Coming Back

I know --- been a while. I've really no idea why this starts and stops so. 

Actually, I do, several reasons.

The Geezer really did start the downward slide into inactivity; it's just not as soul fulfilling and, well, cool as the bobber. It's a big road bike -- just loves the "I" -- the Interstates -- and the long leg, cruise control, satellite radio blaring runs. Oh, I run the back roads on it. Run the twisties in the hills on it (truth be told, it'll out-corner the bobber all day long), heck, I've even run off road -- not entirely, I must admit, on purpose -- with it.

Bottom line is, the damn thing does just about everything and it does it well. But. 

But.

I'm a denizen of the sleepy by-way, the lost town, the old run down country store. I'm a bugs in the teeth, no windshield and "yeah, motorcycles can be uncomfortable -- what was the question?" guy. So while I've been on those by-ways, found those towns and swapped lies with the owners of those stores while runnin' the Geeze, I always have felt that because I was on that big, fancy scoot I wasn't really on a motorcycle run. That, somehow, being on a scooter that I see so many old, fat, RUBS on made it less of an experience.

Never said I was sane, Gang.

Or smart.

Another reason is that I'm going back to music. A lot of the free time and creative energy used for the blog now goes into bangin' away on those basses. Jeez, I do love it. Music has been a constant in my life since I was four years old. It's good to be playing again.

So, yeah, I could give you reason after reason why this sort of petered out. I could tell you how, after that last post: "Heat", things sorta blew up in the Club with several of the Brothers and a lot of stuff went straight to hell. I could tell you I had a few health problems (I'm OK). I could tell you lots of stuff and it'd all be true.

But I had me a RE-VEL-A-SHON t'other day (OK, maybe it wasn't of that magnitude, but rather an epiphany for someone normally as monumentally obtuse as I).

Blogs, it seems, are an interactive medium.

Now while a number of you younger folks are saying: "Duh..." (the height, for many of you, of your grammatical abilities), recognize that we older folks wrote stuff longhand or on typewriters and then abandoned it to an editor or publisher or whomever and maybe, if we were lucky, got some comment upon it somewhere down the road. Blogs, residing within the medium and context they do, are dependent upon comment and response. It is not only necessary -- it is their completion.

I came to this realization just the other day. I have two Daughters-in-Law who are inveterate bloggers. I've always enjoyed the blogs, check them every other day or so, but never really tumbled to the role the comments played. I just viewed them with my 66 year old frame of reference and was disconnected from that which was supplied by others.

OK: "Duh...".

What happened was, our oldest son got his dream job in Virginia. They're moving from here right after the first of the year. Tiffany, his wife, a dancer, writer and all round artiste, is not only a blogger, but does Twitter, Instagram and every other social networking site one can imagine. Now, as Facebook has somewhat softened the miles between my Daughter, Grandchildren and a number of my family members and me, I thought that getting on those other media would help keep up with what went on in Chris' and Tiffany's life, as well.

And so I discovered the power of comments and the role they play in this new media of ours.

Ya' see, the whole time I was writing this blog, I had about six comments. Not much. It was as if it was just out there in space, not much different than the "old" media where the written words really were the "flies in amber". But that's not what this is. It is a blog. It needs you -- not just as a reader, but as a participant.

That's how it works.

So I'm gonna start writing this thing again. Maybe daily, more likely every few days, maybe every week. It'll vary. But I now know that I need your help. Your insight. Your contribution.

Heck, Kids, I still have hills to ride, back roads to run and old stores to visit. I got lies to swap with the folks in those stores.

Who knows -- might even tell ya' some...