What’s this all about you ask? Well, before you jump to conclusions, I must ruin the surprise by telling you that I don’t intend to go a month without the help of some ‘ginch.’

Instead, I use that headline to get your attention, to tell you about my latest side project. I’ve created a blog to chronicle my Dad’s current West Coast adventure from Powell River, BC, Canada, all the way south to Mexico, on his pedal bike with a handful of his friends. This is significant for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that my dad didn’t even own a bike until a few years ago, and he’s asthmatic. As for the title, you’ll have to click through to the site to read more.

So, here we have this cute blog about six middle-aged guys going on the adventure of a lifetime. But that’s not the whole story. I held back from writing this until I had a chance to get a feel for what the success rate of thing would be, especially since we plan to write a book about their adventures after they return.

(The six heroes of this story. My dad is third from the right)

Well, I can honestly say it has been a tremendous success thus far. This is the true meaning of blogging, I have discovered. We’re getting comments from people as far aways as Australia and France, and from such people as my Great Aunts and my Grandma! Needless to say, these folks had never been on a blog before this.

In fact, people from all over the small town of Powell River, BC are dropping in to comment. Dozens each day (although the photo page is just as popular for commenting as any given post is, for some reason). Wives and kids are leaving messages for their fathers, as a way of staying in touch. New photos are being emailed to me everyday and getting promptly uploaded to the Flickr account I set up. The guys are phoning in their updates and sending emails knowing they are becoming pseudo-celebs in the process. And for me, the whole thing has been a whole helluva lot of fun.

So if I could ask one thing, it would be to drop by the site and leave a comment for these unlikely heroes. They’d love to hear from you, and at this stage of the journey (over half way!) every little bit of encouragement helps. Also, when the books comes out, you can bet I’ll be flogging copies on here, and part of the proceeds will go to benefit the BC Lung Association, their charity of choice. Check out the site, read the about page and some of the posts I’ve written, but most of all, check out the comments that have been pouring in since a few days ago when I set it all up.

This is word of mouth in action, and I’m just thrilled.

Comments

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 21st, 2006 at 1:37 am and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.