Hi and welcome to The Routes: A Website of Inexplicable Horrors.
What does that mean exactly, you ask? I don't know. What exactly does anything on my website mean? It's all just a bunch of nonsense laid out in a semi-organized fashion. It's actually just a way for me to pass the time and perhaps even entertain others along the way. Like myself, others are constantly searching the internet for ways to kill time, so here is the cure for your insomnia.
The name "RickyRoutes" came about when I was working at Disneyland. The area I worked at (Fantasyland Classics) was nicknamed "The Routes" (which FYI is not coincidentally the same name as my website. I did in fact STEAL the name!) and one day Erico Suave jokingly said that I should be called Ricky Routes. I liked the sound of that, so I registered it with Yahoo! and AOL Instant Messenger around April 5, 2002.
On October 8, 2002, I was having a conversation with Samantha Wu on AIM while eating Chicken McNuggets ($0.89 Tuesdays at the time). I was probably doped up on something, but I started joking about the different shapes of Mickey D's nuggets. Then, to beat time to a joke, I took pictures of the McNuggets with a webcam and quickly posted them on this free geocities account. She thought it was funny, so I alerted my friends about it and they reacted the same. I then wanted to do some more funny things, so I dug up anything that made me chuckle and threw it on the site.
This is not the first site I have run. I used to run "The Harmony Harold," a fansite for that NBC soap Passions. My site was small and was dedicated to poking fun at the show and was complete with quizzes, games, and other random things (If They Mated? pictures and comics). As soon as I submitted that link to a more accessible website, my hit counter went through the roof. Suddenly, I had returning visitors to the site and fans.
It's a funny thing about websites. When you first open, you start out small, then you hit a surge and get really big, but then it becomes difficult to keep those counts up.
That's what happened with my "Harmony Harold" site. It became increasingly difficult to update frequently and come up with new material. So eventually, my hit counts dwindled and I stopped updating the site (my interest for the show also died off). The website hosting company that I was using was also shutting down, so my entire site went kaput.
Anyway, back to The Routes. In college, I was so bored in classes that I started thinking up ideas to entertain more folks. I started drawing up ideas that would make use of my new Photoshop and Image Ready picture and animation tools. I posted some animated gifs and other things that amused me. I also posted photos from family and friend outings. I often got compliments about my odd and random photo captions.
Sometime during the year, I drew up plans for my Intro page and even opened up a Routes Giftstore. I'm always constantly adding things and little surprises to the site (animation, poetry, pictures, etc.), to try and keep those hit counts up.
What I do isn't for money or selling advertising space. It's all for fun; therapeutic fun for myself and anyone else bored at home. It's free entertainment people! Abuse it!
The site is also here to show people my interests and what little I do to keep me entertained. Recently, I vowed to myself to be more daring in life. Expect more risks and more adventures. Basically, come along for the ride as I do a little growing up.
Meanwhile, I'll just keep doing what makes me sane...
Cheers,
Ricky Routes
The Routes CEO |
