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Editor’s Blog: Just Say Yes

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It seems like we hardly talk anymore, you and I. Sure, every day I and the rest of the Asphalt & Rubber crew bring you stories to help fuel your motolust, but aside from the snarky messages I leave in the comments section, we haven’t really been getting enough “us time”, so to speak.

I want to change that, at least intermittently, on these doldrum Sundays, with a column that really has nothing to do with motorcycles…at least not directly.

This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now this year, but I just didn’t get around to starting because either I thought I was too busy, or I didn’t have a subject at-hand to explore, or I dunno…derringers.

Now as I begin planning what’s ahead for A&R in 2015, I see the same problem occurring: projects have long languished on my to-do list, and I keep saying “yeah, we should do that…” with no results in sight.

The issue is one of impulse, that moment of force that pulls you from the warm spot on the couch and back to the Bat Cave again. The issue is one of “saying yes”, ideally with reckless abandon.

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News

Asphalt & Rubber Turns Five Years Old Today

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Another year has gone by at our tiny motorcycle blog here, as Asphalt & Rubber turns five years old today. The thing is though, the site isn’t that tiny anymore — one million visitors will come to A&R in October alone.

In the past four years, when I have written these birthday posts, I write the same thing about how I look back on the past 365 days with a bit of astonishment, and then list all the great things that we have done in that time.

At the five-year mark though, I find myself looking all the way back to the beginning of A&R, a time when this site wasn’t really anything at all. With that retrospect, I see how Asphalt & Rubber has come into what it is now — if I had to go back, and try to decipher today from the fog of time, it would all feel like an impossible reality, if I am honest.

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Opinion/Editorial

Why Asphalt & Rubber Supports Riders for Health

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You would have to be living in a hole not to have heard about the video footage of a Range Rover plowing through a group of motorcyclists, and the chase through New York that ensued afterwards.

I say this not because the video has been the highest trafficked article on Asphalt & Rubber this week so far, though it is; nor do I say this because the video has been posted to virtually every motorcycle forum and blog on the internet, though it has; but instead because the video has elevated itself out of our obscure sport and into the national, if not international, public consciousness.

It is rare that motorcycling finds its way into mass media, and unfortunately it is rarely a good thing when it does so. Motorcycling by and large has an image problem in the United States. Few motorists commute via motorcycle, which means our industry is filled with people who come to motorcycles from either a hobby, sport, or lifestyle perspective, and because of this motorcycles remain on the fringe of mainstream society.

For some, that is the allure. Motorcycling is “something different’ which in turns allows a motorcyclist to express their individuality in an obvious manner. To illustrate this point, I am fairly certain that the vast majority of flame threads that start on forums and blogs can be boiled down to the premise that because your enjoyment of motorcycles is different from my enjoyment of motorcycles, it therefore must be wrong.

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News

A Year in Review with Asphalt & Rubber: 2012

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It will be a new year soon, and for some of Asphalt & Rubber‘s more international readers, New Year’s Eve may have already given way to New Year’s Day (Happy New Year, if that’s already the case). Going through my RSS feed, it seems obligatory that we make some sort of Happy New Year proclamation, summarize the stories the site has covered, and share some insight on the inner-workings of our operation here at A&R. The Dude abides.

Unsurprisingly, the starting point to our story begins roughly 12 months ago, as with the start of each year I like to look back on the 365 or so days we just completed, and outline my plans for the coming year. Some of that planning is just basic business stuff like benchmarks I hope to achieve with the site traffic, readership, and financials, while the rest of that planning is comprised of stories or events I would like the site to attend and cover.

Four continents, a dozen or so timezones, and more countries than I can remember, the 1,000+ articles written this year on Asphalt & Rubber are truly international in their origin, as are the 4.5+ million of you who came here and read those stores 10 million times. For reasons beyond my comprehension, the site continues to grow in the double digits, with the A&R readership growing another 30% in 2012 over last year.

Pushing over 20 TB (the TB stands for terabytes, or 1,024 gigabytes) of data, those numbers make Asphalt & Rubber not only just the largest motorcycle blog in the United States, but one of the largest in the world — something I find mildly amusing, since yours truly is more than mildly dyslexic.

As for trends, being an online publication means that we are on the front line of watching the motorcycle industry’s adoption of social media, with 10% of our readers finding us on social networks. The real interesting part? This figure is up 40% over last year.

Instead of just listing our top ten or so stories this year, something which most of you could probably guess the list of quite easily, I have tried to cultivate some basic topics from within the industry and the stories that drove those topics this year, as well as some stories that stood out to our editorial eyes. Enjoy them after the jump.

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News

Asphalt & Rubber Turns Four Years Old Today

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Today is a surreal landmark, as it marks our fourth year of publishing Asphalt & Rubber. If you cannot already tell, I am having a hard time believing that four years have gone by since I started this humble motorcycle blog (in the middle of corporate finance class, no less), but A&R continues to thrive despite my best dyslexic efforts.

It astonishes me that our “little” site is visited throughout the world on a daily basis, and that each month more people read A&R than all three of the major US motorcycle print magazines…combined.

Things keep on growing here, and I am deeply grateful now to be publishing the work of David Emmett on A&R, as he continues to be one of the most insightful writers in motorcycle racing, in both the print and online mediums.

This year, I am also very honored to have had regular written and photo contributions from Scott Jones, Daniel Lo, and Jules Cisek this year — their work has helped Asphalt & Rubber earn a reputation for stunning photography, and I hear compliments about their photography virtually every time I meet a loyal A&R reader in person.

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News

Site News: Asphalt & Rubber Is Now on Google+

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You may have already noticed the Google+ “+1” buttons on the site, as lately we’ve been playing around with the social networking service here at Asphalt & Rubber. It took the internet search behemoth a while to roll out pages for sites like A&R, but we’ve finally gotten our Google+ page up, and had some time to populate it with articles and such.

An alternative to website’s like Facebook, Google+ most notably lets you share and connect with other users based on your social circles, e.g. you can select to share articles from A&R only with your motorcycling friends (sparring your non-motorcycle friends from your two-wheeled addiction). So, if Google+ is your social network of choice, be sure to follow us on there to get your daily motorcycle fix, and “+1” any articles you wish to share.

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News

Fastest in San Francisco is a Sellout

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We hope you bought your tickets to the San Francisco premiere of Fastest, Mark Neale’s latest MotoGP documentary, because our screening, co-sponsered by the San Francisco Dainese Store, has sold out. If you happen to fall into the group of GP junkies who haven’t purchased tickets to the SF Fastest screening, you’ll be happy to know that we’ve left 20 or so tickets waiting for you at the box office, but you’ll have to pick them up in person, and by pick them up, we mean walk/ride/swim to the Embarcadero Center Cinema right now.

For those of you who already purchased your tickets, you’ll be happy to know that we’ve got a fun evening planned for you. Director Mark Neale will be on-hand to do a Q&A about making Fastest, and we’ve got some nice items to raffle off to attendees, with all proceeds going to Asphalt & Rubber‘s favorite charity: Riders for Health. The official charity of MotoGP, Riders for Health is an international non-profit organization that provides motorcycles (and rider safety and maintenance) to healthcare workers in Africa.

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News

Asphalt & Rubber Turns Three Years Old Today

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It’s the end of October, and there is a picture of me from a birthday track day, so that could mean only one thing: Asphalt & Rubber has aged another year. Now into our third year of this crazy online motorcycle blog experiment, I pleasantly get to reiterate some of the text from last year’s anniversary announcement, as A&R continues to grow beyond anything that this dyslexic kid, who routinely failed writing classes, could have imagined.

This year has been one marked with notable events, as Asphalt & Rubber has come to you live from a bevy of remote locations for our race and event coverage, such as Qatar, Australia, and the Isle of Man. Storming perhaps the last refuge for motorcycle print journalism, we’ve also become one of only two pure-online publications regularly seen in the MotoGP paddock.

But most impressively this year, Asphalt & Rubber passed the 500,000 reader mark, and fittingly this October is shaping up to be our best month ever in terms of traffic & readership…as was the month before that, and the month before that — with all of that math culminating into the fact that A&R has almost doubled in size since last year’s birthday announcement.

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Banter

Asphalt & Rubber Goes Down Under to Oz and NZ

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For the three weeks, Asphalt & Rubber will be coming to you from New Zealand and Australia, as I’ll be taking my first true vacation in nearly six years (booyah!). The high-profile blogging lifestyle is a tough mistress, and so far this year I’ve been on the road nearly 40% of the time (that figure is pure exaggeration, though A&R‘s entire June article coverage came to you from airports, hotels, and the back of my car).

The plan for the coming weeks is for my time down under to be less of a working holiday than my trips have been in the past (like Qatar and the Isle of Man, for example), so A&R’s mix of daily news coverage will come at you in spurts, while longer op-ed pieces will try and fill-in the gaps on days where I’m riding around in Kangaroo pouches, or whatever the hell it is they do for fun around here.

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News

Asphalt & Rubber Turns Two Years Old Today

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And now for the most important news story of the year: Asphalt & Rubber turns two-years-old today (clap you crazy bastards!). Officially now in our “terrible twos”, A&R continues to grow beyond anything I possibly could have imagined when I first started the site one cold October morning in a frost-covered Pennsylvania. Reporting everything from race results to business analysis, from industry news to humorous distractions, we’ve served over 1,800 articles to our now 300,000+ loyal monthly readers.

While I write occasionally, Asphalt & Rubber really wouldn’t be possible without the help from a metric ton of people, most notably Daniel Lloyd (systems administrator / reluctant coder), Dustin Gibbs (web developer / photographer / escape driver), Peter Lombardi (photographer / designer), Jason Yu (photographer / umbrella girl finder), Scott Jones (photographer / resident person over 50), and Tim Hoefer (hetero life-partner / tamed motorcycle rider). Also a big thanks goes out to all our friends (you know who you are) and family (thanks Mom for letting me use your basement) for supporting this sometimes profitable endeavor. But most importantly, thank you to all our readers, who make it all worthwhile.

Want to get in on the love fest? Follow us on Twitter, Friend us on Facebook, or just leave a comment below.

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