Housekeeping: Four Milli Plus And A Change Of Service Ahead

"Thirty-four months to the first million and twenty months to the next." That's what I said when we hit the two million hit mark in September of 2017. Since then, there's been an, ahem, flattening of the curve in site growth, which is fine. Depending on how you shake and bake the statistics, Riverside Green has between thirty and seventy thousand real human beings reading it on a semi-regular basis, with perhaps five thousand folks who reliably read everything I publish.

Thank you.

As has become customary on these occasions, I'll answer a few random questions and then discuss a minor change coming to Riverside Green in the weeks ahead.

When's the book coming out? The sustained tide of doxxing/whining/snitching aimed at my employer over the past year has made it obvious to me that I can't publish any book worth reading as long as I am a full-time employee of an insurance company. I'd basically be handing my critics a bludgeon with which to beat me. I could write a paragraph like

It's important that we beat racism, treat women with respect, and let racists know that they are bloody well going to lose. Until we eradicate racism and sexism on a systematic level, they will continue to form part of the die with which our national character is stamped.

and it would be excerpted to my boss as

It's important that we beat... women... bloody... until... they... die

Much as I'd like to throw caution to the wind and do it, I have a child who needs my help (and some health insurance) for a few more years to come. That being said, in the event that I do leave the business, for whatever reason, I promise you that my book will be highly, highly, highly entertaining. Part Tropic Of Cancer, part Where The Suckers Moon, and part Flammenwerfer 35.

How are you physically? It's been a robust seven years for injury, I have to tell you. My last operation two Wednesdays ago got my fibula bolted up nice and solid. I'll be riding skatepark by New Year's Day. The good news is that my son is just on the edge of completely eclipsing my ability as a rider. By 2022 I don't think I'll be doing anything but holding a camera, at which point I'll join Brother Bark on the home-aerobics train and stop the broken-bone count before it reaches three figures.

How is Brother Bark? He has an astounding new job that really utilizes his talents. He has a couple of new cars --- well, new to him, anyway. And his commitment to physical fitness has really paid dividends. I think he did 100 pull-ups and 255 push-ups in an hour last week, or something like that. I wish he'd get back out there and play some gigs but unlike me Bark's extremely self-critical as a musician and I don't think he wants to do it until he can do it right.

Racing plans? I'll be running my Radical in SCCA P2 next year with an eye towards learning enough to make a real, no-holds-barred push towards sports-racer/prototype racing in the years to come. The Accord may move to the Gridlife Touring Cup. All of this is subject to, and secondary to, my son's competitive plans. I think he will probably run a least a few downhill and enduro races in 2021, along with Ignite karting.

Alright, that's it for me. Now for the site. I like the way Riverside Green looks without advertising and I while I have the typical club racer's appetite for folding cash, I also dislike the idea of subjecting my readers to unpleasant and/or misleading banners just to make a couple hundred bucks a month. That being said, the co-location aspect of the site has been expensive to run. So in the week to come I'll be moving it off my dedicated box in San Antonio to THE CLOWN somewhere. This will save me a couple grand a year while providing identical service to the readers. I should note that this site is thoroughly backed up once a day to my own storage so it can't be permanently vandalized or destroyed by a script kiddie.

As always, I'd like to express my thorough and humble(d) appreciation of our readers here at Riverside Green. My most devoted opponents will never know what it is like to share one's work with a diverse, accomplished, and profoundly thoughtful group of people like the reader/commenter base here at RG. Robert Farago ironically called TTAC's readers "The Best And Brightest", but it's a phrase that truly applies to what we have here. There's an immense gratification in knowing that I cannot outkick my coverage with you people; I can load the text with any obscurity from Colley Cibber to Bushwick Bill knowing that someone out there will pick up on it. The hyenas out there might envy me to some degree --- and why not, I'm basically a modern-day Ernest Hemingway who can do all the stuff as well as write about it, right? --- but I think what they really envy is my readers. I could throw a dart at the Apache server logs and hit a first-rate dinner companion, a Renaissance man, a brilliant scientist, a battle-hardened soldier. I've never met one of my readers in real life and walked away disappointed by who that person was. Let us continue as we have been, and may it long be so.