The end of the second year

The numbers

At this time last year I predicted that I’d be posting at a rate of “about a dozen posts per month” this year. I was astonishingly accurate: an average of 13 posts per month for 155 posts in 2007. It feels like much less than that.

March was the busiest month with 17 posts, while October was the lean month with 9.

The number of comments has increased roughly 50% over 2006, with 576 comments in total for the year. In 2006 comments were running at 1.4 per post, but in 2007 it was 3.7 per post. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to leave a note, several of you on a pretty regular basis.

Some of the topics

Apart from topics like bike commuting, utility cycling, and cycling in general, other items of discussion included:

• bike lanes in the City of Melbourne
• the Eastlink Path upgrade (Doc Homebrew’s pet gripe for much of the year)
• the Hell Ride came up for discussion again (but if I can help it I really don’t want to talk about it again in 2008 or beyond)
• the mangement (or otherwise) of Melbourne’s public transport
• my self-inflicted knee injury

Speedlinking

I started speedlinking in August. The idea was just to beef-up my occasional Friday photo with a more regular collection of stuff I’d recently found interesting. Talk about lazing blogging… Anyway I hope readers have found those entries interesting also; a handful of comments suggest that at least a few people are reading them.

treadly.net

Also around August I switched this site to its own domain: treadly.net. Please change your bookmarks if you’re still pointing to the old address.

Referrers

I’ll tip the helmet to more referring sites this year (mainly because there were more). The top thirty referrers for 2007 appear to have been:

1. cyclelicio.us
2. Spinopsys
3. commutebybike.com
4. Tweed Coast Treadly
5. goclipless.com
6. Surly Dave
7. planetcycling.org
8. pedaller
9. Bike Iowa
10. Chris L
11. My Bicycle Musings
12. Narragansett Bay Wheelmen
13. Vidman
14. bikeyear
15. London Cycling Diary
16. revrunnerusa.blogspot.com [404]
17. Adrian Fitch
18. tucorides
19. Wheels of Justice
20. Marvellous Melbourne
21. melbourne.metblogs.com
22. blog.bumsonthesaddle.com
23. cycle life
24. Crowlie
25. Research Trailer Park
26. Spacing Toronto
27. Rhys Smith
28. cfsmtb
29. Wikipedia
30. bikesfortransportyeah

It’s interesting that some of these sites sent a large number of links on one topic (e.g. Spacing Toronto, Wikipedia), while others sent small numbers on a large range of topics (e.g. Spinopsys, London Cycling Diary). Anyway, thanks to all of them and, not neglecting the Long Tail, even bigger thanks to to anyone who has posted a link to this site somewhere else on the ‘net (e.g. the folks who posted links to treadly.net on forums like BV Forums, cyclingforums.com.au, and Treehugger).

Predictions and predilections

For 2008 I’ll not be so bold as to repeat my prediction of a dozen posts per month, although it would be nice to think we could sustain that.

I hope that speedlinking will continue on a regular basis, maybe not weekly but we’ll see how it goes. And maybe I can think of a less naff name for it.

I didn’t get to anywhere near as many Audax brevets as I wanted to in 2007, but I want to reverse that trend in 2008. So look out for the occasional brevet report.

I’ll also have another new topic of discussion in the New Year. There will probably be more on that in the next few days…

Thanks

And so it only remains for me to hand out a few more thanks:

To Doc Homebrew, who increased his output of posts incredibly this year. I’m looking forward to hearing about his exploits over a new and quite different commuting route in 2008, but not holding my breath for the same number of contributions.

To Kirsty Altis, who kindly allowed me to reproduce her essay Two-Wheeled Love Affair—if you missed it back in April, do yourself a favour and give it a read.

To all the readers and commenters, especially those who (against all probability) keep coming back. I love hearing from you guys, keep it up.

Best wishes for 2008—and naturally that means a year filled with plenty of good cycling.

More on related topics

• The end of the fourth year
• The end of the third year
• Sneering at the supermarket bike
• The end of the first year