Blog Stats Reveal My Normal Visitor

Like any blogging OCD freak, I sometimes look at my web stats to see how unpopular I am. I am quite unpopular. That's OK, though, because those who do keep coming back are generally my kind of people.

Those who don't keep coming back often land here because they were doing google image searches, and I saw something interesting today.

It's 12:25 AM. Do you know where your norms are?

I think Chris Koos, the mayor of Normal, may have an interloper on his hands, a late night image searcher straying from the path of true normalcy. Rooting out this person in a town with 50K+ people and Illinois State University within its borders may prove difficult.

Of course, the good people of Normal are very likely sick and tired of people like me being all juvenile like this. Remember though, that I'm writing stuff for the Internet. Juvenile is, sadly, the order of the day out here. I'm just trying to fit in; you know, like, act normal.

Yer Pal,

R A N T W I C K

Skippy

I posted a while ago about how I would like to build a Winter bike using an internally geared hub next time around. Here's why:

You know, this thing was performing surprisingly well considering how much slushy crud had accumulated in it. I have fenders for this bike but haven't installed them yet. It is my hope that a front fender with a great big mud flap may reduce some of this buildup, but this kind of thing is usually inevitable in my experience. The result, often, is that you end up with only one usable gear out back. In my case, since I'm only using one front chainring, that translates into one gear period. Knowing this, I often choose to spin a little more than I normally would since getting stuck with a gear that is too high can prove troublesome in the deeper stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. It was clear and -7 C this morning, a beautiful kind of weather for winter riding, and the bike and tires did very well in a really wide variety of road conditions. In a winter that hasn't been very wintery thus far, this morning's commute was lots of fun.

Yer Pal,

R A N T W I C K