Fifteen years

Like many of you this week, I'm wound into a tight little knot of frayed nerves and I haven't been able to remedy this anxiety. I mean, I spent nine hours riding my bike on Friday, pedaling to exhaustion along an icy 75-mile route with nearly 11,000 feet of climbing, and it didn't help. Like at all. I mean, it was a beautiful day and a great ride, but the effects wore off as soon as I stopped pedaling. I'm worse today than I was on Thursday. Alas. I think it might be time to break into the stress eating and wine. 

Amid the fretting about November 3, I realized this date marks an interesting personal anniversary. November 3, 2005, was the day I launched this blog. Yes, this one. Fifteen years. Fifteen years, 2,212 posts, 25,600 comments, and some 60,000 page views per month. I'm both proud and embarrassed that it's gone on this long. I recently read a post from a blogger who has been at it for a mere ten years. The writer mused, "One little blog post is nothing on its own. But publish a thousand blog posts over a decade, and it becomes your life's work."

I can't even fathom how different my life would be if, on November 3, 2005, I sat down at a clunky Dell desktop computer in the loft of a drafty cabin in Homer, and instead of launching a blog to update friends and family about my great new life in Alaska, I decided to trawl eBay auctions for gear I couldn't afford. Or rant about reporters who add two spaces after every period on the Testy Copy Editors forum. Or whatever it was I even did on the Internet in 2005. What did any of us do before Facebook and the rapid erosion of civilized society? I can barely remember. 

Still, I'm forever grateful that this Napster-surfing, 26-year-old version of me started this blog. It quickly connected me with a group of cycling enthusiasts, who donated actual dollars to my novice training endeavors, thus helping me venture into the wild world of endurance racing and winter adventures (yes, I'm embarrassed that I used to beg for money on my blog. But I wouldn't have been able to pay for the Susitna 100 on my $12/hour with no benefits newspaper salary otherwise.) The rest is a whole lot of history. 

This morning, when I again wasn't focusing well on the writing project that I'm currently trying to squeeze out of dry air, I turned to the Wayback Machine to look up my blog in 2005. It was satisfyingly soothing to scroll through the posts as they once appeared. For all of the importance I place on archives, I almost never go back and read old blog posts. It was fun to reimagine this era when life seemed so simple: Scraping feet of snow off my 1996 Geo Prism, bike commuting to work, narrowly avoiding frostbite while wearing four pairs of cotton socks stuffed into New Balance running shoes, well before I owned most of the gear necessary for riding bikes through an Alaska winter:

This was such a nice respite from the Internet hellscapes where I typically spend my time these days. If you have an old or neglected blog languishing in cyberspace, I strongly recommend a visit to the Wayback Machine. 

This nostalgia post doesn't really have a point, other than to celebrate a 15-year anniversary that probably won't feel appropriate to celebrate on Tuesday. It's Oct. 31, and Beat and I have nice plans to hike up Bear Peak and watch the sunset and moonrise of the rare Halloween blue moon. Quietly, I continue to plan an escape to the high Utah desert where I can park a car far away from cell phone reception and spend my nights looking at the sky. 

Escapes of the mind are almost as good as physical escapes. I feel better now. If there's anything I've learned from 15 years of blogging, it's that hope springs eternal. And long bike rides in all weather are the best course of action, always.