How bizarre is it to have a bunch of friends you've never really met?
I have been a member of the Bicycling Magazine Love forum/cult/clique/dysfunctional family for seven years now. Forum members have come and gone over the years (in some cases their leaving was a GOOD thing....) but there's a core group that, through our exchanges of postings, dirty jokes, emails and sniper fire, we have come to know each other fairly well.
The postings are all pretty short, many of them inane, crass and/or in questionable taste, yet from them, we seem to have come to know each other pretty well. It's like a bizarre little family.
Still, it just seems so odd to me that, when someone on the forum celebrates a milestone, or loses a pet or a loved one ,that everyone can actually care about someone they never met.
Some time ago, one of our forum members posted about going through a divorce - and he was taking it very badly. The outpouring of support was incredible. The post went on for pages and pages. Poster after posted offered advice, and support: "...don't give up, it WILL get better....".
Sadly, he didn't seem to listen. He told us he was going away from the board for a while and asked the moderator to remove the post.
He basically just shut down.
Next thing we heard was that he was killed in a head on car crash with a semi.
Folks on the board were just devastated.
Poof! Just like that, one of the biggest goofballs on the board was gone. The guy who was famous for his gaudy shades and his love of anything yellow was no more. No more would I wake up early here on the East coast, only to find that 007Webgod on the West coast had already filled the entire first page of the forum with nonsense posts like "There's a Donut On The Counter - Should I Eat It?" Time after time, I took some good-natured potshots at him and he took it with grace and aplomb, not getting upset, just dishing it back.
This was probably a month or so ago, yet it still upsets me.
So now I have a little yellow tape on my bikes, eat blueberry Clif bars and think about him often when I ride...
...all for a guy I never met.
I hear the echoes
I learned your love for life,
I feel the way that you would
I feel your presence
I remember
I feel the way you would
I feel the way you would
I feel, I feel the way you would
This just can't be understood
Tried to believe but you know it's no good
This is something that just can't be understood
Godspeed, Webby....and wherever you are, may it be nothing but sunshine, tailwinds, downhills and old, lazy, toothless dogs.
