Not one word before I give a long overdue and huge THANK YOU for all the outside help I received and ESPECIALLY to Sean for giving up his time and energy to keep things alive and thriving on here in my prolonged absence. Considering how little actual support I’ve given him during my hiatus I can’t express enough how massively grateful and appreciative I truly am. Sean is now part of the DNA and his welcome mat is welded to the floor. As they say, mi casa su casa.

Now I won’t rehash all the reasons personal and financial for my absence suffice it to say they those distractions are still somewhat of a daily reality. I’m just getting a lot better at ignoring/managing (but mostly ignoring) them. The seat of the DR650 and the RD350 are familiar to me again and I think motorcycles are solidly back on my list of daily philosophical considerations.

All of which brings me to the bike that sort of snapped me out of my slumber… as they say… stay tuned.. 😛

Most of the links refer back to the old blogs libraries so they are not quite up to date with things we’ve done hee in the last few months  but there’s still a ton of material over there on the Picassa albums if you’re in the mood for it.  Enjoy!

Even going back to the old site on blogger the only time I’ve ever broken 3000 hits in a day was when I’d get link “lanched” by a big site like Pipeburn or Bike-exif etc.  The average daily grind was usually in the low 2000’s .  Something seems to be catching on a little here lately as the numbers are on a steady rise.

Whatever it is I just wanted to say thank you to all the regulars and especially the newcomers for stopping by.

I’m still having a ball.

Many of you who’ve followed me for the last few years know that my first love is old 2-stroke streetbikes.  In that community we have our own legends and one of those guys is a man name Tony Nocosia.
For those of you who’ve never heard of him, Tony is THE man who put the early Kawasaki Triples on the map with a small truckload of dragracing records.   And it doesn’t hurt that he’s a hell of a nice guy and is still a legend in the Triples and 2 stroke community.  To those of us who follow these sthngs it’s pretty clear that there is a bias against dragracers getting in. I just got off the phone with Tony and he said that he’d love to be the guy that breaks the ice for more of them. And I couldn’t agree more.
Well as it turns out, over on the Kawasaki Triples board John Aylor is spearheading a drive to get Tony Nicosia into the AMA Hall of fame and I want to do everything I can to help out. If you have a minute, we need folks to to send John an E-mail and a quick message that they support his nomination and think he should be entered for a stated reason. PLEASE DO NOT just say “I vote for Tony Nicosia” That won’t be counted. It needs to be in the form of a compliment of some type. Example… (in your own words please. If you just cut and paste this then 50 of the same comments won’t work either):
I think Tony Nicoscia is a credit to the sport of motorcycling and would make a fine Hall of Fame recipient. His accomplishments speak for themselves, his skills as a rider are legendary, and he is always willing to help anyone interested in the sport of motorcycling.I can’t believe he’s not a HOF member already etc etc…

I really appreciate it and I just talked to Tony and I know for a fact that he does too.

John’s  E-mail to me and Contact Info are as follows:
Hey Steve,
great you are helping.
Keep it simple have them write their “tribute” and have them E mail them to me directly.
Just make sure they need to say what tony did for their motorcycling experience, “I vote tony” is not useable.
And their name and city/state.
Thanks John
PS have then put Tony Nicosia in the subject box….
Johnayleng@aol.com.

Here is the man himself  “back in the day” lighting it up!

If you have any questions about this or want to contribute any links etc then I’m happy to help out in any way!

Thanks Everyone!

Here are some comments from John on the Kawi board about Ton’s influence on the motorcycle world:

I personally don’t think the Kawi triple would have been the “game changer” it was without Tony. If it wasn’t for his skills and dedication, there never would have been the adds where the 500 kicked everyone’s butt. Even thought he was an employee of Kawasaki, he worked his butt off traversing the country to show what a triple could do on local tracks. And I don’t think Denco would have been Denco without him and his skills. He even helped in the final design and testing of the first 500’s. Tony put in countless hours of work and years of traveling for not a lot of money. He set countless records that stood for decades, and motivated many to drag race themselves. Which who knows how much fun and accomplishment on the racers part, which made them better mechanics and people. (triple guys are good guys!)

I also think his records did much for Kawasaki’s direction in the performance field and probably led them in the direction of making more performance motorcycles, giving us great Kawasaki’s through the years. And maybe Kawasaki might have gone in a different direction without the support of sales from Tony’s records. And maybe Dave Schultz might not of gone Kawasaki and not pushed the reputation and records lower. Tony has done so much for our triples.

….

I’m just asking for a couple of minutes of your time now, not for myself, but to help not only a friend, but a guy that is truly responsible for the legend of the triple, the one that has guys stop you to talk about your bikes, and makes your triples worth so much.

PLEASE take a few to say a few words in Tony behalf. As I wrote he is the underdog as he doesn’t have the contacts or money to donate to get in the hall of fame. If anyone deserves to be inducted, it is Tony!

And again, we have to sway the actual voters, and a “I vote Tony” doesn’t really cut it. We need comments that will make them take notice to his accomplishments and how he has effected the motorcycling community through the years. And we need a LOT of responses, as they will be printed out and sent in.

I thank the guys that have already posted, and I would like to ask the ones with just a “I vote for” to take another minute of time to edit and say a few words.

I know the adds stuck in my mind all these years, and I still go “oh yeah” in my head when I see them, beating all the other makes! And the big combo test we all refer to where the H2 came out ahead with Tony’s tuning. (even thought they told him to de-tune the H2 so the Z1 would win, he stuck it to them anyway….LOL)

I was into dirt bikes and didn’t really pay attention to the street bikes, but the performance adds sure stuck and was the reason I got into triples in the late 70’s. And I’m sure they did the same for most of you.

So let’s do this for Tony guys, It’s only a few minutes……….

I suppose I need to find ways to backup my entire blog (YEARS worth).  I don’t see  way to get all the images I have stored on Picassa backed up in total and in order so I’m going to have to trust to the gods on that one.

It this blog does in fact disappear I WILL RETURN in some capacity (and likely with a slightly altered name) but it will likely be on another blog host like wordpress or tumbler etc.. but for now I’ll ride this pony as far as it’ll go.

It must be a curse.  I was actually bragging to a friend about the reliability of blogger/google yesterday.  Go figure.

Well according to my site meter it started at 5 am and ended this morning when I logged in.  

2nd update:  Apparently I’m one of the lucky ones.  According to this some folks have lost their blogs completely and since they are legitimate businesses they have lost significant revenue for the holidays!  Poor bastards.

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=5161eccac29c1be8&fid=5161eccac29c1be8000497502b39ff6e&hl=en

Update:  Well apparently it’s not anything major. After doing some searching I’ve found a few references to this and it’s not all that uncommon for google to pull this on people.  LOTS of speculation as to why but nothing concrete.

Here’s a link to another fellow who had a similar (but not identical) thing happen.  Damm frustrating and very freaking scary!  Now I get to go change all my passwords everywhere.  Oh Joy!  Thanks a lot google.

http://www.labnol.org/internet/google-account-disabled-temporarily/13775/

To those of you who have checked to see my page missing I don’t know what happened  I came in this morning and my G-mail account was disabled and I needed to re-verify all my passwords with a text message verification number.  I’m going to get after google to see what’s going on but for now if you get any e-mails form my address

superduckz@gmail.com

please let me now if it was malicious.  I haven’t sent anything out to anyone since yesterday evening (12-22)