My name is the result of a confluence of events. I was quitting a long term job and in the process of setting up a corporation-independent identity on the Net. Up until that point I mostly used my initials, 'mps', usually associated with my job (other than some BBS-era adventures as Wang Dang Doodle, etc). As a part of this process I decided to grab my own domain name.

I'd always been an avid mountain biker, but for nigh ten years I had been slogging along on the frankenstein remnants of a Schwinn High Sierra -- a bike that was okay in its day, back when the sport was still defining itself. I didn't know much about the "sport" at the time, as off-road biking was simply a natural extension of my days as a kid tooling around the Alabama trails and streets with the other neighborhood hooligans on my Mongoose BMX. Well, part mud & creek, part D&D excursions, transport was transport. Within those creeks and crannies, though, I was always on the lookout for any sort of creature I could find...snakes, salamanders, crawfish, frogs, lizards, toads, you name it. In particular I was fairly enthralled with the whole toad thing.

So, later in life, I rode the living hell out of that Schwinn High Sierra; over time, the only original part left was the frame and one sprocket. During this same time I belatedly gathered a heavy appreciation for blues and roots music with stints in Nashville and Houston, not to mention an appreciation most other sorts of music. Hence I had songs about mojo's running in my head (yes, Doors too).

About the time I was going through this migration to independence on the net, I rewarded myself with a treat. A wonderful steel-framed Ibis Mojo painted in an alarming, but gorgeous toad-green color. (picture circa 1997)

When casting around for domain names, five years ago or so (pre Austin Powers II and it's shameful abuse of the word mojo), all of it -- the toads, the blues, the need for a name -- swirled around the catalyst of my new green bike. Up from the subconscious it hopped: Mojotoad.

So after establishing the domain name, it was only a matter of time before it was adopted as my online moniker as well.

Glad to be here, fellow monks. After more than a year of travel hiatus, it's good to be back.

Matt

P.S. For the morbidly curious, if you are into mountain bikes and want to learn more about how much of a dog the Schwinn High Sierra was, there is a compulsive mountain bike catalogue collector out there. 1987 model. That should tell you why it was so heavily modified over the years, in the quest for hacked improvement of design.