Austin360 blogs > Bottlecaps & Wingnuts > Archives > 2008 > July > 22
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
The (almost) last B&W blog
After more than three-and-a-half years, 501 blogs and 514 comments … it’s time for this blog to come to an end.
I know, despite planning this for about half a year now, I’m a bit sad myself.
Since the boy was born, this blog has been about him, my reactions to being a father and the occasional looks back at wilder times. But it didn’t start that way. Back in the early months of 2005, I volunteered to be a sort of John Kelso Jr.
You know, the everyday guy who eats hamburgers and drinks cheap beer and watches football on TV. I was supposed to offer my would-be (but not quite) blue-collar take on culture to help balance out the, uh, embrace of things trendy you’ll find elsewhere on this site.
But the blog morphed as I did. There were music reviews. A stretch of mountain biking commentary (with endless gushing over the Barton Creek Greenbelt). Then triathlon training. There was bar commentary, high school football poetry and more blathering about Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic than anyone but me cares to read. There was a bit of travel, but not enough.
I found a core group of readers, and then another when I started blogging about my son. I appreciate all four or five of you — even those whose constant suggestions and advice I found to be sometimes overbearing.
In the past year, this blog has offered no real value to Austin readers — at least not what you’d expect from a staff blog on Austin360.com. No, it’s simply been a personal blog of sorts, and that’s not a role I’m really comfortable with.
So, I move on.
There’s a few loose ends:
I never did get back to you on Joe Nick Patoski’s Willie Nelson biography … because I’m still reading it. But it’s excellent once the history hits Austin, full of little details to enthrall the most dedicated fan: Did you know that it was artist Jim Franklin who introduced Willie and Leon Russell?
The boy walks the walk, but talking the talk? Not so much. He’s getting there.
Did I lose the 45 pounds I gained since spring 2005 and return triumphantly to triathlons? No. But I’ve lost 15 and did manage to jog nearly a mile this morning (a far cry from the 7 miles I could jog two years ago … but, it’s a start).
And, finally, a not-forgotten request from a longtime friend. Back in August 2006, my buddy Scott asked me to write a blog about the Nutty Brown Cafe, heading out toward Dripping Springs. He had grown up just a mile or so from there, back when that area was “in the middle of nowhere.”
I said sure, I’d go there and write a blog about it. But pregnancy (Shannon’s … not mine) and fatherhood distracted me. Next thing you know, two years have passed.
There’s something in there about not going home again, life moving quickly and the increasing difficulty of slowing down enough to look back. Or maybe it’s just that I’m lazy, I don’t know.
Either way, we’re moving forward.
Here we go …
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