The Searchers

One of the things that I appreciate about the Blogger platform is the fact that it provides an overview of my readers' statistics. No, I can't see who you are or get any insight into your shopping or porn viewing habits, but it does provide information like number of views, sources of links, and browser platforms. For example, Internet Explorer users represent 34% of readers, with Safari running second at 25% and Firefox at 19%. Very interesting stuff for us numbers geeks. Also of interest is the  number of international readers. Though I sometimes have concerns about some kind of cyber ne'erdowells when I see contacts from countries like the Ivory Coast, Indonesia and  India, not cycling hotbeds in my mind, I think it's cool if there are readers there as well as in countries like Russia, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Australia and the UK. Here's a snapshot of "Pageviews by Country" for a week:

United States   1,009

Russia   34

Germany   32

Spain   20

United Kingdom   17

Poland   11

India   10

Canada  6

Belgium   5

Indonesia  4

 I know that there are some Texans in the mix, also, though they do not stand out in the stats as a "whole 'nother country" in spite of the tourism campaign that touted Texas as such. What really touches me is when I hear from deployed military personnel. In fact, I'd really like to hear from anybody reading JBarCycling abroad. Some of those "readers" may actually be some kind of sinister cyberbot, but so far I have not received reports of Nigeria letters on my email account.
The statistics also list the most commonly used Google search terms used to find the site. The most frequent, of course, is simply some version of JBar Cycling. Surprisingly, the second most used search term at this time is "Christmas Poems"; surprising, because I don't think I've ever mentioned Christmas poems, but perhaps I'll be motivated to pen one for the satisfaction of the seekers. While it is constantly changing, terms appearing persistently are "snarling dog", "cat 5 tattoo", "bike polo", "Arkansas cycling" and my favorite, "flying monkey tattoo". The term actually appeared in the same post with "snarling dog" in a discussion as to which image might best serve as a tattoo design to mask a scar from a serious dog bite. I'm still voting "flying monkey".