It was three years ago today...

...miss Fede taught her blog to play / they've been going in and out of style / but they're guaranteed to raise a smile/ So may I introduce to you / the act you've known for all these years/ The Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Baaaand!

Ok dear readers, sorry for that. After all this time you've probably got to know me quite well, so you'll probably forgive me this moment of craziness. After all, this is a happy day, isn't it? I mean, it's 'My Blog''s third birthday, isn't that quite a thing? It's time to party-party-party-party girls!! Come on, let's have some (virtual) champagne and lets put on some good music (ok, perhaps 'good' isn't the best word to define David Guetta and Lady Gaga's songs, but I think you've understood what I meant...)!

Geez, three years. Oh God, has it really been so long since I started this blog? I feel old! Well, ok, perhaps 'old' is a bit exaggerated. Still, I must admit I feel 'changed'. On paper, 3 years look like a very short period of time. But in life, 3 years are a huge amount of days, some of which have been bad, some of which have been good. In the last 3 years of my life everything has changed for me, even if perhaps it doesn't really show. Even if I'm still a curly girl with a strange pair of looking glasses, even if I still love Bob Dylan, even if I still spend the whole month of July cheering on some unknown readers while eating lots of ice-cream, I've changed. And also this blog, which is a kind of 'image' of me, has changed.

My first few posts on this blog were awful and they're likely to enter the history of the Blogosphere as 'the worst written Christmas posts ever'. During that cold month of December 2008 I had reflected very carefully about the chance of creating a blog (I was afraid it would have taken me too much time to keep it updated :P), but in the end I decided to set off on this adventure. And now, three years later, I don't regret that choice at all, because that adventure has allowed me to 'meet' some amazing people who I would have never met otherwise. People with whom I don't simply share a passion, but with whom I also share part of my time, of my worries (who doesn't remember my famous Maturità rants? ;)) and of my joys. People with whom I have the chance to laugh about things that my friends would never understand and people with whom this year I've had the chance of grieving with on some very sad occasions. Cycling is a family and my blog is a little window on this amazing world, with all its amazing people and followers. 

2011 hasn't been a good year for me, nor has it been a good year for cycling. A few days before Milan-Sanremo a relative of mine passed away, two days before Flanders one of my parents had a heart attack (don't worry, now they're fine). Then, on a sunny day of May, Wouter Weylandt's life came to an end and I found myself in front of this very same computer screen, crying my eyes out, mourning the same loss as you all. The same happened a few days later, when we all mourned the loss of Xavier Tondo. In the haze of unanswered questions following these two deaths, there was one little thing that cheered me up: the way in which we, people of Cycledom, gathered together as a family in order to get through those hard moments. In those days, we showed everyone that we're a big, colourful family formed by many different people with many different backgrounds, many different problems, but just one passion: cycling.

During the last three years I've grown up, just like my blog and just like you all, my dear readers. In that quiet, cold winter evening in 2008 I was a nervous high school student who was afraid that her blog would have never been read by anyone and whose biggest problem was 'what am I going to do on  New Years' Eve now that my best friends are off to Berlin?' . Now, even if the New Year's Eve problem has remained (with a difference: this year my friends are off to Madrid :P), I'm a much more mature girl and this probably (hopefully) emerges also from my posts. Even if sometimes I write silly things (see the song above for further confirmation of this), at least in these days I don't write just about my favourite cyclist, but I write about cycling in general - and, in my opinion, that's an improvement.

Unfortunately, also as a consequence of events concerning my off-line life, me was unable to blog as much as usual this year. I had lots of great blogging projects in my mind, but I simply couldn't find the time to write them down on this web pages lost in the Blogosphere. This autumn for example I would have liked to write a few posts about some famous athletes (not just cyclists) of the past, I would have liked to write another pronounciation post, I would have liked to organise a poll about the 2011 cycling season. I would have liked to write a joyful post when Menchov signed with Katiusha (it was high time baby!) and I would have liked to write a post about the Bergamo stage of the Giro. Unfortunately, I didn't have the time for all those things. 

Hopefully next year I'll be able to offer you (and myself) more posts in comparison to this year. Luckily, the start of the new cycling season is right behind the corner and Milan-Sanremo, Tour of Flanders, Gand-Wevelgem and all the others races are ready to accompany us once again through another year, full of problems, laughs and bittersweet moments.

While waiting for 2012, therefore, let's raise a glass of (virtual) champagne to cycling, to the riders and to all the amazing people who are part of the cycling family. Thank you for this year, my dear readers, and all of the best for the upcoming one. Have a lovely evening everyone! (*turns off the computer while singing 'Happy Birthday to my blog'*) Cheers! ;)