227: thanks for the love man...

So lets pretend for a second that some Jackass race promoter told you that if you could wear the cow wristband that they required for entry into the staging area at their race for a year, he would give you free entry to the next year's race, could you do it?

Well, James C of Landenberg, Pa is right on track to making this mission a success. Here is an updated photo of James's cow wrist band.

Only Three Month's to go!

You know I have to say I’m having a pretty good week in the blogworld.

I enjoy blogs, I love sharing the stories of the adventures or non adventures I get to stumble through, almost as much as I love reading other folks tell their stories and share their experiences.

I have enjoyed writing this blog also as a means to capture things that happen in my life. It’s fun sometimes to look back a year or two and see where my head was, or what I was thinking about.

Part of my character is that I love to tell stories and share experiences. The blog model has been a great forum for me.

In the past couple of weeks I have gotten a couple of really nice emails from folks I don’t know complimenting the blog, saying things like fatmarc.com is motivating and inspirational. My jaw kinda hit the ground.

I started my blog so I could stop spamming my teammates and friends on our email listserves with ride reports and other jackassery we got into. Gwadzilla was my gateway drug dealer.

The blog was a much better platform for me to share stories. I found other ways to spam my friends, (like questions of the week for instance. )

For a while my blog served as a platform for sponsorship. I’ll admit, I didn’t really like when it went that way. In fact it almost killed the blog for me. When folks commented that teams only wanted me because of the blog, I felt kinda sick to my stomach.

But I changed it. It is what I want it to be, and now I get to blog when I feel like I have something to say, or not say.

I recognize that my focus has evolved from single speeds, and endurance racing to an obsessive focus on cross. In doing so I pretty much alienated my audience: Frankly, I haven’t paid all that much attention to the volume that the blog gets anymore. That was nice to know when I tried to leverage it for sponsors. As I mentioned that almost killed it for me.

I enjoy writing fatmarc, and at some level it allows my parents and in laws , who I don’t see enough of to have a window of what is going on in my life. I felt like if folks out there are still enjoying what I put out that was pretty cool too, if no one is reading, well I enjoy writing it...

It is something that makes me happy and allows me in some sick, sad way to express myself.

I guess it's the adult version of the skate zine's Mike Brevoort and I put out as kids (Damn the Defiant and Jabberwocky) For the record I always though Jabberwocky would be a great name for a bike team.

My intent has been to be funny, share a sliver of my life, and to have a chance to tell stories.

Telling stories is essential to who I am, and one of the things I get out of cycling. It just seems a ride is always an adventure, and races always create 100 stories for a 100 different people. I love that part of the game.

I am also lucky to be surounded by a lot of really funny people who are great story tellers. Peaches, who does not have a blog, might be the best. I swear I want to write a book with that guy some day. But there I go digressing again.

James and Jill both had very kind words about the blog, and I appreciate them taking the time to drop me a line.

I am humbled.

Thanks for reading and letting me share my experiences.

respect
fm

No Duponts were hurt in the creation of this blog.