Up Front

UP FRONT

My Life as a Blog

David Edwards

FOR SOMETHING THAT WAS ALL BUT UNKNOWN 10 years ago, blogs have done pretty well for themselves. Chroniclers of the genre can identify just 23 “personal online journals” (later “web logs,” soon contracted to “blogs”) as 1999 began, maintained by pointy-headed computer wonks who knew how to code HTML, the “tag language” of the Internet.

Then came blog-hosting sites and even blog search engines, one of which, Technorati, estimated that blogs numbered 4.8 million by 2004-and that was just a start. Today, the figure has skyrocketed to somewhere north of 100 million! Blogs are mainstream.

Cycle World joined the blogosphere in January of 2006, when my aside on a Honda Gold Wing press intro was uploaded onto our relaunched website.

Like the cobbler whose kids have holes in their shoes, I’ve never been able to keep a diary, but blogging for the past three years has created a pretty good snapshot of my life and experiences-an unexpected byproduct of filling space on a computer screen. A couple of my favorites:

As Organizer-in-Chief forCW’s recent Battle of the Baggers shootout (October, 2008), it was up to me to arrange lodging for our motley crew of 10. Vegas was the first night’s stop. After an all-day, 115-degree crossing of the Mojave, checking into a cheesy neon barracks on the Strip was a non-starter, so I booked us individual rooms at the exclusive Green Valley Resort, just outside of town in Henderson.

Swank digs, as they should be for 300 clams a night, a figure well outside our company’s Travel & Expense guidelines. My excuse is that I was going for cost-averaging. The next night we’d be bunked down in the wilds of northern Arizona at the much more bucolic Jacob Lake Inn, two to a room, with one unlucky soul relegated to a sleeping bag on the floor.

Things started off a little rocky at Green Valley, though. Because we arrived late, some of our rooms had been given away. It looked like Peter Egan and I would have to share. Now, I like Peter’s company, but I ; wasn’t happy. What good was a reservation, I I crabbed to the poor girl on the reception desk.

“Well, Mr. Edwards,” she offered, “I have J you and Mr. Egan in the Mediterranean Suite, ; and (lowering her voice) that usually goes for $2000 a night...”

Yes indeed! Two large bedrooms separated f by a central salon that contained a foyer; an office, a wet bar, a 10-person dining table and I a modular couch whose cushions no doubt had stories to tell. In all, some 2000 square feet of marble-tiled, plush-toweled, HD-TV’d luxury. High-roller heaven!

The next night, Peter and I shared half of a 1930s cabin in the woods, no television, no phone, no Internet access. Cost all of $85 for the night.

Do I have to tell you which setup Egan liked more?

We laid to rest my Grandmother Rene over the Christmas holidays. Bad timing but no reason for any undue sadness. She was a week short of her 102nd birthday and had led a full, fruitful life.

Francis Helen Irene Winter was born in 1905 in Grimsby, England, seven years before the Titanic sank, nine years before the start of World War I. She was working as a waitress in London when she met Alfred Hart and fell in love. The two married in 1930 and produced daughter Doreen-my mother-a year later. A son, Robert, followed in five years. Their happy homelife was interrupted in 1939 with the start of WWII. Alf joined the RAF and was soon deployed to North Africa as part of a mobile radar unit. He wouldn’t return home for another four years. Like many English women, Rene was also part of the war effort, working in a munitions factory and taking in two child evacuees from the London blitz.

Rene (pronounced “Ree-Nee” in the longstanding British tradition of ignoring anything French) was always motorcycle-friendly. She voiced no objection when my future father, a Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm mechanic, began squiring her daughter around on his only means of transportation, a brand-new 1950 Triumph Thunderbird 650. And that’s Rene in the attached photo, showing great bravery by climbing on behind me barely a month after my 16th birthday, the ink still wet on my driver’s license.

Thirty years later, long after she and Alf had emigrated to the U.S., I gave her another ride, a short, around-the-block hop on my BSA Gold Star. She loved it, smiling the whole time, and snapshots of the event were duly circulated to family members-some of whom were aghast that I had subjected our 95-year-old matriarch to such danger.

It wasn’t long after that we noticed Rene’s memory fading. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, the cruelest disease, and began a seven-year decline. She remained happy to the end, though, often showing the same smile I had seen on the BSA.

I’d like to think of that ride as one of her last, best memories. Rest well, Rene.

To read more of the CW Staff Blogs, go to www.cycleworld.com.