Hello World

Hello World!

My name is Todd Matteson.  This is my inaugural post to my first ever blog.  I don't have some grandiose plans for this.  I'm just going to be using this space to share some thoughts that I have been kicking around in my head.

I imagine that almost all of the visitors here will know me in real life, either currently or from a long time ago.  Whether you talk to me once a week or once a decade, I'd love to hear from you.

Just to clarify, I'm the Todd Matteson from Iowa.  I think there are about six or seven of us nationwide, just judging from an internet search of my name.  At least it is much more unique than John Smith.  It must be impossible to Googlestalk someone like that.

So why would someone like me, who posts to Facebook about once a quarter, want to set up a blog?  I'm not really sure.  I guess I like the thought of expressing myself without all of the associated rigamarole and superfluous stuff that gets associated with Facebook.

I'll be writing about all sorts of stuff, whatever is on my mind.  I will, however, try to stay away from political posts.  I do have some strong views on most political topics, but I usually only reveal these in person.


Some housekeeping stuff: I encourage comments, questions, concerns, feedback, etc.  The content will be mostly mine, I'll try not to plagiarize, and I'll try to give credit where possible for stuff that isn't mine, but don't expect full bibliographic citations.  I'm not that kind of guy.  I am one of those who picked his gen ed classes in college based on if the class title sounded like it required me to write papers.  I studiously avoided any essay classes.  Not that I really care, but for any lawyers reading this blog, everything is copyrighted by me, I guess.  The look of the blog will likely change a lot during the honeymoon period here at the beginning.  I just randomly chose a template when setting this up.  I'll customize more in the future.

So why the blog name?  I'm a big bicyclist in my spare time from being an actuary during the working hours.  I also race triathlons sometimes as well.  I get a lot of enjoyment out of riding my road bike.  I'm not militant about it though.  I'd like to get to a point where I ride my bike about as far as I drive my car, but that is a ways off.  I ride about 2,000 to 2,500 miles a year, but still drive about 10,000.

Thanks for reading!  I'll see you in my next post, likely tomorrow night