Wow. It’s almost been 2 years since my last post. Well, I promise that’s not because nothing has been happening!
After the Clap for Alaska 2022, I did intend to do a trip review post…but then I didn’t do it. That riding season was pretty much over for me after the trip so not much to report there. But LAST summer…my goodness. First I came up with a crazy idea to host a freaking motorcycle rally! I managed to trick a buddy into helping me organize it and we spent March-August planning the first annual 2 The Border rally…..and I was so damn busy I barely took a single picture and didn’t make a blog post about it. And then guess what I did….go on…guess. Right in the middle of the most stressful and busy 5 months of my life, planning for the rally, I decided to invent another project! And thus, BudgetMoto was born! The idea had been in my head for a few years but I figured I would just do that on the side while planning a motorcycle rally AND make a YouTube series out of it. Also, the whole idea of the rally was to bring some attention to Tourmoto so I had to develop a couple of products so I could actually, ya know, sell something.
BudgetMoto Adventures
Well, I’ll keep this pretty short cause it’s all covered in the video series. Basically, Enrique and I each had a budget of $1000 to buy a bike, get it running, outfit it for travel, and take a 4-day trip on it. We did the fixing and outfitting on our own at home and then he came up here for the trip. You guys, it was so damn fun. I can’t believe how much fun it was. I got out and saw more of my local terrain on that stupid blue bike than I had done on my KTM up to that point. We even ended up finding the perfect location for the poker run for the rally. The trip was a huge success. That stupid bike survived the trip, somehow, and ran the rest of the summer until finally giving up the ghost on the highway 80 miles from home. Now it sits on the lift in the shop getting an engine transplant…..I REFUSE to let it die. EVER.
It was such a success that it is going to become an annual project for me. The 2024 BudgetMoto bike was purchased yesterday.
2 The Border
So I have this friend, Troy, who just does everything he decides to do. Once his mind is set on something he just does it. And I made the mistake of floating the idea of organizing my own motorcycle rally. And just 24 hours later he called me back with a basic plan and a venue lined up……
So we spent March-August planning. And believe it or not, it went really really well! We had a great turnout and tons of positive feedback. So much so that we’re doing it again this year. This year will hopefully be a little bigger and we can just keep growing every year. Check out the website www.2theborder.com
TOurmoto
Like I said, I wanted to do the rally to drive some attention to Tourmoto. But I needed to actually have something to sell. So I FINALLY got two products launched. The MoTow rope and Moto Cook Kit. And with that, I needed a website. Luckily, my buddy Troy is a marketing genius and website builder extraordinaire. Troy allowed me some space on the server space he rents and helped me shift all of my stuff from WordPress to build a new, self-hosted site…complete with built-in web store. This proved to be such a massive project that it’s still, technically, not finished….nearly a year later. Cause I have no idea what I’m doing. But it’s getting there.
So what does that mean…and why am I making a blog post about it?
Some Sort of Road Trip
Now that I finally have a real website to support my desire to supply the motorcycle with Tools for Travel, I can separate my own travels from that and just have it be a page on the website. The cheap/free version of WordPress does not allow for Ecommerce and I was forced to smoosh the blog and a crappy webstore into one poorly designed site. Now I have the freedom to have a poorly designed webstore and a poorly designed blog clearly separated but connected by a poorly designed website. So I’m reclaiming the title of Some Sort of Road Trip for the blog.
the future
This summer is about to get wild. Year two of BudgetMoto Adventures AND 2 The Border, my first real dive into the retail side of Tourmoto, and a previously unmentioned burning desire to break through to 1000 subscribers on YouTube. So stick around for more garbage. O yeah also I’m going to Alaska again LOVEYOUBYEEEEE!
