Summer Cleaning
Technology is a great thing. We see it everywhere. I remember as a youngster riding around proudly back in the sand pits on my Honda XR 75 with my cool sounding "up pipe" from DG. My friend Eric had a year older XR 75, it was a silver tanked unit when mine was Honda Red and he had a Basini pipe on his bike. We were all that and a bag o'chips back then even with our open faced helmets.
Eric was an innovator and just the coolest person to know because his sister had a boyfriend who parked his own YZ 125 in the same garage as Eric's and I just loved to go over and marvel at the total "coolness" and high tech gadgetry of the larger bike. It had an "up" pipe and a "porcupine" gold colored head and it had trick looking FOX Shocks mounted instead of the spindly units we had on our XR's. When the guy started it up and reved it out it was like angels singing along with the intoxicating smell of race fuel mixed with bean oil.
I remember pouring over Motocross Action magazines and photos of places like Saddle Back and Carlsbad. I remember John DeSoto in the mags too. I remember my first rush of Technology when one of the mags spotted the first water cooled engine prototypes that Bob Hannah was riding. Holy COW a water cooled motorcycle engine!!! What will they think of next? Within a matter of years though I beat that XR to death and left the dirtbike world for something else but everyonce in a while I'd drop in to the local dealer, Heysers Honda, Kawasaki and Yamaha on Route 1 in Laurel MD to pick up a magazine. Imagine my surprise when I saw pics of bikes without rear shocks!!!! I really and truly thought it was "photo-trickery" done by the magazine.
How in the world does the bike stay up in the air with out shock absorbers? I mean even the "mono-shock" Yamaha's had a steel frame attatched to the swing arm that made technological sense. But this? Wow! Who woulda' thought about that. Of course technology had leapt forward again and with out me this time. It was years later after getting in at the begining of the JetSki sport and riding and racing through the 80's and 90's that I came back to dirtbikes and Holy Cow again! Linkages, Water Cooled Engines, Powervalves, Nikasil, Disc Brakes and 13" of travel!!!!
So now jump forward to the latter half of the first decade of the 3rd Century and we have feather light four-strokes and all that goes along with the new revolution in 4-stroke innovation. What's next...I have no idea but on the Electronic side of this equation, the World Wide Web and all the gadgets associated with it I'm hanging in there trying to keep up. We have digital cameras and websites, we upload, we download, we learn new programs, we buy computers that get outdated just as you get the hang of them, we buy through eCommerce sites, we send and receive eMail, we listen to podcasting, talk on iPhones, listen to MP3 Players, watch DVDs, we use Compact Flash, we make MPEG's, and JPEGS and the list is growing.
My Summer Cleaning this week has been to clean up the site and organize it as well as learn and adopt some new technology. You are reading this web-log (Blog) which is one of the pieces. Some place somewhere someone is hosting this site and with just a few clicks I can make it part of my website which is hosted somewhere else by someone else while the Youtube clips are held in another place and the Online Photos are some where else...all the while you're reading this at home at your leisure and I'm writing it at my leisure. It's all seamless and in real time 24/7 with just a click of your mouse.
Next up for Action808.com will be some eCommerce solutions for the many folks who have requested to use a credit card. We're working on it...just another thing I have to learn.
-scott
Eric was an innovator and just the coolest person to know because his sister had a boyfriend who parked his own YZ 125 in the same garage as Eric's and I just loved to go over and marvel at the total "coolness" and high tech gadgetry of the larger bike. It had an "up" pipe and a "porcupine" gold colored head and it had trick looking FOX Shocks mounted instead of the spindly units we had on our XR's. When the guy started it up and reved it out it was like angels singing along with the intoxicating smell of race fuel mixed with bean oil.
I remember pouring over Motocross Action magazines and photos of places like Saddle Back and Carlsbad. I remember John DeSoto in the mags too. I remember my first rush of Technology when one of the mags spotted the first water cooled engine prototypes that Bob Hannah was riding. Holy COW a water cooled motorcycle engine!!! What will they think of next? Within a matter of years though I beat that XR to death and left the dirtbike world for something else but everyonce in a while I'd drop in to the local dealer, Heysers Honda, Kawasaki and Yamaha on Route 1 in Laurel MD to pick up a magazine. Imagine my surprise when I saw pics of bikes without rear shocks!!!! I really and truly thought it was "photo-trickery" done by the magazine.
How in the world does the bike stay up in the air with out shock absorbers? I mean even the "mono-shock" Yamaha's had a steel frame attatched to the swing arm that made technological sense. But this? Wow! Who woulda' thought about that. Of course technology had leapt forward again and with out me this time. It was years later after getting in at the begining of the JetSki sport and riding and racing through the 80's and 90's that I came back to dirtbikes and Holy Cow again! Linkages, Water Cooled Engines, Powervalves, Nikasil, Disc Brakes and 13" of travel!!!!
So now jump forward to the latter half of the first decade of the 3rd Century and we have feather light four-strokes and all that goes along with the new revolution in 4-stroke innovation. What's next...I have no idea but on the Electronic side of this equation, the World Wide Web and all the gadgets associated with it I'm hanging in there trying to keep up. We have digital cameras and websites, we upload, we download, we learn new programs, we buy computers that get outdated just as you get the hang of them, we buy through eCommerce sites, we send and receive eMail, we listen to podcasting, talk on iPhones, listen to MP3 Players, watch DVDs, we use Compact Flash, we make MPEG's, and JPEGS and the list is growing.
My Summer Cleaning this week has been to clean up the site and organize it as well as learn and adopt some new technology. You are reading this web-log (Blog) which is one of the pieces. Some place somewhere someone is hosting this site and with just a few clicks I can make it part of my website which is hosted somewhere else by someone else while the Youtube clips are held in another place and the Online Photos are some where else...all the while you're reading this at home at your leisure and I'm writing it at my leisure. It's all seamless and in real time 24/7 with just a click of your mouse.
Next up for Action808.com will be some eCommerce solutions for the many folks who have requested to use a credit card. We're working on it...just another thing I have to learn.
-scott
posted by Scott at
11:52 PM
