Ready, set, wade in

The longest journey starts with a single cliché. This one almost did, anyway.


Thank God I could hold off until the second paragraph. If it’s true about the single step, then maybe that’s why it’s taken me so long to join the modern world and start a blog. I’m a triathlete, after all, and we have things to take care of before that first step. Like the swim. The bike. Comic strip deadlines, magazine work, training, racing, life in general and now a book, "Trizophrenia: Inside the Minds of a Triathlete,” published by Velo Press and available in bookstores and online now.

While all these things were distracting me from starting a blog, they were making it all the more appropriate that I start one. It turns out that while all those things make for a rich and rewarding life, they take time away from friends and family and – dare I say it – fans just as surely as they take time away from more new projects.

So here’s what I’m hoping to accomplish with this blog: I’ll share a few thoughts with the world a few times a week, ideally, eventually, on something resembling a dependable schedule. I’ll try to share thoughts that are worthwhile and only thoughts that are worthwhile. (Note: I will fail at this.) Maybe I’ll elaborate on what’s happening in today’s Frazz episode. Or in Trizophrenia, or in my Triathlete magazine column or my VeloNews cartoon. Maybe I’ll subtly draw attention to those products like I just did, or maybe I’ll announce new products like the upcoming cover art for The Bob and Tom Show’s annual (and wonderful) comedy CD, distributed via the USO exclusively for the enjoyment of our overseas troops.

I do these things anyway, in the form of e-mails to friends. Which brings me to this: I have a lot more friends than I have outgoing e-mails. People are getting missed. So here’s my chance to apologize to those people, en masse (how personal), and maybe start over in a format that sees me less likely to fall behind.

While I’m streamlining the outbound stuff, I’ll try and make it easy for people to write back with their own. This blog is open to comments and questions, inevitably heckling, and definitely correction. Please, join in. I was always better at conversation than monologue.

So here I am. I’m taking that first, clichéd step. It’s not so hard after all. It’s just a new way of sharing the same old stories and thoughts. And occasional, not terribly subtle, reminders that !!TrizophreniaFrazzTriathleteVelonewsBobAndTom!! I have the occasional ulterior motive and product to move just like anyone else.