April Is Finally Here
Man, April is finally here.
Man, April is finally here. We are starting season two of the magazine and welcoming another riding season. When we started the magazine last year, the period from January to April was intensely active as we strove to get the magazine organized, defined and published. You would think that the same period this year would have been less active but in fact it has been just as busy.
We have been hard at work over the winter season. One immediate thing you will notice is the web site has a new style. Across the top are a series of tabs that take you to the various parts of the web site that will be of the most interest to you. Another thing that you will notice is that we changed our logo. Even though we were deeply enamored with our original logo, it would not translate well into embroidery and screen printing. So we dumbed it down so that the companies doing our artwork could reproduce the logo correctly.
We have also been working hard on a new addition to the magazine that we call the “North Country Rider Magazine – Motorcycle Vacation and Trip Planner”. It is primarily targeted to those individuals that are visiting the area and provides dynamic maps of “Place to Stay”, “Places to Eat”, “Places to Party”, “Biker Friendly Bars” and “Dealers and Shops”. It also has Trips, Destinations and Event Routes. “Trips” provides routes and directions for some of the rides that we take through the North Country while “Destinations” provides routes and directions to some of the lesser known venues that might be of interest to people visiting the area. The Event Routes section provides the routes of Scheduled Events for which the event planner has provided us the route in advance. The whole thing is based on Google Maps and provides dynamic mapping overlays. All in all it is a pretty slick piece of software and we believe that many of our subscribers will find it useful as well. We hope to have it operational in May.
This winter was not all work. We enjoyed Christmas with Boozefighters Chapter 80 (Timberjacks) in November. We had a Thanksgiving celebration with Leather and Lace in January and being that this is a Sisterhood, Karen is writing her first article for this event which appears in this issue. We also attended the Schedule of Events meeting in February as well as the Bike Nights at Sportline Power Products and the Cabin Fever Party at McDermott’s Harley Davidson in March.
Speaking of the Schedule of Events, we have most of the Southern Adirondack events in place from the results of the schedule meeting. If you are hosting an event, PLEASE send us the flyer for your event as soon as you have it created. We think the Schedule of Events is much more effective if we put your flyer up on the web site and then provide a link to the flyer in the event’s entry. If you are hosting an event and it does not appear in the Schedule of Events then please forward your information to us as soon as the event has been planned and then follow up with the flyer at a later date. The sooner your entry gets into the Schedule of Events, the better it is for your event as it gives the readers a chance to plan their event attendance. As always, if you are planning an event to raise funds for an emergency, get the information to us ASAP and we will gladly send out a newsletter to the subscriber base informing them of the event.
You are going to see some changes in what we report and how we report it. Last year our experience was somewhat like a child exploring new and wondrous things and our reporting reflected that wonderment. This year we are going to look more into why people attend various rides and delve more into the charities that the rides benefit. Last year we strove to cover a biker friendly bar or establishment each month. We are not going to do that this year. As we ride we will ask owners if they wish to be highlighted in an article and if they so desire and they make themselves available, we will interview them and create an article. We are going to try to focus more on the people who ride and a little less on where they ride to. We are also going to detail which rides we plan to attend and cover in the next month and our reasons for selecting that ride. We can’t attend every ride but if you or your club has an event and you wish to submit your own article about the event we actively encourage you to do so.
We still need and always will need subscribers. If you are a subscriber you receive a monthly newsletter that highlights the articles in the newly published issue and a listing of the events for that month. Having the Schedule of Events for the month dropped into your in-box should be reason enough to subscribe. Subscribers are what allow us to convince advertisers to advertise with us. If you use the magazine, please take the 3 minutes it requires to subscribe so that your use of the magazine can be counted.
Speaking of advertisers, the ads you see are hot linked to the advertiser’s web site. Take advantage of this and visit their web sites once in a while. You may be surprised at what you find when you get there and above all, please patronize them and thank them for supporting the magazine.
Please remember that this is not my magazine and it is not Karen’s magazine, it is your magazine. We encourage each and every one of you to become actively engaged in the magazine. You can do that by encouraging people to subscribe, submitting your own articles or becoming a regular reporter/contributor. Also remeber that we actively encourage your feedback on the magazine.
Well that pretty much sums up the winter activities and changes. We look forward to serving the North Country Riding community during another year of fun and frolic.
Ride Safe and Ride Well
Ed & Karen Frulla
Publishers