It's not about the bike?

We're back from Wyoming and had a great trip. What a beautiful part of the country - but being out there started my allergies and has cut back my breathing. Its hard to tell about the later when you're at altitude (7000-10,000 feet), but now that I'm home, its clear that my breathing is worse than it's been in a long time. URG!

Lots of folks were riding out there. They ranged from downhill/free-riders, to fast roadies, to touring folks. The valley has a lot of space with relatively flat roads, and there area all the steeps (road or off-road) anyone could ask for. There's also a nice trail system that seems to largely follow the snake river. So, the options are great! I just wasn't sure if there would be enough locals (or at least folks who live and work in the area) with the itch. Much of the area has become a billionaires haven - and its not clear to me how many of them want to spend time on a bike. Then there are poor transitional types (ski-bums and there summer equivalents - is there a name for them?) who may be willing to put a serious part of their personal assets into a bike. And, of course there are the long-term folks in the business & ranching class. All in all, I was surprised at the number of expensive bikes spotted.

Anyway, on to the meat of this post.

When posting, one doesn't really know how one is being received except by site statistics and comments from readers like you. One of the things that has amazed me is the lack of reader postings. Mind you, frame-building doesn't likely have a broad audience, but folks who get into the site spend a lot of time here. Does something about the site dissuade, or intimidate folks from commenting? Hard to say. Anyhow, I thought it might be of some interest to share what I know about you the reader from site statistics.

85% of you are using a Windows system. 10% use an Mac system. and 5% use Linus or the popular Unknown. This is interesting to me as the most recent stats I've heard are that Mac only has a 3% market share. My overly simple interpretation of this is that folks interested in frame-building have a bit of an esthetics (rather than engineering) bias. I'm not saying that this is true of You, or of all viewers, but when one gets past the religious wars - Mac users tend to come from backgrounds where visual tools are important. By the way, posts are welcome on most any topic, but the question of what's better - Windows or Mac is old, tiresome, and unnecessary - so let's stay away from that one on this blog.

53.54% of the monitors used are 1024X768. Of the rest, virtually all of them have a higher resolution. From this I infer that most of you have, or have access to fairly current PC hardware. Some may be accessing using work or school provided hardware, but still there don't seem to be many limited systems looking at this site.

Explorer captures about 63% of the viewing market. Foxfire and Netscape pull in about 24% (with Foxfire completely dominating Netscape). Opera has 5%, Omniweb 4% and Safari 4%. These sound like pretty normal numbers to me.

85+% of viewers are from the time-zones which span the US, Canada, and western South America. Another 7-8% come from time zones spanning continental Europe and the middle of Africa, while close to 10% come from time-zones covering parts of China, South-East Asia, and Australia.

Viewer languages might not seem interesting in that 95% are English, like this site, but Chinese and German hold 2% shares each, and Dutch has a 1% share.

While there is only 1-2 average visits per day, the average visit length is over 3 minutes and drills down through 4-5 pages. Mid-month is, by far, the most popular time to visit (are you busy paying bills at the end of the month?). While I have no statistics, a review of visitor details shows that a number of you keep coming back to see what's new.

So, this small audience has enough interest in the subject-matter to spend long periods of time sifting through my posts. Which leads me to be puzzled why no one posts comments. Well, comments aren't required - but do feel welcome to contribute! Perhaps you have an idea for how to improve the content of the site? Maybe you have a question or comment regarding my frame-building efforts? Don't hold back, you can join in.

Cheers,

RG