Sad Sign of the Times

2008-12-20T11:38:00.000-08:00

When will this economic turmoil end? The state of the economy over the past months has had a pretty big impact on the motorcycle nation. On one hand, we had sales heading up with the gas prices, although much of the increased sales were not of the motorcycle variety but the scooter variety. On the motorcycle side, we experienced sales going down as people were scared to use their disposable income to purchase a nice motorcycle that many of them had no intention of using as a form of transportation but would use it occasionally on the weekends. The numbers that I was seeing were not panic numbers, but they were numbers to continue to follow if you make your living off of the sale of motorcycles or accessories. I did see that the Harley Davidson Motor Company had layoffs over the past six months which I believe has never happened, at the very minimum, since the company was purchased back from AMF.

Today, I read evidence of how it is all beginning to impact the rider. I was shocked when I pulled up an article and read that Honda has canceled the Honda Hoot. The Hoot started fifteen years ago in Asheville, NC as a rally friendly enough to bring the kids to. In later years it moved to Knoxville, TN and has grown many times. 2009 is going to be a sad year indeed. If the Hoot goes down how far behind could Myrtle Beach, Daytona, Laconia, or Sturgis be? I shudder to think about it.

Ride Free

Steve

Coming Full Circle

2008-12-19T13:34:00.000-08:00

Here we go again! I left Blogger some time ago to venture into the land of my own hosting and blogging. I worked and worked to get things going. I had the blog going and started working on the podcast portion of what I wanted to do but never got it right. In other words, I tried to grow into a world that I was not tech savvy enough to be in. So, here I am back at Blogger and will try again here. Blogger has tried to make things easier for people and I hope to be able to figure out how to do the things that I want to do, which is to blog about motorcycles and podcast about the same.

For those of you who followed me a little bit before, I hope that you will come back and hang out here. I would like for you to let your friends know about the new setup so that we can get some networking going. I have found many new products that I had not heard of just by asking questions of others. I hope that we are able to do that here. I will be back soon with the first product review and will work over the holidays to kickstart this thing.

For those of you who don't know me I will give you a short profile. I am a motorcycle enthusiast who loves technology and got into podcasts when I got my first iPod last year. Yeah, I was late on the iPod craze but what the heck, I am a 42 year old father / stepfather of 4 and a new grandpa to 1. I work my regular job, attend college part time, and teach motorcycle safety for ABATE of Indiana. I also run one of the safety sites. I stay very busy.

Last time I started the blog, I was trying to update every day. That was far too much. We are going to see how this goes and I welcome opinions when I get this thing moving whether you think the show schedule is working. This is not my forum to talk motorcycles, it is ours. I look forward to meeting many of you in the coming months. Welcome and enjoy.

Steve

MCNation Podcast

Sad Sign of the Times

Coming Full Circle