Vagabond Bob/THGLC/Mr.Bob/Uncle Bobby/Zed

For the first installment of my salute to the bloggers on right I would like to introduce you to the dude that started me on this whole blog escapade. Bob Makela. I stumbled on his site by pure accident or perhaps coincidence. I was messing around online during one of my weekly midnight shifts and came across it. I have no idea which post I read first, but I was instantly interested in what the wordsmith had to say. So I backed up to the first post on his site and started from the beginning. With few exceptions (some of the posts about not posting enough), it was a fantastic read from the beginning to now.

Bob fascinates me in so many ways. He has a child like enthusiasm that seems to affect every one he meets. Yet his wisdom seems to be enormous. His perspective of our world is refreshing to a skeptic like me. He has an incredible ability to draw the good out of people. Hell, even I've developed more of a soft spot as a result of reading his site. Bob plays by his own rules and it's awesome. He is a guy who lives his life in a way so many of us want but would never have the balls to pull off. I get the impression that people he's close to look down on him thinking that he has more potential. After all, he is a forty-something UCLA graduate who happens to be a talented writer gallivanting across the country in a VW van like modern day homeless hippie. But, that's exactly why I have tremendous respect for him. He stands, almost solitary in the middle of our 9-5/Starbucks society with a big middle finger up to those of us (myself included) who walk around aloof and uncaring. He's the hero in his own story in a life of discovery and interaction with the core of what makes us human. And if people give him shit, I respect him even more for pulling it off and showing us assholes that it can be done. I think the longer he gets away with it, the more he pisses his skeptics off. Even though they give him shit, I'm sure (somewhere in the back of their heads) they're thinking, "I wish I could do that." And that probably makes them resent him more. But there are at least 13 of us that realize the value he brings and we, those faithful few, will not judge. We will do what little we can to help a man on his quest to wake the rest of us out of out zombie-like indifference to the world around us. Even if we run the risk of being arrested for tainted mail.

Thanks Bob. After all, I didn't even know what the hell the fascination with blogs was until I came across "TheGreatestYearOfMyLife." Now blogs are my reality TV. I can now survive a crappy meaningless job by posting things to this site and living vicariously through others. I look forward to reading your book.