IMPORTANT 2SB RSS/EMAIL INFO

I’m cutting off Feedburner, it used to be a great service, but since Google bought it, I haven’t even been able to see my stats, and the help forum was apparently abandoned months ago. I have no idea how many subscribers I have, or if my feeds are working correctly, So this is the last RSS feed you’ll see, and the last email you’ll get for a while.

Cutting this cord will force me to set up a better service, and I will post that info prominently on the site when it’s all working, hopefully over the weekend. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it just needed to be done. It sucks to have to start from scratch with RSS and newsletter subscribers, but I need to re-take control of my feeds.

Back from Sturgis…

Yep, we were gone for a week or so, checking out the scooter scene in Sturgis, Michigan. (I posted a similar photo on my Facebook page and apparently my friends actually think I’d waste valuable vacation time at a Harley rally.)

In any case, we’re back and there’s some some good stuff on deck, including a Vespa Vednesday Video and some good news from Genuine.

Not Hacked

We were down for a few hours this morning, with some symptoms that led us to believe we might have been hacked. Once we fixed it, to our relief, it was clear that The People’s Republic of China had nothing to do with it, it was just an SQL glitch. Props to our beloved hosting co. Tilted for their help, and to Chandler for notifying me so quickly.

Avatars

You might have noticed comments have avatars now. If you’d like to customize yours, simply register (free and easily) with Gravatar. If your mail address in your 2sb account matches your Gravatar account, your avatar will apear. easy peasy. It’ll automatically add it to every post you’ve ever made here, *and* on other Gravatar-enabled sites.

Cold Weather Challenge

WINNERS:

1. Bob Hedstrom: -16°F, 10.1 mi
   1/15/09, Minneapolis, MN, 2007 Vectrix
   … I’d been riding a Vectrix a lot during the past summer and always trying to test its limits. I really wanted to see what extreme cold would do to battery performance.
   After checking the temperature at 10:45 am and it was still hanging in at -19. Time to ride. The Vectrix has a lot of torque and even the bare looking portions of the streets had a bit of slip to them. I had to be very careful but kept it upright the whole time. I outriggered my boots in all turns… Map
2. Tom S.: -11°F, 11 mi
   1/15/09, Omaha, NE, 2008 Yamaha Zuma
   Commuting in my Jeep is not a whole lot different from being on my Zuma at these temps so I bundled up extra good and headed to work on the Zuma of Doom! 90mpg is always better than 12mpg!… It’s getting cold enuff to where I’m ALMOST ready to give it to the Minnesotans… NOT IN A MILLION YEARS!!! haha!
3. Colin Doyle: -10°F, 14.1 mi
   12/15, Collegeville, MN, Honda Ruckus 50
   Video!
4. Luigi G.: -7°F, 10.1 mi
   1/16/09, Dover MA, 1970 Vespa GTr
   I had to do the run early in the night instead of just before sunup as I needed to get finished packing for the long ride to the FYBO rally… (epic report in comments below)
5. Stefan: -6°F, 10.3 mi
   1/16/09, Cleveland, OH, 1980 Vespa P200
   Old lady was driving me into work…I see the temp at Walgreens was -12°, and i’m all like “it’s on!.” get to the shop, fire up the “mf’n juggernaut beotch p-deuce”, map out a nice 2.5 mile loop, and run it 4 times.…Is it true the runner up prize is a 3 second pull on a bottle of malort with an old style chaser?

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CWC+2SB=AFU

Tonight I planned to post the Cold Weather Challenge sign-up page and unveil some new stuff for sale at Scootmoto. Tonight I ended up botching a WordPress upgrade, then locked myself out of the 2SB admin page, completely destroyed the site, and took three hours to fix it. I think it’s almost back to normal now, let me know if you see anything weird. For the last two hours I was pretty sure I’d killed the site for good, so just seeing it load is making me very happy. Maybe the Cold Weather Challenge will start tomorrow night. Sorry, Ryan. In the meantime, here’s the Cold Weather Challenge theme song (right click to download).

2sb news

We finally added a contact email address in the top right box, I’ve been meaning to do that for ages. If you’re getting email subscriptions, you might want to add that address to your whitelist, I just realized I’d been using my work address for email updates all this time, so I switched it. If you’re not getting email updates, sign up over there —>

Sorry about the lack of posts last week, I had an impromptu business trip, family in town, Halloween, and an overnight camping trip. Lots of stuff is coming soon, including a long-term in-depth field test of the Benelli/Andretti 150XT, reviews of my new Scorpion EXO-700 Neon helmet, ICON Pursuit gloves, and the long-promised Corazzo shop jacket review, plus a few books I’ve been meaning to review for a while.

Twitter

I finally caved in and set up a Twitter account… but I have an ACTUAL PURPOSE for it! I’ll use it to post scootering tips and I’ll also post quick bursts about rumors and upcoming stories. So, if you’re into that, we’re simply “2strokebuzz.” If you prefer not to join Twitter (you’re smart), you can still read the posts or subscribe to an RSS feed here.

2nd Octannual 2SB Coloring Contest!

It’s been eight years since our last coloring contest, and the wounds have healed, let’s try it again. As you may have heard, MotoGP’s coming to Indianapolis Motor Speedway this summer, so we’re co-opting THEIR contest to show those cheese-eating, terrorist-loving Europeans what a MotoGP bike should look like.

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Flu Update/Apology

Judging by the four-hour wait at UrgentCare yesterday, most of America has the flu right now, but it was a bad time for me, I’ve still got a lot of DealerExpo to talk about, people have been sending me great links left and right, the new T-shirts are almost in production, and that’s not even accounting for my real job, or American Scooterist, or any of the many other balls I dropped last week.
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Construction continues…

Just about everyone I’ve asked, including myself, said they’d prefer to see the center column as an all-inclusive chronological listing rather than separate categories, so I’ll be changing that back soon, as soon as I figure out how. In the meantime, have you checked out 2strokebuzz Radio?

Surprise!

Welcome to the new 2strokebuzz! There are still a couple quirks we need to work out, but for the most part, things are up and running and looking more or less like we’d hoped. Enjoy the changes and drop us a comment if you see anything goofy or have any suggestions! Thanks for reading 2sb for 12 years, here’s to 12 more!

Pardon our mess

We just upgraded our WordPress (from 2.0.3 to 2.3.2, it’d been a while!) and had a little panic attack when the site went blank, luckily it was just a couple out-of-date plug-ins, and it appears everything’s working fine now. If you notice anything strange or out-of-place, please let us know (comment here or email us) so we can fix it. Archive categories are also being rearranged, which is leading up to a few bigger, more noticeable changes coming soon. We might have a few short outages late at night over the next few weeks, if it’s a planned outage, you’ll see a “check back soon” message. Thanks for your patience.

Archive: Alfredo, 1996

Alfredo Mar, Niagara Rally, 1996

I did an interview the other day with Karen for the awesome Kickstart magazine, and it got me thinking about how long i’ve been doing this (12+ years!), and all the great people I’ve met through 2strokebuzz and scootering. I started digging through some old shoeboxes tonight and thought it might be fun to start posting some photos and stories from the old days.

There’s no better person to start with than Alfredo Mar. When I bought my first scooter in 1995, Alf was the first person I met on Usenet, and a few days later, the first scooterist I met in person. I remember seeing him in front of Arturo’s Tacos on his mirrored-out P200 in pressed slacks and a tennis sweater with a weird laurel where the alligator should be, and feeling entirely inadequate with my rusty Primavera, dirty jeans and biker jacket, but within seconds of talking to him, I knew we’d be friends. We’re still best friends, and our daughters are, too. This photo is from Niagara 1996, our first major road trip. (Check out Rich Easton lying down in the background.) Alf bought that burgundy P200 from Vespa of Chicago when he went away to college, but it’s been in my garage so long (I’ve moved with it twice!) I think I might have common-law ownership.

Header Artists

You’ve probably noticed our new random artwork behind our logo over there on the top left of the page. If not, you’re either reading RSS, your monitor is too dark, or you’re pretty flipping unobservant. Anyway, there’s finally a page where you can see all the art and find out more about the artists, and find out how you can submit art or photos for that space, we’d love to have more!

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