5 years on ….

Aprilia Caponord Rally-Raid ETV1000 2010 Icelandic ash flights cancelled2010 ……. A year we made a mad-dash to the UK by Capo when an Icelandic volcano rather unsportingly blew its top. A year we gained a Kitten (Sam-Sam) and lost a cat – my venerable old friend Joe. A year when Kelly the English setter lost a foot but found a strange kind of companionship with a chicken! A year when the Capo went MoSFET and sported a nice new headlight switch ……. But most of all, it’s the year when the moto-abruzzo WordPress website/blog went live. 5 years to the day to be exact!

Way back then, Jan told me that something like an estimated 75% of blogs are abandoned after the first three months, so I’m glad to have dodged that particular statistic …… also that the ‘in’ joke websiteamongst the blogging glitterati is that most blogs have a readership of 1. Looks like I nailed that one then!

The reality is of course, that a site mainly dedicated to one particular bike is never going to have much traffic. In truth I suppose I have written it more as an aid-memoir for the Capo in the  years to come, a diary of one particular bikes journey and it’s issues along the way.

The intention was always to keep it clear of advertising and not ask for funding to maintain it, other than that, it just goes where time and content takes it. Maybe when the Aprilia Caponord Rally-Raid ETV1000Caponord (touch-wood!) hits 100,000 miles next year I’ll look at winding down the site and porting the content over to a self-publish book to put on the shelf, that way the content won’t disappear if the server/host decides to pull the plug one day.

Until then of course, the increasing miles on the Capo will generate a proportional increase in site content as a consequence of needing more restoration work. There’s also the question of a possible stable-mate ……. Do I plough on with the Capo regardless, or wind-down the mileage after 100k and look for something to take over the long-distance Euro trips. If so what? Inevitably I seem to go full circle and come back to square-one – another Capo, a Rally-Raid of course. I suppose it makes sense – reasonable price, ample spares to hand and a working knowledge of the model, and it does exactly what I want from a bike, period.

Either way, 2016 will be a landmark year with (I hope) plenty of posts and new pages.

 

Dashboard repairs

Risto's Christmas cardYes I admit it here and now, I’m doing a U-turn – a full 180° – and NOT stopping dashboard repairs at the end of January 2015. Jeez …. You’re thinking, I wish this chap would make his mind up!!

Why the change of heart?

A couple of reasons actually …. Firstly, a few emails over the past couple of weeks that have made me reflect on the initial decision, secondly a Christmas card. Yep – a lowly piece of card with a simple season’s greetings from a Capo owner in Finland.

Risto sent his board over almost 18 months ago and by all accounts is happy with the work done and each Christmas he has sent a card. That connection across the continent would never have Aprilia Caponord ETV1000 & Rally-Raid dashboard repairs and upgrades, backlighting and voltmeterhappened without the dashboard repair service. This year I opened the card and felt a twinge of regret, uneasiness, a sense that a decision I was making was the wrong one. The bottom line is that I would miss the emails/calls and involvement if I stopped something that I’ve been involved with since the beginning of unravelling the dashboard circuits.

Jan and I sat down and worked out some ways to free up a little more time and I’ve decided to put other projects on the back-burner for now. So I will not stop doing what I’ve done for almost two years ….. Give folks a grain of hope that a piece of their pride and joy can be repaired or upgraded. Sorry for the wobble, but hey, I’m only human.

And Risto ….. If you read this, just remember that opening your Christmas card changed the course of moto-abruzzo as he staggers into 2015. That’s pretty awesome when you think about it! 😀

Feedback please ……

 ... will I dream?           (SAL9000 - 2010)Moto-abruzzo has undergone quite a change in the background, somewhere deep in the bowels of the code lots of little ‘0’ and ‘1’s have been fiddled with …… and so I’d like to ask your assistance in flagging up any links, pages etc. that don’t work properly so I can fix them, or sob quietly in the corner (my choice!).

The idea is to hopefully get website content distributed to you a little quicker and so ANY feedback is greatly appreciated. Either leave a comment on the particular page/post or contact me through the contact page. Cheers!

Time for a change – 2012

It’s that time for reflection as one year fades into another, time to take stock of Moto-Abruzzo and in what direction I want to push it in 2012. Well to start with, I guess I have to think back to exactly what got me motivated enough to start the blog in the first place. It was (and still is) my Caponord Rally-Raid of course. I had this idea to write-up my own experiences, nothing anecdotal from others, only what I knew and experienced first hand. To that end it’s been quite successful – but limited, if nothing needs tinkering with, or breaks … what do I write? And that’s the Achilles heel of the blog.

So for 2012 I need to expand, to keep the blog fresh, to introduce a little pace …. but I don’t want to lose the essence of what I started. After plenty of dog walking and time to reflect, these are the meager ideas that popped into a tired mind.

  • Abruzzo: More content, but from the perspective of a bikers eye. Abruzzo websites/blogs abound with more general info than I could, or want to accumulate …. but none are from a bikers viewpoint as far as I can see.
  • Caponord: I’ll stop taking the mundane jobs for granted, everything is questionable to someone. So I’ll cover the basics with text/photos/video/3D to add more depth to the Capo content. Simply put … more detail.
  • Blog layout: Devote a little more time and effort to increasing the blog look and speed for mobile/smartphone use. The technical content may be useful when you’re stranded by the side of the road! Mobile content is where it’s all heading I guess.
  • Mystery project: Yep, the one and only. The dusty canvas draped over the mysterious artifact that gently pulses and hums hypnotically in the shadowy corner of the barn may well be pulled back to reveal ………… all in good time!

So I hope dear reader, you’ll still pop by now and again and see what’s new, maybe drop me a line – good or bad. Constructive feedback can only help move the blog and it’s content forward. Layout or display issues would be very useful …. I’m no internet wiz-kid. I’ve an ageing laptop running Vista and access to a couple of old clunkers with Windows XP. Combined they let me see the site in Firefox, Explorer and Opera but I’ve no idea what it looks like on Windows 7 or any other browser. Time to upgrade? Yeah, you may well be right…….

A warm, windy and atmospheric December day, that was ideal for a nice ride out and few moody pics dropped to black and white. Picture 2, looking over the saddle …. I can see my house from here!

 

Back again!

Well a big helllooo to you all!

After dumping Facebook and all thing Google, I couldn’t raise enough enthusiasm to start over with a new blog – especially when hosted (controlled) by a big fat corporation.

Then, over a spiffing lunch one day I got a piece of excellent advice about setting up a website based blog.

I mulled it over for a few days, then tinkered and voila, Moto-A is back again …. hot-to-trot! So a big thank you to you-know-who!!!