The end of the WORD as we know it

It's been a long time coming.  The writing has been on the wall, and it can not be ignored.

The cycling blog, as we know it, is dead.

The victim of many different trends and tendencies.  The supersaturation of the blog world, Facebook, Twitter, larger media sites absorbing bloggers for content...

This affects many, but none more than the cast of characters employed here at Bad Idea Racing.

When was the last time we heard from Mike Piazza, coach, general manager, attorney, public relations man, and head IT guy?  What about Admiral Ackbar, Sponsor Liaison and Equipment Acquisitions Director?  What have they been up to?  Things have been a little too quiet around here.  Creative posts have been lacking.  Lots of murmuring going on at the water cooler lately.  
"Are we gonna have a job next year?"

"Will we get COBRA?"


"Should I be sending out résumés?"


Most cycling blogs can be divided into two categories.  Personal weblogs of athletes and those for profit or supporting a cause.  Mine is both but mostly neither.    Most of the athletic ones have gone from daily postings to frequent to occasional to "whenever I feel like it."  Content has suffered greatly.  The ones with more purpose will die without material, constant updates, and a multi-pronged social media campaign .  Without getting too deep into it (boring), let's just say they are "successful," with reason and purpose.  Kudos.

I am without reason and purpose.


So here I sit.  The "season" is over.  I'm making no efforts to secure new sponsors for next year.  There are no custom frame ideas floating in my head.  I've got no plans to make next year happen much differently from the years before.  No training, no Run Club, no short track season, no cyclocross... nothing.

I am happy and content in my world.


I've used and abused all manner of filler material in the past.  "What's in the big blue bins?", tours of my bike room, false interviews with the industry elitist media, product reviews.  All I have left to fall back on is dream sequences.

As Colin Farrell said in the movie Seven Psycopaths, "Dream sequences are for fags."

As Christopher Walken said in the movie Seven Psycopaths, "They don't like to be called fags.  I think they prefer homos."

So....

Without cause or profit to motivate me and stir me from bed every morning before the sun comes up, Bad Idea Racing will be following the "cycling athlete" weblog business model.  Posts will be much more random than ever before, well as random as a guy with some OCD tendencies can get.  Two to three posts a week, with surges of up to but not exceeding four when material is available.  Expect this trend to continue until the 2013 "season" starts back up in late March/early April.

What will be the net result of this action?  Most importantly, I'm going to get some extra sleep.  I could use the spare time to put in some winter miles, hit the gym, run, or do Bikram yoga... but I am not.  Readership will drop slightly.  Fickle fuckers.

There is little I can do to cut back on being stretched thin.  I have not had more than four days in a row off the bike in over 16 years.  Due to my desire to remain employed as a bike messenger, I will not be getting the chance any time soon.  So this is the step I am taking to avoid a permanent burnout and being committed to an asylum.

I still love to ride bikes, and I still love to write stuff and things.  Let's keep it that way.

The blog is dead.

Long live the blog.