FEB 9, 2009 – 12:00AM

The other day, the boss and I were talking about Facebook.

He was surprised to learn I had a Facebook page, and I explained that I wasn’t some tragically sad old-man Facebook stalker type. Really. I simply use Facebook to do my job. I’ve used it to contact sources, network, fact-check and look up names. There are few better sources to double-check how a person spells his/her name than Facebook.

Old fogeys that we are, however, we both admitted we just didn’t get the allure of Facebook.

Some kids around the office log into Facebook before doing anything else, and it’s never more than a quick click away. I have friends who swear by Facebook and spend hours on it daily, tracking down old friends, chatting, playing games … you name it.

I explained to my boss my professional reasons for having a Facebook page, then admitted, “I don’t have many friends, and I don’t like to volunteer much information.”

I was talking about Facebook, by the way, but I could have been talking about life.

Our conversation drifted to Twitter, and I said I — a man of few words — could almost dig (or Digg) it in the right context.

My beef with Facebook and Twitter is the too-much-information factor. I don’t really care what most of my friends are doing most of the time.

“Joe is playing World of Warcraft until ‘Lost’ comes on.”

Don’t care.

“Jill is wallpapering her bedroom.”

Meh.

At times, though, such dispatches are good to have.

If a friend were to compose a Twitter message under the 140-character limit that read, “There I was at work, checking the lights, and Christian Bale just went BALLISTIC; audio file to follow, NSFW,” well, yeah, my interest would be piqued.

What does this have to do with commuting by bike? Not a thing, thanks for asking, but this does: Bikejournal.com.

County Administrator Craig Weinaug, a noted mile-eater himself, called my attention to it awhile back, and I poked around before signing up for the free service that lets me track my bike mileage in more ways than I thought possible.

I can list rides by type, distance, bike, weather conditions, terrain … more categories, really, than I can recall or imagine.

And though I already keep track of some of those details on a spreadsheet on my computer, and I’m almost anal-retentive about it, I kinda like the notion of moving that info to The Cloud.

After entering the rides, Bikejournalists can compare their stats to other riders in their bike club, city, state or nation. Last I checked, I was in the top-75 nationally, just 2,000-some miles behind leader runnerb723, who apparently has no job, no family and no time to do anything but ride … and, of course, enter his rides online.

But that geeky number crunching is just part of it.

Bikejournal.com also has a forum, buddy lists, links, lists of clubs and rides and stores and blogs and … well, you get the idea.

It’s like Facebook for bike wonks. Call it Bikebook. Or is it Facebike?

Come to think of it, I kinda treat it just like Facebook: I don’t have a lot of friends, and I don’t like to volunteer much.