill as a framebuilder; a writer needs to write on a regular basis.

This blog allows me to post random thoughts and other writings without cluttering up my website; although I will admit my website gets neglected at times because of time spent writing blogs, when it too needs updating regularly.

Earlier this year I added advertisements to the blog, but removed them after only a week or two. The reason; I realized we are all bombarded with too much advertising and I did not need to be cluttering up my blog with more junk.

This blog is of course a form of self-promotion, to make others aware of my current creative endeavors. There is no point in creating anything if no one knows about it

When I came to the US in 1979 I was an unknown framebuilder. Even though I had a solid reputation in my native England; I was relatively unknown in America. The way I became known was by articles in various magazines like Bicycling and Velo-News, and after that it was steady word of mouth.

Now I am a relatively unknown writer with a novel called Prodigal Child; it too sells largely by word of mouth. This blog is a two way street; if I can manage to inform, entertain, and occasionally amuse you with my writings, hopefully you will become a regular reader and tell others of this blog and thereby perpetuate the word of mouth thing.

I appreciate and encourage your participation by way of comments and suggestions. Some of you don’t want the hassle of signing up with Blogger to post a comment, but you can always go to my profile page where you will find my email and contact me directly if you have a specific question or suggestion for a blog.

Sometimes I am swamped with emails and it takes me a while to answer them all, but I am not at the point yet where I cannot handle the personal contact. When it gets to that point it will be nice to have a wider audience for my writings, but for now I like the way it is; I feel I have a small but very elite following.

But then bike riders are, for the most part, an elite bunch anyway.