blog seven, the blog that defines awesomeness

I’m pretty sure that I’ll be using Jenkins’ perspective to examine my website because it regards motorcycling which is predominantly a male dominate lifestyle. The raw power, the camaraderie, the rush, and the “addiction” that you get is almost completely exclusive to males. While there are females out there that are crossing that gender border, it’s only happening within the past year or so and they represent less than 1% of the motorcyclist culture. Motorcycling lends itself towards males needs of exploration and conquering new territory, the thrill of new things whether they be sights, sounds, physical sensations, and even emotions.  I’ve been sky diving, bungee jumping, I’ve blown stuff up with explosives, I’ve shot animals, and nothing will ever compare to the feeling of tearing around a corner at full lean, knee dragging on the pavement, literally inches away from what you know is your demise, only to rise up away from it, crank your throttle hand down and take off like Satan himself is on your ass. The same exuberant feeling that boys get after conquering an imaginary foe from the fort the constructed out of logs in the woods, or a little shack they built in the middle of nowhere. They return home with mud and sometimes blood on their skin and clothes with a complete disregard for the pain or discomfort they might be enduring for the simple fact that they know they accomplished what they set out to do upon the concoction their idea. They fought tooth and nail in an imaginary sense just like today’s modern gladiators do on the race track. Every ounce of their soul can be consumed by the task at hand, willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to reach their goal. The developmental patterns of motorcycling and the childhood boy culture are completely intertwined in just about every aspect. It’s almost like leading a life of a motorcyclist is to never grow old. You constantly encounter scenarios that you would as a child but in different garb.

Tentative comments, what in the world does that mean?

I wish I would have seen this earlier instead of taking care of it at 2am. It would have given me a chance to ask the question that the title of my blog is asking instead of me now, obviously blogging about it. Don't get me wrong, I literally understand what tentative comments are; I just don't know exactly what I'm supposed to be commenting about the website. It says we're supposed to say why we chose this particular website but I honestly don't know why other than the fact that after a quick skim of the homepage the website is motorcycle related and I happen to know quite a bit about motorcycles.

http://www.motorcyclesafetyinfo.com/

This website seems very basic but possibly full of really helpful information to new and inexperienced riders. Just from the picture of the motorcycle they use and the fact that they have an MSF (Motorcycle Safety Foundation) locator on the right hand side of the page tells me that this is not a website that would be frequented by riders that have any kind of track background, anywhere from track days to amateur racing events. Even the aggressive and talented canyon carver would possibly be beyond the knowledge that they probably are displaying and utilizing on this website. There’s a lot of statistics that I can see without really reading into any of it so it is probably meant to inform someone with text via a knowledge database than teach them any real techniques that a new or inexperienced rider could visually grasp and understand and actually apply to their riding.

On the left hand side of the page there a link for suggested gear to wear, riding skills and techniques, safety studies, and a resources and links section as well. I could definitely be proven wrong about there not being any visually learned and applicable riding techniques from this site, but I really doubt it based upon the extremely simple design of the website. The color combination used is awful, it completely reminds of an orange hazard road sign, which is actually probably the intent behind the color scheme sadly. You would figure if they’re designing a website towards new and inexperienced riders, they would try to make a website that was eye catching and that would keep their attention so they actually took in all the information that was being made available from the website.

Some things are just worthless

like the OWL's link for online documentation. The MLA update is SO much easier to follow through the index and find, not to mention it actually just gives you a solid breakdown of "this goes here, and this is next" instead of just giving you 100 different examples expecting you know to know wtf they're talking about. Irritating to say the least when you've spent 9 hours doing math, went to sleep, woke up, and now you have a bunch of english assignments to bang through before you can even get started on the four + hours of world history homework you have. For having 12 credit hours of class, I really doubt I'm supposed to be spending 20+ hours on school work in the span of 3 days.