It was the summer of 1996, I would finally figure out how to get the computer we had purchased a few months prior online. It was during that time that the system purchased earlier in the year would finally be logged on the world wide web for the first time. With a new account set up with our internet service provider, that also happened to be the provider of our home phone service (Bell Atlantic) would dial in, and for the first time in my life, I heard that age old sound of the modem handshake, also known as “the dail-up sound”. The screeching noise sounded like it came straight out of the future. The possibilities seemed endless. Who would I talk to? What websites would I visit? How do I send an email?

Each passing milestone was met with the excitement that was to be expected when a teenage trailer dwelling boy like myself would experience with this new found link to the 21st century. It was a feeling that those who lived through it almost sigh with nostalgia when we consider what the internet has become now over a full score into the new millennium.

Indeed, the transformation has been bitter-sweet. While on the one hand, the ease of eCommerce, endless music on demand, streaming movies and TV shows, the performance of virtually every kind of financial transaction imaginable, have made “the internet” an integral part of every day life, on the other hand, it has fostered what I might consider a “meanness” of humans in general, greed on an unprecedented scale, the general dumbing down of the population along with what seems like a never ending list of addictive brain rotting apps, and so on. The internet has not come without its costs.

Anyway, not long after getting online for the first time, I decided I wanted to be a part of it. My very first online writing was a guestbook entry for a personal pet page hosted on the (now defunct) GeoCities. The site was called “Roxies Dawg House”. The creator of Roxie’s Dawg House was even so kind of write a basic one page webpage for my dog Wendy and publish it online! (Sadly I can not find an archived link to this page at this time). By the end of 1996 I was already experimenting with basic HTML commands, FTP software, etc, and would eventually have a VERY basic personal website online on a free personal website host called “One Stop”.

Through my late teens and early adult-hood, I would continue to hone my HTML writing skills, and actually got pretty good it at at one point if I do say so myself, even being paid $300 to write a basic website for a Realtor in Texas back in 2000, as well as attempting to start a small business where I would write websites back in mid 2001. Sadly, it was a dismal failure.

From 2001 to 2002 I mostly just wrote occasional personal websites in my most basic form of HTML coding. There are fragments of those websites still available on the Internet Wayback Machine (www.wildmanrd.com).

During the summer of 2003 is when my internet creations really began to take on a new life and meaning. Our move into the Town of Pulaski in May 2003 introduced us to “high speed” internet via Verizon DSL service (only dial-up was available in our old home). By the end of 2003 and over the next few years I began to explore webcasting (legally) through services such as Live365 and LoudCity. I ran online webcasting stations such as my first “Wildman Road Radio, Bellevue Ave Radio (each named for the street our home was on), AC RADIO PULASKI, and my most successful, “BeanJelly Radio”, which played all vintage 78RPM record recordings from the 1910’s through the 1950s, with most recordings being from the 40’s and 50’s.

Due to the changing legal landscape, and a general lack of overall interest, I ceased webcasting around the late 00’s. From around 2012-2014 my websites mostly revolved around supporting my business endeavors including Lunar Services (a small restaurant repair service I operated for a while), and Lunar Curiosities (a downtown “brick and mortar” New Age (witch) shop in Pulaski Virginia).

Around late 2013 I took a new job at the local grocer where I worked at the time to become a part of their newly formed in-house food equipment maintenance department. Thus, all my previous business endeavors were closed out and we moved from Pulaski Virginia to a small town called Damascus Virginia, near the Tennessee state line. Web design took a backseat during this time, though I would occasionally toy with some basic sites from time to time.

As time went on, we moved around a little bit, finally settling in a home in Lebanon Virginia where I ran a basic “90’s style” website on dreamspace. This was around the early 2020’s and the most recent version to this one. The idea was simple, as the internet changed and evolved into a cesspool of algorithms and brain-rotting social media apps, I wanted to create and maintain a simple, “old fashioned” style of website from the previous century.

I’m somewhat embarrassed to mention what the main content of that site in particular. Mostly gender-bending/transgender nonsense, photos of me looking ridiculous and writings of me sounding even more ridiculous. Some of those pages I plan to post here just for a complete picture of my past, however I will likely omit some of the more embarrassing content.

Around the summer of 2023 due to various factors taking place in my life, my webdesign went on a bit of a hiatus. Life changed, and changed A LOT. We pulled up our anchor, sold our home in Lebanon Virginia and moved clear across the country to western Washington State where we currently reside.

I created this website September of 2026 with the largest goal to give me something productive to do. It’s main function is to be a place for me to write my thoughts for my wife to read and for me to look back on and reflect as the years go on. I don’t expect any other visitors for the most part, save for the occasional spam-bot. I chose the WordPress platform because life is a little more hectic these days than it used to be, and I just don’t have the time for the coding required to maintain a complex journal anymore. WordPress makes this somewhat easy for me while giving me the look and feel that I desire for this site.

The name “Traveling Mountain Boy” relates to the current role I seem to be at in my life, that being an old boy from the mountains who has traveled. No webcasting music stations, no business endeavors, no LBGT bullshit, just the ramblings of a mid-aged white boy from the mountains of Virginia who has had to start over more times in his life that he has had websites to chronicle it. The journey of a man, weathered down by years of mistakes, joys, sorrows, promises kept and broken, friends that have come and gone, miles on my old beater vehicles, miles of my shoes, and even more miles on my soul. My hair is falling out, what’s left is turning grey, who’s eyes now need glasses to see, a slight limp in my foot, working for God only knows what at this point, yet I persist. Traveling, telling stories, trying to survive a world that is trying to kill me.

Going forward, I don’t know how long this site will last. If history is any indicator, I’ll probably find some reason to delete in six months to a year, though I hope not. I hope that if people see content on here they don’t like, they’ll just move along, instead of being a nuisance.

Welcome to my website… 30 years in the making, always a work in progress.