Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Introducing my new blog - Velo Celt

Introducing my new cycling blog, Velo Celt. Why the name Velo Celt you might ask? Will there be musings on kilted cycling or how to throw off one's English or Roman oppressors from the saddle on two wheels? No, afraid not. Velo Celt came to me simply as a lighthearted title that seemed to be kind of catchy. I tried other title variations on the theme of "Two wheels and something," or "Adventures in cycling, something, something," and so on. A few of what I thought were the more clever titles I came up with had already been claimed by other cycling blogs, which goes to show you there are very few original ideas. So, after many false starts I hit on the aforementioned funky combination of two words probably rarely seen together.

While content will focus almost solely on cycling and cycling-related subject matter, I chose to add the "Celt" because I am a dye-in-the-wool Scots-Irishman through and through. I own kilts, I love the bagpipes, and I believe, perhaps smugly, that my ancestry has some of the richest history and traditions of any in the world. Anyway, the content will always have some cycling content, be it a gear review, a pictorial and narrative of a recent trip, or something related to cycling advocacy.

I had originally wanted to keep all my blog-based musings on the web concentrated in one area, namely my other blog titled, I only went out for a walk.... You can read that blog here http://natural-historian.blogspot.com/ I only went out for a walk... started out as a strictly natural history blog. That was going to be the repository of my writings on all of my adventures outdoors in nature regardless of whether they were on foot or by bicycle.

I realized recently that even though I could do all of my writing in one blog, it would probably be better to keep my many missives separated by content. I ride my bike 110 miles a week to work and as such I think a LOT about cycling. I think about trips, I think about gear, I think about advocacy and cyclist's rights. I realized that my writing could very well become very cycling-heavy and I didn't want what had ostensibly begun as a natural history blog to become more of a cycling blog than anything else. So, I decided to split my content off into multiple blogs based on subject matter.

There will be inevitable cross-overs between my blogs, as many of my interests overlap. It's even possible that what may start out as a post in one blog will be continued in another. For example, a narrative of a cycling trip from Chicago to Starved Rock State Park, might link to a post in my natural history blog where I examine the geology, flora, and fauna of the park, in addition to the early history of the Native Americans who formerly lived in the area. Another cross-over I've been thinking of writing deal with how I plan to use my cargo bike to take archery materials (bows, arrows, and targets), to an outdoor shooting range on Chicago's lakefront. The crossover there would be between Velo Celt and yet another of my blogs, The Celtic Craftsman http://thecelticcraftsman.blogspot.com/

I expect every post will be standalone and won't require you to read on into the content of one of my other blogs if you don't want to. I briefly collected comic books for about a year or two in high school and never could stand it when the ending to a story in Iron Man would cause me to buy an issue of Fantastic Four or whatever the case was. I always saw that for what it was, a cheap tactic to sell more comic books. However, I'm not trying to sell you anything. I just see that there will be places where the subjects of my blogs will overlap and where expounding upon one subject might be better done in one blog versus another. Still, I hope that my varied interests and how they mesh will intrigue you and that you'll find something that interests you in all of the places I choose to write.

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