Writing Assignment 1

Blogging 101 writings assignment #1. Who am I? What am I doing here?

My name is John and I am amidnightrider.

The Midnight Riders are a supporters group of the New England Revolution. I am the senior member who joined at the inception of the organization in 1995.  I use that group name as a handle for my writing, which kind of has a double entendre.  Or maybe a triple.  I am one of a group of hundreds of supporters, which makes me not “The” but “A” midnight rider.  I also live in Massachusetts, (think Paul Revere), and often ride my bicycle at night.  amidnightrider fits very comfortably with my writing.

I reintroduced myself to serious bicycle riding in 2004. I began looking for others who biked on the internet and found people writing about their adventures and experiences.  I loved reading about people who commuted to work by bike on a couple of bike forums, and pined to do that, but I lived 40 miles from my office.  One day, off the cuff, a writer mentioned dual mode commuting.  He was an executive who also had a long commute. He told how he found a place to leave his car part way and ride his bike the remaining 8 miles to the office.

I wanted to document my rides with miles, weather, who I met and all that stuff and began writing on a site called My Dear Diary.  As I made more bike friends I soon made the switch to blogspot and was there for a few years.  Soon I had a fairly large group of bike people on my blogroll and noticed that many had switched to the bigger and better WordPress. It took me a while and I made the switch here in February of 2014.

I was very comfortable with blogspot which allowed me to learn the ins and outs of WordPress fairly quickly.  I’m still learning and that’s one of the joys of writing and reading blogs.  Every once in a while, someone does something different, the light bulb glows, and I learn yet again, something new.