As 2011 makes its final bow, it’s time to look back at the last twelve months of Down the Road.
I was extremely fortunate that WordPress.com featured two of my posts on its daily Freshly Pressed feature early in the year, bringing a surge of visits and netting a few new regular readers. But then I spent the whole summer detailing my trip across Ohio’s National Road. I found the whole thing endlessly fascinating, but given that readership slowly declined post after post, I’d have to say that most of you were not as enthralled. Lesson learned! Here are the five posts from 2011 that got the most visits.
- Living vicariously through wealthy car collectors – Photos from my annual visit to the Mecum muscle car auction, it was featured on Freshly Pressed.
- Zeiss Ikon Contessa LK – This 1960s 35 mm camera has a wonderful lens and gave me some excellent results.
- Vintage TV: 1970s weather forecasts – I can’t believe that this post full of YouTube clips of 1970s TV weathercasts hit the big time.
- Kodak Brownie Starmatic – My other Freshly Pressed entry this year, it is about a 1950s Kodak camera that sets exposure for you.
- Kodak Signet 40 – I was surprised both that this 1950s Kodak gave such pleasing results and that so many people were interested in this almost-forgotten camera.
I think a better measure of a post’s impact is how many comments it gathers. These are the most commented posts of the year.
- Kodak Brownie Starmatic – One happy effect of being Freshly Pressed is that lots of people comment.
- Living vicariously through wealthy car collectors – Ditto.
- Captured: Letting my sleeping dog lie – This simple photo of my snoozing pooch moved several readers.
- The Indiana Fried Chicken Tour: Kopper Kettle – Fried chicken has wide appeal!
- Kodak Brownie Hawkeye, Flash Model – This camera had an exposed roll of film inside it. I had it developed and got back ten images from a late-1960s family vacation. Lots of people agreed with me that this was cool!
As usual, the posts I liked the best didn’t climb to any heights. Don’t click any of the links above; those posts have gotten plenty of love. Please, go read these.
- Eventually you realize you’re the common denominator in your problems – Teetering once again at the edge of burnout, I finally faced how I let this keep happening to me.
- Why New Jersey’s anti-bullying law is both too much and not enough – It was hard to share publicly how badly I had been bullied as a teenager, but doing so established my credibility when I blasted New Jersey’s anti-bullying law.
- Moving on is a simple thing; what it leaves behind is hard – Why I left my church when it was struggling to stay alive.
- Paul McCartney kind of saved my life once; he has no idea of course – I was down, really down. Some Paul McCartney music was the knot at the end of my rope.
- I came to believe – How a leap of faith followed by patient determination cemented my faith in God.
Thank you for reading Down the Road. Your visits and especially your comments are what encourage me to keep writing.
Most popular posts ever: about bad grammar, a broken cup, a folding Kodak, a rangefinder Minolta, and The CBS Late Movie.
