One Year of Old Highway Notes

Saturday, August 9, 2014

One Year of Old Highway Notes

Hello and welcome back to Old Highway Notes. I had written a post for you about Roger Dean Field in Jupiter, Florida. I was getting ready to add some music to the playlist when a slip of the typing fingers erased my work and the backup failed. I guess that is the blogging equivalent of throwing a rod in the jalopy of a blog that is Old Highway Notes. I will recreate it for you, but it was too close to deadline to rewrite and keep on schedule. Watch for it to appear soon.

After my post disappeared, I realized that yesterday is the one year anniversary of my first post on Old Highway Notes so I thought I would take a moment and reflect on a few things I have learned.

I have found that:

Some of you seem to like what I am trying to do here. Your positive feedback has kept me motivated to keep up the project.
Posting every Saturday at 6am Pacific time is a challenging discipline. I only missed a few posts which was my summer vacation and was late only a few times. Year two I am aiming for a perfect record.
The concept of this blog is unusual enough that it doesn't fit neatly into most of the category listings available when I try to promote it. Is it music, is it travel, is it history? I'm not sure.
The highways really do drive the story. Sometimes it is a musical Note, sometimes it is a Note from a guidebook, sometimes it is a Note scribbled into the margins of a history book, or on the back of a postcard. I never really know where the Notes and the Highway will lead me. It's an adventure!
Chicago has an incredible amount of music to explore, but just wait til we get to Texas, Hollywood and New York!
Researching for my posts is an exhausting process sometimes, but the results are worth it.
Two posts a week is impossible to keep up with during the time I have available.
There are many holes in my music collection that I will be filling as I go forward in life.
There is a lot more to learn about all three highways I am investigating.
I have learned a lot about html, web design, marketing, SEO, affiliates, and lots more. The more I learn the more it seems I need to learn. I love a challenge!
It has been very difficult to get comments on posts. Getting people to share posts is even harder.
I have not been able to attract subscribers...yet.
It is hard to impress Google.
I made several technical mistakes as I created Old Highway Notes. Slowly fixing them has been a grueling process.

That last point brings me to my next point. I am going to take the month of August "off" so that I can spend some time under the hood trying to be a web coder and trying to tweak some things and fix some newbie mistakes. I want to make the changes so that you can have a more pleasant experience, and I don't think I have enough time to do that as well as craft new posts. Besides, it is summer in Portland and the sun is shining. That can't be passed up I need to get my annual dose of Vitamin D before the rains return.

I hope you have a great August. Can you make me jealous with your Labor Day plans? Let me know what you are up to in the comments and if you have any suggestions for improvements to the blog you would like to see, please share them as well. I will meet you again after Labor Day. Thanks for a great year of music, history and virtual travel. Until we meet again, use lots of sunscreen and drink plenty of fluids!

Mileage Stats

Route 66: 0 Miles/1 State/621 Tracks/141 Videos/26 Posts

Highway 101: 19 Miles/2 Countries/1 State/503 Tracks/186 Videos/23 Posts

Interstate 95: 77 Miles/1 State/24 Tracks/60 Videos/8 Posts

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