Three Years of MotoBlogging

 

 

Last week I listened to an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. His guest was Dan Carlin. If you haven’t listened to Dan’s podcast, Hardcore History, do yourself a favor and check it out. I especially enjoy his series on World War I which is titled, Blueprint for Armageddon. The conversation turned to how they both make most of their money from podcasting and anyone can do something similar, they only need to start doing it.

 

After hearing this, I instantly started to draw parallels to beginning this blog. It’ll be three years next month that I wrote the first blog post for KLK. At that time, I was pretty miserable at my job and I believed I had made the wrong career choice (engineering). I began to think of ways that I could build an online business that pertained to my passion, motorcycles. First, I wanted to create a YouTube channel (which I have and still might pursue more in the future), but after thinking about it, I decided a blog would better suit me. I asked two of my best friends to join me and KLK Cycles was formed.

 

Three years later, I’m still an engineer. Actually, I have been pretty content with my job lately and no longer feel a need to find another. While I haven’t turned blogging into another career, I do believe it has helped me a lot. In three years I have received quite a bit of free stuff to review, I’ve written for larger blogs, and recently I had an article published in a motorcycle magazine. The number of page views per post is now five times larger than it was two years ago and a following is slowly building. I haven’t made any money doing this, but I find it extremely fulfilling and enjoy both writing and seeing the number of page views progressively increase. Who knows what the future may hold.

 

"Do or do not, there is no try." - Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back

Monster Love

 

The Ducati Monster is my favorite motorcycle. Well, that’s mostly true. Sometimes another bike can challenge for the top spot in my motorcycle hierarchy, but most of the time if you ask me, my favorite is the Monster. If that Monster is matte black, then look out, I’m reaching for my wallet. I mention the Monster because I just read this article from Motorcyclist. I hadn’t realized that Ducati has already been making Monsters for 25 years.

It was around 1996 when I first noticed a photo of a Monster. Prior to this, I was definitely interested in motorcycles, but I hadn’t had much interest in reading motorcycle magazines. That year, I was a junior in high school. For some reason, I was placed in a study hall with only middle school students. I literally knew no one. So, I spent that time in the school library, where they had a monthly subscription to Cycle World. I’d read that magazine cover to cover and anxiously await the next month’s copy. This is when I first saw the Ducati Monster.

I can’t say I fell in love with it instantly. I’m sure I thought it was cool and would’ve liked to have one, but I could say that about a lot of bikes. This did put the Monster on my radar, though. Two years later when I was traveling to Milwaukee to visit my Grandfather, I stopped in a Ducati dealership to check out the new bikes. There it was. A matte black Monster 750. That’s when I truly found my favorite motorcycle. 21 years later, I’m still riding a Ducati Monster.

If you haven’t seen a Monster in person, go check one out. Make sure it’s matte black, though. It’s not that I don’t like other colors, but yellow and red just don’t look as good on a Monster in my honest opinion.

“So that was it. This bike was really not like any other Ducati. It was just like the loud stubby powerful thing on its way into the ooze. A prehistoric beast. A monster. The kind of animal you thought they didn't build anymore.” - from Monster Story by John Burns, featured in Cycle World

Robots on Motorcycles

I’m not sure how I missed it for this long, but Yamaha has a robot that rides a motorcycle. Not only rides, but races. In fact, this Popular Mechanics article details the race between this robot (named MOTOBOT) and arguably the best man to ever race motorcycles, Valentino Rossi. I thought I was fairly up to date on motorcycle technology, but seeing as the first reports on MOTOBOT were back in 2015, I guess I was wrong.

I am not embarrassed to say that this thing kinda creeps me out! When I look at the photo in the article, I’m immediately reminded of all the sci-fi movies that have killer robots. If the next Star Wars movie had a droid character that looked like this it would surprise no one. One Day humanity could be slaves to such robots (okay, I’m exaggerating a bit).

If I overlook the creepy stuff, I can see the great implications that this could have for motorcycles. Imagine being able to road test a bike without worrying about injuring a human. If you remove the fear of injury or death, then a motorcycle could be ridden to its absolute limits. Now, you can argue that many of the people testing and racing motorcycles may not have that fear, but we cannot be sure of that. I repeat myself when I say this, but I’m really looking forward to what the future holds for motorcycles.

“In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization.” - Nikola Tesla

Millennials and Motorcycles

Apparently, the millennial generation is not buying motorcycles like previous ones. I’ve read this in multiple articles that were trying to explain the recent dip in sales for Harley Davidson. Although I’m all for anyone and everyone riding motorcycles (the more, the merrier I say), I think that this dip in interest could be a good thing.

If less people are buying motorcycles then companies will need to innovate to keep existing interest and to attract new people. This may mean increasing performance, styling, safety, or all the above. Necessity breeds innovation. I’m looking forward to what the future may hold.

If less people are interested (less demand) than prices will also drop. It’s simple economics. This will especially hold true for used bikes. I noticed this when I was in the market for a new bike. Ducati Monsters with less than a thousand miles were selling for under $7000. I nearly bought one, but I was too attracted to a new model, so I didn’t make the smart financial choice. My next bike will definitely be used.

I highly doubt that the market is really that bad. I’m probably going to the International Motorcycle Show in Chicago next February (I’ve been going nearly every year since 1999). If I do attend, I imagine that the crowds will be just as large as ever. The motorcycle industry isn’t going anywhere, but we may see some changes in the near future.

“Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.” - George Orwell

Negative Waves

There’s snow in the forecast. Actually, when I looked online, it said it was currently snowing, but it doesn’t appear to be. Of course, like every year, I’m behind on my pre-winter projects and I’m hoping that this snow isn’t the real thing. By real thing, I mean that it doesn’t accumulate on the ground. The real reason that I want winter delayed is that I really want to ride and was hoping to have at least one more good one.

Part of my wanting to ride is the fact that I haven’t been able to ride as much as I’d like this year. Actually, I haven’t ridden this little in about twenty years. I can point to a lot of of excuses why I didn’t take the time to get out and ride, but the reality is that they don’t matter. I’m not ready to be done for the year.

If I look at it optimistically, I can recall years that it snowed in October and then stopped for quite a while. The year I bought my first Ducati, I drove through a blizzard to bring it home. A week later, all of the snow melted and I was able to ride five or six times before it snowed again. Let’s hope that if we do get accumulating snow, that it’s a year like that one. Keep your fingers crossed! “

Why don’t you knock it off with them negative waves?” - Oddball in Kelly’s Heroes

Edit: it did snow after I wrote this, but no accumulation yet. Keeping those positive waves

Just Like Batman

Have you seen Tim Burton’s Batman? The Michael Keaton Batman. I believe it takes place in the Autumn. I am a huge fan of the character Batman, but I must admit that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen that movie. I originally saw it in the theater in 1989 when it was released and I later bought the VHS tape and watched it often, but it’s probably been ten years since I’ve seen it. Anyway, riding in the fall always reminds me of that movie.

 

The reason why it reminds me of the movie is that in many of the scenes with the Batmobile, a cloud of fallen leaves swirls behind it. For some reason, as I ride my motorcycle in October and November, when many of the leaves have fallen, I picture the same swirl of leaves trailing me. I’m sure this doesn’t actually happen, but it’s always a cool picture in my mind.

 

Anyway, this weekend is supposed to be a nice one. I’m planning on getting out and riding. Make sure you wave to the guy on the black Ducati with cloud of leaves following in his wake.

 

“I’m Batman.” - Michael Keaton in Batman

Motorcycle Magazines

If you noticed the last post on the KLK Cycles Facebook page you'll know that I recently had an article published in a motorcycle magazine. The magazine is called Backroads. It is mainly distributed along the east coast of the United States, so it's definitely not one of the main motorcycle magazines, but it's still a point of pride for me.

 

I actually wrote the article over a year ago having another magazine in mind, but that fell through. The other magazine was Roadrunner, which is a much larger magazine than Backroads. I followed Roadrunner's writing guidelines when I created the article and hoped it was what they'd want. Also, my friend Jeff Frenette is an outstanding photographer and he took some great photos of the ride detailed in the article. I hoped that by submitting both outstanding images and following their guidelines to the best of my ability would give us the best chance to be published.

 

I submitted the article and images on a Thursday evening. On Friday, the latest issue of Roadrunner arrived in the mail (I was a subscriber). As I browsed the new features, I noticed something that made my heart sink. One of the main stories was detailing the exact ride that I wrote about! I cursed my bad luck. I waited six months for someone at the magazine to respond and they did not. Was the reason they didn't use the article the fact that they had just released a similar one? I'm not sure, but it definitely didn't help the situation.

 

After the six months, I emailed a representative of the magazine and politely asked them to remove my article for their consideration. They did and told me to consider them again for a future submission (I still might do that). I did a Google search for other motorcycle magazines that would accept article submissions and came across Backroads. With a little correspondence back and forth with the editors, I was told that they accepted the article to be published. That was last April. Since it detailed an Autumn ride, I wasn't surprised that they waited until now to publish it. I received an email last week saying it was published and I'd receive copies of the magazine along with payment.

 

A few days later a package came in the mail and I was thrilled to see the article in print. My thrill subsided when I noticed that the article said words and images by Josh Karvakko. I clearly remembered telling one of the editors that the photos were taken by my friend Jeff Frenette. I nervously browsed all of my email correspondence to find out if I had failed to give proper credit for the images. I did give credit to my friend. They messed up, not me. I called Jeff and told him the good and bad news and he was far less worried than I was. We decided not to call them out on the error. The best they could do would be to print a retraction, which barely anyone would see.

 

Like I said before, I am thrilled about the article being published. I was just disappointed that the proper credit wasn't given for the photos. Well, that and the fact that they changed the title of the article to, "Touring the Colors - NOT." Cool title...NOT.

 

Careful what you wish

You may regret it

Careful what you wish

You just might get it

 ⁃ "King Nothing", Metallica