on the trail
Riding to work this morning through a dusting of new powder, I amused myself by identifying the various tracks I noticed on the bike path (especially since my eyes were mostly forced downward—look up too long and I risked getting bopped in the eyeball by an icy snowflake). There were the footprints of an early walker, a road bike, a bird hopping across the path, ooh! a rabbit! There's a dog being walked, and... what on earth?! What is that winding, dragging trail, with two parallel lines of scurrying footprints along its center? A giant caterpillar? Some sort of segmented worm?!
A little ways along, the answer was revealed: a little long-haired shi-tzu dog, with dragging toenails and fur sweeping the ground. Who would have thought. A segmented worm would have been more interesting.
I really wished that I'd had the camera along: I would have photographed the tracks to present any skilled native trackers in the audience a chance to prove their skills. I also would have photographed the spot where I swerved wildly on the snow-covered ice, careening back and forth across the path for a dozen yards before being forced to put my foot down (and it slipped too, of course). I didn't go down, but the tracks were certainly messy. In embarrassment, I wrote "oops" in the snow; oh I hope that someone goes be and sees it before it's covered with snow!
All in all, though, I was amazed by how well I was able to keep the bike under me this morning. If I had tried these conditions a few months ago I would have been completely destroyed. Isn't visible improvement wonderful! I can't wait for spring, when I can try out my awesome new balancing skills on the trails!
Lavish and traffic-drenched
So earlier this week Harvey and I got 15-minutes of fame by appearing in a video on Bike Snob NYC. In the blogging world Bike Snob is kind of a big deal. He's up for two Bloggies this year, he's giving away free bikes, and he's finagled his blogging into a column in Bicycling Magazine. But most of all, he's got the traffic. Oh man does he got the traffic.
My vimeo dashboard lets me monitor the play numbers of my videos. Most of these are pretty expected for our limited range of family and friends. Harvey feeds Rascal - 56 views. Harvey makes baby noises - 63 views. How did your bike get stolen, after being featured on Bike Snob NYC?
3,067 views.
That's right. Over three thousand people this week listened to me whine out the words "Hi bikesnob! This is Leah at squibix dot net, and Harvey at squibix dot net..."
You'd think that would turn into some traffic for our blog, wouldn't you?
Well you might, and you may still think that. I have no idea. I've been long mentioning to Dan that we should set up google analytics for our site, and we finally did it this week! A day after the Bike Snob Nod. Can someone please shut the barn door? it's freezing in here!
In other words, we have no historical comparison to say whether we're doing better this week than last week. But even so, the numbers aren't... well... let's just say they're a jumping off platform if we hope to get nominated for a Bloggy ourselves next year. Yesterday we had a whole 59 visits to our site. 48 from direct traffic, 8 from vimeo, 1 from facebook, and 1 from factinis and factomelettes (hi guys! We love you!), and one from google. And that person was searching for "squibix." I can has SEO please?
So in conclusion, our state the union may not be catastrof***ed, but there's a ways to go. But we'll make it one of these days. The internet is the new Broadway! And I want to be a part of it!