A complete surprise to me + Happy New Year!!

On of the reasons that I've always maintained a blog or a journal or something along those lines is because I enjoy writing.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself waking up about 5 or 5:30 every morning for the past couple of months to write a novella, or a short novel.

It all started as a bit of a joke.   I was talking to a friend of mine that actually has written several romance novels.   What we we talking about doesn't really matter but I found myself challenged to write better than half the hacks in that particular field.    So I managed to write a 2066 word short story that got some good feedback not only from them, but from the general public as well.

I'm friends with several writers in fact so I felt that if they enjoyed the work I was doing, then I was on the right path so to speak.

The only problem was that I didn't think I was done with "Emma", the main character in the story.  Could I, a guy, write something from a women's point of view that would make sense to women?   How does one write a particular type of scene if you've never experienced that yourself?

The Emma character story started to grow.  Different chapters were written.  She started to grow into a monster of slightly under 15 thousand words.   Then when that story was finished...I looked back and said, "How did you get into this predicament Emma?   What drove you there?

So the prequel had to be written with the intent to unit both stories into one coherent whole.   That took another 15 thousand words.

I wrote a novella.

It was finished just a few days ago and now, it sits in the hands of five or six trusted friends who will review and edit it, helping me hopefully improve upon it.   There is still a lot of work to do because I'm sure there will be a rewrite or two in some areas, a couple of changes to be made.

Then I intended to see if I can either self publish it, or get it published the more traditional way.  However I'm rather proud of myself.   I managed to write something that may never see the light of day, but I still managed to do it.

That's a pretty cool feeling.


Now as far as 2018 goes!

Honestly the year was not a bad one, other than a costly mistake on my part (I owe about 6K now sadly) the year as a whole was not a bad one.

One of the reasons that I was even considering becoming a truck driver was I liked the idea of a more steady income, something that was recession proof (drivers are always needed) and that I could see the country...and write about it.    After all, this blog was originally designed with adventures in mind right?

I will also admit that I missed writing, I was not doing much of it before October.   I could not really figure out how to back up the tractor trailer properly.   If you can't back up properly your going to cause a wreck.   It really is that simple.

So lucky for me I was able to take advantage of the Annual Enrollment Period in Medicare and keep myself and the lovely Sue from starving in the month of November.  In December, I swallowed my pride and went to a headhunter resume in hand.

By the middle of December I was offered a position with New York Life in their call center.  The pay was acceptable but not great.  The benefits however were amazing!!!

Matching 401K up to 6%, then they would match at 50% up to an additional 4%.   In other words $8 out of every $10 I put into the 401K was matched by the company.   You don't see that anymore.  Pension plan!!!   Also something you don't see anymore.   A medical plan with no copay's?    WHAT!

While I'm not happy with where I'm starting out, I'm told this is the way NYL does things.   At 52 years old I'm swallowing my pride and will do what ever is needed to be done.

You want me to clean toilets for those benefits?  DONE!

Did I mention I was vested as of day one as well?

No wonder it's so hard to get a job there.

The only thing that I don't like about the job is the commute.  It takes me about an hour both ways to reach my destination, which can be longer depending on traffic.   Even though gas is relativity low now, we all know it will not stay that low forever.

Suddenly a motorcycle for the comment starts to make a bit more sense.   Although I would have to ride the freeways again, something that does not appeal to me.  It's also been two years since I've ridden a motorcycle. 

The last time I did, I was gun shy to be honest.  I would hate to buy another bike and be guy shy again.

Sue, when she pushes for a bike at all, wants me to ride a three wheeler.  She just feels that they are more stable and that I would be less likely to take a risk since they are a bigger bike.   Plus, as she points out to me...two of the three accidents that I were involved in were not my fault.   True...but still. 

I have to admit that the Can Am's are fun to ride. 

Although they are not cheap.

Oh well, Happy New Year everybody. 

I got to get back to work.

He's right...and I need to rekindle the passion I had for blogging

Originally posted here but I'm sharing it.  The guys right and I really need to rekindle my passion for blogging and riding in general.

I thought my last couple of posts have been....to put it nicely "lacking."  OK, I was thinking I have been a whiny little bitch alright.

Anyway.  Enjoy.

How to Make the Next Great Motorcycle Blog by Wes Siler (all rights reserved)

There's no good motorcycle content anymore. That's a) partially my fault b) a damn shame and c) a great opportunity for an enterprising enthusiast. Here's how to do it, do it right and make money doing it.

Just so everyone's on the same page: I have zero interest in ever again writing about motorcycles full time. Bikes are fun and all, but being the World's #1 Dog Camping Journalist is even funner. Man, it'd be nice to read about bikes sometime though.

I bounced this piece of fellow cranky old writer Sam Smith, just to make sure I wasn't totally off base. He told me to include the following three points:

Why bike journalism matters: Because motorcycles are awesome. Because we care about them. Because they deserve a larger place in the world and because more people should ride them. And because they're hard to get into and most people go about it all wrong, then get scared off instead of becoming life-long riders. Because riding a motorcycle means freedom and sticking it to the man and extending a middle finger in the face of people who say you shouldn't or can't.

Why It currently sucks: Because no one is even trying. Bonnier bought all the magazines, then just made them feel even more identical and even more like advertorial. Because a press release is not an article. Because no one's figured out how to make money doing it. Because the big brands are scared. Because no one's taking chances.

I'm definitely going to piss off my friends who write about bikes by writing this article. To them, I simply ask: Are you proud of your work? Are you doing the best you can? The best you could if your company actually backed you? Be honest.

What I miss reading: A review that really tells me what it's like to ride a new bike. Or one that feels free to tear it apart. And one that gets it right when it does. Amazing first person, life confirming adventures. Substantial insight into how new technology works. The real life stories of the crazy, awesome people who make crazy, awesome bikes. Stuff with attitude, articles with intelligence, content that really draws you in and really demonstrates how great riding bikes really is.

Yesterday afternoon, I sat down, opened a beer and my computer and just really wanted to spend an hour or so getting lost and learning something new about motorcycles. Maybe a really in depth review of the new H2R or an interview with the guy who designed it for Kawasaki. Maybe a story about doing something utterly insane with it. But, despite the big budget launch that just took place, there just wasn't any of that. Just some lame first rides in which various ex-racers competed to gobble the H2's knob with hackneyed metaphors. That's not just a shame, it's a real problem. If no one cares enough to make motorcycles interesting, then who's going to be interested in them?

So, I'm going to make this easy for you.

How To Get Started

At the risk of sounding like too much of a Gawker cheerleader, I'm going to suggest you start your budding bike blog right here on Kinja. Over other easy publishing platforms, it's almost toosimple, it's totally free and it will make your content easy to share across the main Gawker sites like Gizmodo and Jalopnik.

There is no more powerful traffic referral out there than that achieved by getting a story on the front page of a Gawker site. Not Reddit or Digg Twitter or Facebook or anything, but you can still use those too. Eight years ago, I launched a business on that premise and it's Gawker's traffic that was the main reason I was able to grow it into the most widely read motorcycle website only a handful of years later.

You could, of course, go through all the trouble of building your own website on Wordpress or something, then hope Jalopnik re-blogs the occasional story. Doing that will cost you money though and will never put the same number of eyeballs on your own stuff as them putting your stuff right on their front page will.

If you're business minded, you're probably spotting one big flaw here: by doing this on Kinja you're giving up the ability to sell your own display advertising. I wouldn't worry too much about that, there's extremely, extremely, extremely little money to be made from selling ads in the bike space and there's more effective ways to make more money more easily. But, we'll go into that below.

Right now, you should be worried about growing an audience. And that audience exists right here. A breakout, major scoop, most popular story of the year on a motorcycle site will be lucky to get more than 10,000 page views. Here's some incoherent ramblings easily netting 100k+here in the Gawkerverse. Yes, you really do have an opportunity to be more relevant than everything that exists currently in the motorcycle space.

What Content Will Be Successful

If you make compelling, interesting, unique, original content, they will come. There's no point in copying what else is out there or even using it as a model for what's possible. Not only is there a serious dearth of quality in motorcycle content right now, but as an upstart, you're not going to have the same access as all the lazy old men who write bike reviews. That's ok, it just means you need to work harder and, you know, actually be creative.

News: You should aim to break every news story. No one else is putting in the effort to do so, which is all it really takes — hard work. This is going to be both your low hanging fruit and your biggest driver of traffic.

To do it, you should seek to develop a comprehensive, multi-language RSS feed of all the editorial motorcycle sites out there. Do the same for the bigger forums, again making sure to include markets like Thailand, Germany, Italy, and the UK, where bikes are both a larger part of the overall culture and where they're produced, designed and sold in large numbers. Create google alerts for important new models, under all the logical permutations of their potential names. Identify major influencers and subjects on Twitter and create columns for them on Tweetdeck. Identify the big, influential Facebook groups around motorcycles, across the world, and check in with them daily. The general idea is to create your own spider web that's capable of capturing all information around motorcycling as it falls through the Internet. Spend time doing it and continually mining it and you'll own motorcycle news.

And owning the news is sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. Be seen to be the place where news is broken and be the site that people want to read and people will send you scoops. There was never any subterfuge or intrigue involved in gaining any of my sources, people that work at motorcycle companies are motorcycle enthusiasts and just liked my work and wanted to help out.

Look at news as more than just new bikes. You should also be covering tech innovations, exciting new gear, shake ups in the world (Audi's Ducati purchase for instance), political stuff and just anything that's interesting and ongoing around motorcycles. Then go deeper.

Reviews: You're not going to have access to test bikes not only to start with, but for quite a while. Likely years and years. The manufacturers are all staffed by people who are either ignorant of the media space, scared to take risks, or more typically both. And, the only press fleets are in SoCal, so if you live literally anywhere else, you might as well give up on the idea of testing mainstream motorcycles ever. There's also nothing worse than a badly written, amateur hour bike review that lacks perspective and insight. Writing a professional review takes perspective and expertise. Both exist in the space right now, but not paired with talented writing and the freedom to tell the truth. That's sad, but there's not going to be much you can do about it to start.

Where the opportunity here lies is to tell first person stories around interesting, unique bikes. Why hasn't anyone flown down to New Orleans yet to take JT's bonkers Bienville Legacy for a spin? Do that, take some awesome photos. Get drunk with JT after and come back with an awesome story. I did that with one of his previous bikes back when I was getting started in this world and it remains one of the best stories I've ever told, even if I did get sued over it.

Do the same with a friend's oddball classic bike and tell us what it's like from the perspective of 2015. Find custom builders near you and do the same with their work. Try and get some seat time on a famous race bike. The opportunity here is to tell great stories about interesting bikes, not to try and compete with CycleWorld for launch access.

Technology: You know what's interesting about bikes? All the stuff that makes them work. Which, by the way, is totally changing as we speak. So tell us about it. Call up the engineers designing the stuff and ask them questions. Get access to their sketches and ideas and diagrams and test procedures. Explain what makes it great, explain how it works and explain who it's going to change the bikes we ride and the ways we ride them.

Personalities: Motorcycling may not be a terribly lucrative world right now, but it sure is an interesting one. You will have no dearth of crazy people to talk to and you'll find access to them fairly easy. Email Pierre Terblanche and ask him what the hell he's doing at Royal Enfield, a company that hasn't designed a new bike in 50 years. I bet he'll respond to that email and I bet he'll tell you exactly what he's planning.

Features: You can do some neat stuff on a motorcycle. Go do it and tell us about it. Seek out people who have done their own neat stuff and tell us their stories too. Go places, do things and take good photos along the way. Not only will this be good content, but it'll inform your growing knowledge of the world and help shape your budding expertise and perspective.

Racing: Don't bother, no one cares. And modern racers are perhaps the least interesting people in the entire world.

In general, you should seek to make motorcycle content that's interesting to a wide audience. Yes, geek out on them, yes treat your audience with respect as the smart, knowledgeable people they are, but don't chase only the audience you see on bike forums or on existing motorcycle sites; that's simply a very, very small group. The wider world is interested in bikes, it's your opportunity to fulfill that interest with interesting content.

And please don't just copy someone else's work. There's way too much plagiarism in bikes, something that results in a swirling descent into poorly-informed, badly made, toilet-worthy bike content.

Make something you can be proud of, without caveats.

How To Make Money

There's no money in display advertising in the motorcycle space. You could spend three or four years chasing manufacturers, then eventually net yourself what they'll call a "trial buy" which is really just a check for $5k for a solid month's advertising, an amount that's a total insult and which will never increase. Or, you could join an ad network, but those will only pay you a $1-2 CPM rate by the time it's all said and done; you're effectively just making someone else money.

As an indication of how little money is spent on ads in this world, everyone seems to be aping the BikeEXIF tiny little ads thing nowadays. Those are typically sold at $50-200/month depending on the site we're talking about; an amount that even in volumes of 8 to10 spaces just doesn't merit even the minimal effort these require.

Your best bet to earn real money, do so from day one and without having to spend all your time trying to sell ad space is going to be affiliate. Amazon will pay you 3-5% of any purchase made after following a link from your site to theirs (even if you're writing about a helmet and your reader ends up buying a box of crayons). With real traffic, that's potentially real income, all without having to put on a tie and go to sales meetings or promising to write nice things about someone's shitty bikes or products.

That's the great thing about an affiliate model, it gives you the freedom to work for your readers. If you're seen to be transparently testing and recommending stuff in their interest, then they'll trust you and buy the stuff you recommend as a result. It's an ideal arrangement between outlet and reader; foster trust and profit from it.

Kinja is a great platform to run affiliate from, as an independent publisher. It's easy to seamlessly include the links and the potential for real traffic creates potential for real profit. There's no reason you can't do the same on a different platform, but again, doing so would just be adding unnecessary complication and barriers.

You'll need to be covering products that are available for sale online, of course, but riding gear, tools and all that stuff can fit seamlessly into a larger editorial view of the motorcycle world. It just so happens that Amazon's next big conquest is going to be motorcycle gear and their inventory of it will be increasing dramatically this year, so that's good timing for you.

RevZilla also operates an affiliate program that's very beneficial to independent publishers. It's an invite-only thing, but if you're making an awesome bike site, I'll bet they'll want to work with you. Doing so will be more profitable than just working with Amazon and you'll be informing readers about products sold by the company they want to buy them from.

How much you're able to make obviously depends on how well you're able to accrue eyeballs, your ability to retain them and how well you're able to integrate affiliate into your larger editorial picture. That'll take some trial and error and some experimentation, but it'd be reasonable to expect to be earning $2,000-$5,000/month from it within your first year.

The overall traffic potential in motorcycles isn't super great, sadly. But even with an audience of, say 500,000 unique's (a reasonable goal), you could get your affiliate earnings over $10k/month. And at that point you could make this a full time job.

If you're able to do that, you won't need my advice anymore. But, allow me to give you one last recommendation: Don't sell out. If you are able to beat the odds and make a successful, standout publication then other entities will come courting. Take it from me, you are better on your own than you are with a boss or a business "partner."

I've probably managed to piss off a lot of people by this point. So, let me close on a positive note. If you accept this challenge, if you sit down and start making great motorcycle content, then I will put my money where my mouth is and help you. Impress me and I will open my Rolodex to you, make introductions on your behalf, answer your questions and maybe even write you the occasional article that's rude, insulting, disrespectful, but also totally accurate and something that needs to be said. And I'll do that for free.

So who's going to do it? Who's going to write something about motorcycles that's actually worth reading?

(Originally posted on Indefinitely Wild; all rights are reserved and the content belongs to them)

A bit off topic (and late) but HIGHLY IMPORTANT!

A combination of having family visiting from up north, training and working with people for my new position, negations for picking up another route for the small business on the side (we won the bid thank you very much), and weather has kept me off the bike this week.

However I could not let Banned Book Week pass without a comment.  Maybe it's because I picked up a dog eared copy of the Motorcycle Diaries recently.  Maybe it's because I know a few writers (See my links page for links to their books).  Maybe it's the firmly held belief that an educated populace can decided what is best for it and that leads to greater freedom.  Maybe its because I used to teach (as well as other things)...who knows.

Banned Book Week is a celebration about the written word and the power that words have to persuaded - Friends, Roman's, Countrymen lend me your ears from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar comes to mind.  In the beginning Caesar is portrayed as a power hungry madman...yet at the end of Mark Anthony's speech in the play; the common people raise up against Caesar's assassins.

Books have the power to make us think.  Provide warnings.  Enter the public consciousness and become part of our shared, common and very human experience.    So, when I hear about censorship or that some people are pushing for a particular belief system over another the hair on the back of my neck raises and I start to snarl.

Sadly the people that raise these complaints are often doing so with the best of intentions.  I'll be the first to admit that I've read some material which I've found questionable.  One book dealt with slavery, racism, used offensive language and was determined to show youth rebelling against authority figures.  The name of that book?  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Yet this book is a classic of American Literature.  Perhaps the racism was part of the time and had to be considered in context (although frankly the racism in the book is shown to be stupid and misplaced).  The issue of slavery, handled well I thought and considering how the book was published in 1876, certainly understandable.  Jim, the escaped slave, is a very honorable man.  Their are lessons to be learned here, if we open our minds to receive them.

Almost two decades ago I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X because I was looking for a way to relate with my students - I was teaching science at a mostly all black high school at the time.  I found it to be an amazing book and marveled at the journey Malcolm X took.  Here was a man that served time in jail, was a pimp and a thief, yet somehow found a way out of a thugs life to lead a people to something greater.  Something better.  Yet, all the students related to was the hatred, not the love that Malcolm eventually came to.

Interestingly enough...both these books have been banned at various times.  I can certainly understand the reasoning...radical and dangerous thinkers who promote ideas that don't suite the mainstream.  I would recommend either of these books in a heartbeat.

I don't know if I'll be on my bike much next week, or the week after (God knows I hope so!).  I hope to be, I miss riding.  But if I'm not, I'll curl up with a classic and catch up with my reading.  We can still think for ourselves, enjoy that freedom.

Just a quick update - a famed Lambretta lives.

Our good friends over at Scooter Diaries gave us some good news recently.  The famed Lambretta is restored and purring like a kitten.

I have been wanting to read this book but somehow my subtle hint to the girlfriend and my parents of "Hey, I would really like this book for Christmas...for my birthday....because I want to read it"  seemed to fall on deaf ears; it appears I will have to buy myself a copy.   Truth be told, with everything that has been going on these last few months it was forgotten about.

For those of us that like good stories and adventure, I thought I would share this video with you.

Speaking of Epic Adventures.  This is the last day of the 2014 Scooter Cannonball.  Congrats to all that made that journey.  Have a beer, you deserve it.

The writer in me....

I have to be honest.  I've been down in the proverbial dumps lately.  Life has got in the way again and again and I've not been able to do what I love.  Even eating has been a chore as of late.

Having suffered from depression for years, I was not ready to give into that darkness.  Then, because life is a strange and wonderful thing, two things happened in rapid succession.  The first is that I got a wonderful IM on the Scootdawg forum which really made my day.  The other was a long phone call with a good and old friend about the nature of creativity.  He's a fellow writer (you can buy his wonderful first novel here) and a fellow biker.

First:  I hate you!!! Yes, I hate you! You turned me on to reading your scooting blog, and then I went to the links for more scooting blogs. Having those blogs were not enough, so I went to the links of those blogs, and so forth, until not only do I do scooting reads, I went to any motorized 2 wheeler blogger throughout the world...
I now have a list of 27 bloggers that are currently posting that I read religiously every day. Everything to Princess Scooterpie to Ruckus Scooter Love to Real Men Ride Vespas, and I am constantly looking for more blogs to read...
It has gotten me out of bed many a day, because it's hard to read so many blogs with a small iPhone4S in bed..

A writer's job, at least in my opinion, is to get people to think.  They don't have to agree with you, but at least now they are thinking about the subject in hand differently.  The greatest thing that ever happened to me as a writer was being recognized in a bar during a soccer game - "Hey, I read your articles all the time on A-league.com!  You guys really know what your talking about!"  Sadly that site is now defunct.

Although an article posted on that site got a very long forum discussion going on Big Soccer site.  The title of the thread?  "Rob Wilson is an idiot."  Getting people to think, to question...that is what I want to do.

I like non-fiction writing.  While it's fun to create your own worlds, no matter how fantastic, I prefer the "teaching" aspect of non-fiction.  Many of you may never visit Florida, or Pittsburgh, or wherever I happen to point my bike's wheels.  What I hope to do is provide a little glimpse of my world.

The problem is that I've not had the desire to write that much.

Enter my good friend Brook and a long conversation about the nature of creativity.  Basically at the end of a two hour phone conversation what we had managed to do was to drink a six pack of Shiner Bocks - although he may have had a few more than me judging from that familiar and distinctive tapping sound that a bottle makes hitting a table - and realize that "Writers write and bikers ride."

It would be to easy to write about the other things I care about.  While I may be a "voice of reason" when it comes to politics; the current environment does not call from reason.  Besides...who wants to read something that actually might make sense?

Riding has exposed me to a larger world.  To ideas, people who I might never meet and interesting places I might never have seen.  I still have fond memories of butterfly's on tombstones during one such adventure.  I ride to see...to discover...to experience

These last few months have had me questioning why I want to ride.  Why I blog even.  Thanks to feedback and friendship I know why.   Now it's just a matter of time till the next adventure.  The next story.

Running from the bulls

On Saturday, in a city that is nothing like the fabled streets of Pamplona the bulls ran, chasing young men and woman out for a thrill though streets and over barricades.  I only wish that I could have been one of them, but with a bum leg and ankle and about 15 pounds of extra flesh...I would be but easy pickings for a bull.

Still though one wonders what goes through the mind as you stand there, and around the corner turns a 700 plus pound animal and you realize that you are in it's way...and that it has no reason to stop.

I could not participate and sadly was fated only to watch, to live vicariously though those that can run from nature.   Oh how I yearned to be a part of this event.  To hear the hooves, to laugh a nervous laughter and to run...run...run down the quarter mile track.  The event would be over shortly after it started, and bragging rights would be established over cold beers.

I'm not sure why I wanted to do this, and if I was not under direct orders not to, I would have done this.  I think of Hemingway and the other writers that have influenced me in ways subtle and not so subtle.  Jack of course, Hunter S Thompson and George Plimpton.  Writers that loved the exploration of life.  I suppose my riding a bike is an extension of that need.

The Great Bull Run and Tomato Royal (a food fight based on La Tomatina) maybe as close as I'll ever get to running with the bulls.  You can see actual video from both events here.  Sadly do to other commitments I could not attend either event...even though I informed everyone that I was going to attend the Bull Run for days in advance.

At one time in my life I would have gone, I would have run with the bulls...injury's and commitments and common sense be damned!  Not anymore.

Still though, I can't help what happened to the immortal I once was.  Who thought nothing of chasing black haired and smokey blue eyed girls though the night, of traveling half way around the world alone to see what was there.  The guy that never thought about having to many cigarettes and cold beers.  There were many short skirts and seductive smiles and late nights in jazz clubs where whiskey and poetry flowed.

I'm not a young man anymore.  I'm not that guy anymore.

The lovely Susan often says that I got a motorcycle because of a mid-life crisis.  Sometimes I think she may be right.  I own my own business, have a home that is paid in full, a car that isn't, Kimmie (which I paid cash for), two cats...two ex wives, a 401K and medical plans....a thyroid pill to take in the morning.  I've done okay for myself...but still...it never is enough is it?

Still though I think about the thousands of miles I have placed on her and I realize that no...it's not a mid-life crisis.  Its me being who I am and I'm not that same young man anymore.

So the bull run went on without me.  I'm still interested in grabbing the bull by the horns.  Of exploring this world and learning what I can from everyone and everything.  Yet...yet, I don't know if I want to ride again.

This past month has been hard on me.  I've grown used to riding in my car back and forth to work.  I can listen to my NPR and not have to examine the weather report like some sacrificial lamb.  Over the past several weeks I've been asking myself "is it worth it?"

Honestly the jury is still out.