I've been slowly recovering from the December accident and have not been updating the Roads And Riders site in ways that are immediately evident. Certainly, there have been changes and updates nearly every week, but they have not been in reader content. I've spent time on page layouts, graphic displays, site navigation, and generally attending to simple housekeeping chores.

I just have not had the heart to write about riding while I am physically unable and without a mount. I'm sure you can understand that. It doesn't seem fair to any readers for me to sit and spout from memory what a joy motorcycles are, even though I could. For me that falls into a slightly different category of writing more suitable for a novel than a journal or freshly written guide for active riders searching for new places to see. No, it's the act of doing something that inspires me and gives me a reason to write and share the activity with others.

Throughout the recovery I've sat here pondering how to regenerate rider interest in the site and I believe I've found it.

I've spent hours, days and weeks, pouring over maps and plotting the best routes across the USA aboard my new Honda ST-1300. I want to run several out and back loops that make it possible to completely document US Highways from end to end. Two and three thousand mile rides like US-52 from Charleston, SC, all the way up to Portal, ND, and US-6 from the Atlantic Ocean to California. I want to see if it's possible to capture the excitement of the post war era that was found while traveling The Dixie Highway, The Old Spanish Trail, the National Parks Highway, and America's first road, The Lincoln Highway.

A New R&R Site Feature

The biggest waste of time has been trying to plan interesting stops along each of the routes I desire to ride. I plug the search keywords US-52 into every search engine and I get thousands of result pages, but few of them tell me where to find a campground along the route. Darn, why aren't search engines oriented in a way that riders can plan a path down the road? "OH ... , OH..., OH...! Stop the car Muldoon!" THAT'S EXACTLY what I need to do!

Roads And Riders has had a small, site based, search facility almost since the beginning. But it only cataloged the writers and their story lines and the pages of the Veterans Memorials section. That hasn't changed, but now I'm working every day to add websites outside of the Roads And Riders world. These are the sites that might give readers the inspiration to ride someplace they have never been. Museums, outdoor activities, campgrounds, hotels and motels, cavern tours, railroad excursions - anything that might be of interest to riders heading out to regions unknown. And the beauty of it, it's all keyed to the highway.

The database has just over 1,000 entries right now, but you can easily see what I am building. Look for the search engine window on this page, it's in the upper left corner. The database is hand coded and verified, oriented to the road, and makes it easy for touring riders to find what they want. What's along US-50? Just put US50 in the window enter. Narrow down the search this way; US50 + camping + showers would give you a list of all the campgrounds that have shower facilties. The goal is to catalog about 50,000 sites - that should give you a very useful tool in planning any day trip or weeks long national tour.

RIDER RECOMMENDED

Are you broken down somewhere and need a reliable shop to repair your bike? It's not very complete at the moment, but a rider in this cirmustance may look for help by typing in the road, the state, and the manufacture name of the bike, i.e. US17 + VA + Honda ... and look what you get... a shop that has been recommended by other riders to give good service. If you have a recommendation, send it along.

ADVERTISING BANNERS

During the recouperation from surgery I also pondered many life goals and the specific circumstances of why I had to have the shoulder repaired. It was a wake up call of the first magnitude. I'm going to change many things, and one of them is the way I regard this site. It's always been a way to support my riding habit. A few dollars here and there each year to buy some tires, oil, and a good supply of gasoline. From now on the site is intended to be a commercial venture that provides a living as well as a lifestyle. That takes sponsor dollars, in this case in the form of advertising banners linked to the search engine results pages.

Please patronize the advertisers whose banners you see within the content pages and search engine results of Roads And Riders. I don't charge to list a URL within the database. So the small amount of revenue that is generated by the graphic ads must carry all of my effort and time spent in collection of data and coding the information so that it may be useful to you. If you are a potential advertiser, click here to find the ratecard. It doesn't cost much to advertise here, but I will certainly appreciate it and I'm sure our readers will too.

Winter is nearly upon us, but I expect to be riding the southern highways again very soon, even if it is a bit cold. Because I know that it is always a good idea to "Ride today - Tommorow you may not be able!"

-LW