Nobody Wants to Visit Vinalhaven?

I purposely feature somewhat obscure sites on the Twelve Mile Circle. Thus, my visitors tend to fall into two categories:

• Those who consider themselves connoisseurs of geo-oddities.
• Those who visit a single time because a search engine told them they should come here.

Predictability

I’ve become pretty adept at watching the news cycles. Often I can predict visitor surges about to wash across my site like a ring produced by a proverbial stone thrown into a pond. It’s a fun game and I enjoy it. I’ll even make little mental bets with myself. I’ve also learned to spot trending pages in near real-time. Then I track them back to their sources, either due to an event or a link from a major website. I pour over the visitor statistics like an obsessed baseball fan.

That’s why I’m a bit surprised that I received only seven visitors on my Vinalhaven Ferry and Island page yesterday.

Why Vinalhaven?

Vinalhaven (map) is a small island located off the coast of southeastern Maine. It has about 1,200 residents, mostly lobstermen and their families. I was lucky enough to visit during the summer of 2009.

But Mr. 12MC, one might argue, Vinalhaven is in the news right now solely because its residents are being infected in disproportionate numbers with MRSA, the flesh-eating bacteria! Who would want to visit this place while a dangerous pathogen is on the loose? Isn’t that a bit unrealistic? To that I would counter: that hasn’t stopped anyone from visiting my Plum Island page — one of my more popular lately, actually — and that place is infected with anthrax!

I demonstrate to myself, once again, that I’m out of step with the collective wisdom of the public. Maybe that’s why Twelve Mile Circle will never be more than a small niche publication. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, just an observation.