Last Tuesday, this rather alarming tweet showed up in my feed. For a few minutes, I instinctively hoped I was misinterpreting it. I shot a message back seeking confirmation, and quickly learned that Motorcycle USA―which has been the home of my "Backmarker" column ever since RoadRacerX.com went dark―had itself been given just a few days to live.

As of last Friday, all the web site's staff have been laid off.

Was it the oldest online motorcycle "magazine" site? I think that might be Motorcycle.com, but it was certainly one of the oldest. And for quite a while it was one of the very biggest.

I always thought that Don Becklin's brainchild had a relatively strong and easily understood business plan. Once he'd built up Motorcycle Superstore, he had one of the few vertically integrated moto sites; ad space that he couldn't sell was used by his retail operation. Although I've been writing for MCUSA for years now, I was never privy to the site's financials. All I knew was they were willing to pay quite a bit more than Road Racer X paid, and they never came back to me later and asked me to lower that rate. In the world of journalism―print disrupted by web―that constituted a win, for me.

I saw it coming. Maybe. A few of my friends complained that the last redesign of the site left it harder to navigate; I thought my own problems with it could be ascribed to the fact I hadn't updated my browser, or something. But the new site's Facebook comment system seemed to be an engagement killer. I sent in Backmarker columns that failed to generate a single comment, making me wonder how many people were reading me at all. (I did, quite often, get comments directly. So I knew there were some readers.)

What does the end of MotorcycleUSA mean?

It can't mean that Becklin's basic business plan is outmoded, because just a month or so back, Cycle Gear merged with Revzilla―an online retailer with a great blog; conceptually similar to Motorcycle Superstore/MCUSA―in a deal that suggested Revzilla was worth hundreds of millions of bucks.

I don't think it bodes ill for Motorcycle.com―which has historically been MCUSA's most direct competitor. MO's not tied to a retail/online partner; it's a subsidiary of Verticalscope, which runs a number of sites unrelated to motorcycles (including AshleyMadison.com!) It seems to be going from strength to strength lately, and probably has been poaching eyeballs and independent advertisers from MCUSA.

That leaves three other kinds of "commercial" motorcycle blogs, as I see them: There's sites like Asphalt & Rubber, or Motomatters; they focus on niches within the moto niche (meta-analysis from A&R, top tier road racing insights from David Emmett.) There's the sites attached to print magazines like Cycle World. And there are sites like Lanesplitter that generate some content, aggregate a little more, and generate revenue with sponsored posts and affiliate marketing.

I presume that most of that group are turning enough profit to maintain their small (mostly sole proprietor?) staffs. So far, I think the sites still associated with print mags are plaintive efforts to convince advertisers that those magazines have entered the 21st century. I'm still waiting for a great print mag to emerge, with a companion web site that uses both mediums optimally and builds a great social community around the two. Because print's not going away―in fact, when I compare my own print sales to downloads, I see it making a bit of a comeback.

The world of motorcycling is diverse. We'll always support small-scale projects that provide deep, expert content. But the motorcycle industry in North America needs a true media outlet of record; a place that covers every major event and product, and does it authoritatively. Ideally, I'd like to see two such players compete to keep each other sharp, but Germany's been well served by a single such publication, das Motorrad, for a century.

Selfishly, I'm sad to see MCUSA go. For me, as a freelance journalist, they were great to deal with. They paid well (by modern standards; let's face it you can write for millions of people in Huffington Post and make fuck all.) My contact there, Bart Madson, was a total pro. But maybe there's a message in this: I should ride more, and gather some new stories.

Over the next few months, I think my own path will become quite a lot clearer. There's stuff going on in my life that will be motorcycle news, but I can't quite talk about it yet.

Ulrich, you kill me.

My appreciation for this film was enhanced by the fact that, back in the late '70s and early '80s, I sat through hundreds of hours of grindingly boring, terribly-written “story” while watching that shot-on-film porn in dingy theaters and video arcades where, if you dropped your wallet on the floor, you'd just leave it there and report your credit cards as stolen.

A minute or so into this film one rider looks up and sees the female talent, wearing little more than sunscreen, and says, "Look at those girls. They look really thirsty." At this point, if you were just making a bad movie, instead of a bad porn movie, they'd ride to rescue. Instead ― and this shows real creative genius ― They do this...

I suppose I don’t blame the riders in this video. Most of them are not, probably, philosophy majors or noted ethicists. It was probably a pretty good day for them, and after all, Monster writes their checks. And this isn’t a diss on motorcycle racing per se, although I roll my eyes every time I see the Monster Energy “girls” at races, too.

I’m surprised that more people aren’t talking about the restricted number of motorcycle entries being allowed in this years (centenary edition) of the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb.

Am I wrong about this? I’ve heard from a couple of sources that there will only be 33 bikes accepted this year.

I raced PPIHC twice in the naughties, and remember a field of well over 100 bikes (including quads, yuck) when I was there. But, as more and more of the course was paved and average speeds increased, it seemed that the organizers were increasingly skittish about motorcycles in general.

A quick check of entry lists for the last couple of years shows 60-some bikes and quads. In spite of the fact that few competitors were racing, a rider was killed in 2014 (ironically after crossing the finish line) and then another was killed last year.

At least once in the past, organizers discontinued all bike classes after such fatalities. But it seems that this year, they’re taking a page from the TT organizers' book. After David Jeffries died in the 2003 TT, they reduced the number of entries and then discontinued morning practice, thus reducing the total risk exposure.

Some people have said that by reducing the number of competitors, PPIHC will increase the number of practice runs available to each rider. That may be true but it doesn’t follow that increased practice will make the race safer. If anything more runs might encourage riders to seek the limit, raise average speeds, and make the race even more dangerous.

In any case, if the stories I’ve been hearing are true, and there’s only going to be 33 slots available for motorcycles this year, I have to wonder whether the race will survive the next fatality at all. I always thought that the Isle of Man might finally kill off the TT once it had reached its centenary. They didn’t, and in fact it’s gone from strength to strength since then. But Pikes Peak doesn’t have nearly the TT’s profound sense of its own history.

One more high-profile incident and the organizers may well say, “We got to 100. That’s a good time to call it quits.”

Careful up there, eh?

UPDATE... Shortly after posting this, a little bird told me that a few months ago, the number of motorcycles was destined to be zero. But, the bikers negotiated one third of the 100 scheduled race slots. Watch for an improved new-rider program (perhaps modeled on the Isle of Man's program) to be announced in the coming weeks.

A few months ago, I wrote an admittedly provocative post criticizing the Distinguished Gentlemen's Ride, in support of prostate cancer.

I made a point I've made over and over: there are all kinds of worthy causes out there... that other people should support. But that we, motorcyclists, should focus our charitable efforts in one narrow area, spinal injury research.

No column I've ever written has triggered so many comments or personal attacks. Many motorcyclists would rather stick a camera up their butt than admit that that their next motorcycle ride might result in spending the rest of their lives on another set of wheels.

The motorcycle industry will, by and large, ignore me because it's made up of motorcyclists who are so afraid (with good reason) of paralyzing injury that they can't bear to think about this problem. And they last thing that an industry desperate for first-time rider wants to confront is this fact: riding motorcycles is dangerous.

But here's the thing: There are still many in the medical establishment who feel that spinal lesions are and always will be incurable ― that's an entrenched belief that, itself, discourages research. The truth is a different. There is some very promising research being done.


Last month, there was a great story in New Yorker magazine about an operation performed in Poland, based on research conducted in the U.K. You can read it here.

The key thing to take away from it is this: these research projects are happening at a very small scale. The guy in that photo seems to have benefitted from an experimental procedure that nearly wasn't performed, for the lack of $10,000.

A million bucks, or $10 million. That's money the people behind the DGR or the Susan G. Komen Foundation waste on business-class upgrades and planning retreats in the Caribbean. But that kind of funding could literally speed the development of an effective treatment for spinal-cord injuries and paralysis by decades.