I'd rather be traveling. Most of my life dreams involved traveling in some form or another. Some of them Marilyn and I discussed, even though they never got much beyond the dream stage.
Before kids, we discussed loading up an RV with computing equipment and traveling around to some of the smaller U.S. towns providing freelance computer and programming services in person. Then we discussed traveling around after an empty nest on a big cruising motorcycle with a trailer.
Now with the Internet so pandemic and free wifi almost everywhere, I am once again thinking of traveling as a way of life. Indeed, if it is to be a way of life, it requires some income. Now Google has a mechanism, AdSense, to pass around a very small portion of its money machine. Theoretically allowing Google to place targeted ads on a blog, which is also one of the reasons they host blogspot, and having a sufficient number of readers such that some of those ads are clicked on will create some form of payment to the blog author. I plan on setting up AdSense just to get the mechanism down, and then getting creative on my blogging.
I'm having a lot of fun thinking of creative ways to combine traveling and blogging, some of which may involve my own website, which would have an additional benefit of involving an old love of mine, programming.
My idea: blog about various motorcycle tours, some exclusively from my own interest and research and others that are the result of either suggestions or surveys, hence the separate website, although suggestions could also come through comments on the blogs.
A one person brainstorm, really a tempest in a teapot, has generated the following:
A "Living Memory Tour," where I travel to all the places I remember living and document my memories of living there and how they've changed, with at least current pictures. Now, I recognize that this has limited commercial appeal, read that likely low reader interest, but it interests me and is both an excuse to ride my motorcycle and to write. I suppose I could include some additional places I've thought about living, or where Marilyn and I actually looked at houses, but that doesn't sound too commercial either.
Another tour might be the "Places I've Always Wanted to See Tour" or any combination of "Whizzing Around:" North America, the U.S., any State or Region, or even some foreign countries. The standing joke was that Marilyn always wanted to stop and go to the bathroom, preferably in some car campground, which she could mentally add, or not, to her "places she wanted to camp" list. She never wrote them down so I could never have a camping tour of these places but one "whizzing" tour could have a campground focus and another could have some other focus.
Perhaps the Whizzing theme or some other label could apply to some of the possible survey driven tours. I've eaten at several restaurants that posted certificates about their being the "best" in some category. Generally these are the result of a survey filled out by just a few readers of a really local paper. One tour could be based a compilation of those surveys or on blog reader input, perhaps through this website I still don't have. I still need to develop a cute rating to compare the various "bests."
"Biggest Oldest Tree Tour:" A tour of the Bristle Cone Pine, a couple old growth Redwood forests I want to visit, and old and large trees around the country of various species. Some of these are landmarks of historical or literary significance. While a tour of the Major League baseball parks has been done, my thought is to do a "Major Minor [league] Baseball Tour.
Even better, I can visit my children and siblings during the winter and not even need a separate place to live. (Ha, ha.)
Showing posts with label ideas for blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ideas for blogging. Show all posts
Monday, April 5, 2010
Monday, February 16, 2009
Blog Thinking
Two posts in one day. Well, the first one was a short one.
After coming back from the "wellness presentation" yesterday, I didn't want to change clothes and go back out into the rain to take my trash and recyclables to the curb for the next mornings pick up. Since my trash can is over sized, I felt I could go a couple weeks without too much piling up. After all, I had done it before. Low and behold, I woke up early this morning because my furnace came on. So I got dressed in my exercise clothes and decided to run the trash and recyclables out. I made it just as the recyclable truck was driving by. I hung around in the rain for the bins and brought them up to the house leaving the trash can for the other truck.
After my wild rice was done cooking for the Mango Black Bean Salad that I like, I decided to take a walk. I get out to the curb and there was my trash can with the lid off and the trash still in it. I guess its better than dumping it on the street but if they weren't going to take the trash, why did they remove the lid. I dumped the water out as best I could and moved the now covered trash can back to the house.
Then I proceeded on my multi-purpose walk. Multi-purpose because I had a destination, a shopping errand and wanted to get some aerobic walking in to make up for not walking yesterday. (Aerobic is defined by the Omron Pocket Pedometer to be at least ten minutes of continuous walking with a certain number of steps in a minute.) In a little less than seven miles, I did over 12,000 aerobic steps. I did take a big break in the middle with the buying and reading of a newspaper while drinking my latte. It may be my last latte because I just checked on the number of calories that are in one.
On the walk I found myself making mental observations and working out the wording of how I would write about it, if I were to write about it in a blog. (Thus the title of this blog posting.) Unfortunately, most of those observations and wordings were less than memorable in their own right and made more so by the passage of time from then to now, when I'm actually writing.
The walk actually started in the rain, (Yes, I was that determined to get a walk in today.), but about a third of the way to the Safeway that was my destination it stopped. By the time I was walking back, it was actually partly sunny. The sun didn't mean that the streets gutters were dry or that all the back yard drains weren't still acting like little springs, some even like fountains, and didn't keep my jean cuffs from getting wet, but did lift my spirits. I was all set to walk in the rain and it turned out I didn't have to.
There was one huge pickup truck that had a battery charger doing its thing on the trucks battery. I couldn't help but wonder if the trucks battery was drained because of a lack of use. Gas prices have crept back up to $2.239 for regular and I can't imagine that truck getting all that great of mileage. After the second six months of just sitting, my much smaller truck had to have the battery replaced. It would no longer take a charge.
Well, I'm off to fix my now much reduced dinner and make up for that latte. I'm trying to have five servings each of grain, fruits, and vegetables and two to three servings of legumes all within my ideal weight times ten calories, of which no more than ten percent are to be fat calories and all eating done by 7:00 PM. If I were working, it would be impossible.
After coming back from the "wellness presentation" yesterday, I didn't want to change clothes and go back out into the rain to take my trash and recyclables to the curb for the next mornings pick up. Since my trash can is over sized, I felt I could go a couple weeks without too much piling up. After all, I had done it before. Low and behold, I woke up early this morning because my furnace came on. So I got dressed in my exercise clothes and decided to run the trash and recyclables out. I made it just as the recyclable truck was driving by. I hung around in the rain for the bins and brought them up to the house leaving the trash can for the other truck.
After my wild rice was done cooking for the Mango Black Bean Salad that I like, I decided to take a walk. I get out to the curb and there was my trash can with the lid off and the trash still in it. I guess its better than dumping it on the street but if they weren't going to take the trash, why did they remove the lid. I dumped the water out as best I could and moved the now covered trash can back to the house.
Then I proceeded on my multi-purpose walk. Multi-purpose because I had a destination, a shopping errand and wanted to get some aerobic walking in to make up for not walking yesterday. (Aerobic is defined by the Omron Pocket Pedometer to be at least ten minutes of continuous walking with a certain number of steps in a minute.) In a little less than seven miles, I did over 12,000 aerobic steps. I did take a big break in the middle with the buying and reading of a newspaper while drinking my latte. It may be my last latte because I just checked on the number of calories that are in one.
On the walk I found myself making mental observations and working out the wording of how I would write about it, if I were to write about it in a blog. (Thus the title of this blog posting.) Unfortunately, most of those observations and wordings were less than memorable in their own right and made more so by the passage of time from then to now, when I'm actually writing.
The walk actually started in the rain, (Yes, I was that determined to get a walk in today.), but about a third of the way to the Safeway that was my destination it stopped. By the time I was walking back, it was actually partly sunny. The sun didn't mean that the streets gutters were dry or that all the back yard drains weren't still acting like little springs, some even like fountains, and didn't keep my jean cuffs from getting wet, but did lift my spirits. I was all set to walk in the rain and it turned out I didn't have to.
There was one huge pickup truck that had a battery charger doing its thing on the trucks battery. I couldn't help but wonder if the trucks battery was drained because of a lack of use. Gas prices have crept back up to $2.239 for regular and I can't imagine that truck getting all that great of mileage. After the second six months of just sitting, my much smaller truck had to have the battery replaced. It would no longer take a charge.
Well, I'm off to fix my now much reduced dinner and make up for that latte. I'm trying to have five servings each of grain, fruits, and vegetables and two to three servings of legumes all within my ideal weight times ten calories, of which no more than ten percent are to be fat calories and all eating done by 7:00 PM. If I were working, it would be impossible.
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