This picture is from my 2006 Dayton Cutoff day trip. The Dayton Cutoff was an alternative to the official National Road between Springfield, Ohio, and Richmond, Indiana. It passed through both Dayton and Eaton, Ohio, and was much more popular than the official National Road. In fact, it was included in the National Old Trails Road automobile trail in 1912. A century of development has moved things around a bit and the name National Old Trails Road seems to have morphed into Old National Road but this is where the modern equivalent of the National Old Trails Road (a.k.a. Dayton Cutoff) connects with the National Road at Richmond.

I knew when I started this blog that interesting things might not happen in my life with adequate frequency to feed a weekly post. I consider it important to post on a regular basis but knew some weeks would just be flat out boring and others simply would not have enough open time to write anything. The My Gear and My Apps series of articles were conceived to address the problem. Since their subject matter was not tied to the current date, I could write the articles during those boring weeks and post them whenever the need arose. That worked rather well until my recent twenty-eight day trip.

I anticipated being gone three Sundays and left home with almost three articles ready and waiting. I figured that, sometime before the third Sunday rolled around, I’d find the time to finish off that third article. Wrong. When the third Sunday arrived, not only didn’t I have a blog post ready, my daily trip journal was about three days behind and what computer time I had was spent trying to get it current. I gave up and posted a white flag in the blog. When I did that, experienced blogger Jim Grey gave me some advice. He suggested that I pick some photos from completed road trips, write a paragraph or two about them, and save them for an empty or too full Sunday.

This is pretty much how My Gear and My Apps work but there are some important differences. Talking about gear and apps tends to run into more than a paragraph or two and typically requires a little research. Finding appropriate pictures can also take a little time. Jim’s idea uses pictures I already have and I soon realized I could shorten the process even more. I’ve already picked a picture from each of my completed trips to appear at the top of this site’s home page. A different picture is randomly selected each time the page is displayed so I even have an automatic way to select a next picture for the blog. As Jim stated at the end of his tip, “Problem solved.”

Both My Gear and My Apps will continue but I’ll also be filling some Sundays with a picture from one of my road trips. The thumbnail will link to the full sized version of the picture and a link to the trip it is from will be contained in the descriptive text. This is the first.