Ten years for domain name Theslowlane.com

Ten years ago, my Internet provider had been bought by another company. I decided to get my own domain name since it looked like my site was soon to be cast into the whims of corporate mergers.

Since 1995, it had been under the name of my dial up Internet provider.

Remember Pacificrim.net in Bellingham?

So what should my own domain name be?

Several ideas came to mind including "nudeworking," a word I made up to describe the type of networking I like doing around saunas and hot springs.

Back then, I was writing some mild homoerotic fantasies and adding them to my site. People encouraged me to write my safe sex fantasies as part of a workshop for safer sex that I was attending.

Workshops were from something called "Friend to Friend." Part of the funding even came out of Atlanta.

These fantasies may be a bit slow compared to our testosterone culture.

Slow.

That's an idea also. Like life in the slow lane.

Maybe The Slow Lane could tie it all together.

Bicycling is slower than race car driving. An intelligent conversation is slower than the quick blow job; which wouldn't really interest me that much anyway.

Armed with several ideas for domain names, I talked things over with the waitress at a local restaurant.

She had time, business was slow that day.

My waitress thought it over and said, "Theslowlane is awesome."

Both ideas, Nudeworking and Theslowlane were OK, but Theslowlane tied it all together.

Bicycling, voluntary simplicity, contemplation, conversation and yes, even mild, "aesthetic style" eroticism. It's all under one roof.

That waitress was appreciative of slowing down. Not long before our conversation, she did get a speeding ticket, however.

Speeding in Montana when that state didn't even have a speed limit!

How can that be?

Officers could still determine that one's speed was not reasonable and prudent for conditions.

She was going 100MPH.

I've crossed Montana at closer to 10MPH on bike trips.

No posted daytime limit for cars seen along Clark Fork River in Montana. 1997.

Theslowlane sounded good. Even easy to remember so I came home and punched it into the computer.

It was available.

Easy to remember and available on the first try!

Maybe no one wants to be in the slow lane.

I registered, but assigned it to the wrong web hosting company. That company wanted my site to be "www.that_company's_name.com/theslowlane/."

One of the other janitors, where I work as a janitor, gave me a magazine article that rated web hosting companies. I found the company where my site is hosted now.

It took a while to get the domain name transferred to another company where it could be "www.theslowlane.com."

Not much money was lost, just a little time.

Back then, web based domain name management wasn't as easy to do as now.

I remember sending a fax with photo ID to the domain name registrar. Fax line was almost always busy.

Eventually the change took hold.

Then it took a while for domain names to "propagate" throughout the system.

Like two weeks or so.

Those were the days, but I didn't complain. After all, it's about the slow lane.

By April of 1999, most of my site was under www.theslowlane.com and the heart of my web "empire" has been there ever since.