In the Summer of 2002, I was 24 years old, single, had a good number of friends who rode motorcycles, and my 1989 Suzuki GSXR 750 just broke down. I purchased the Yamaha Road Star (Star Cycles) Warrior in June, which, at the time, was one of the fastest and best handling power cruisers in the market. Being that I was coming from the sport bike realm, this was the bike for me.
2002 was the first model year for the Warrior so there wasn’t yet a community site up and running. There was a community of Warrior owners on a hosted forum site (Delphi), as well as a fan’ type site, but they had missing pieces. I started the rswarrior.com site in June of 2002 primarily using software written by me. With a bit of luck, and help from key people, the site took off.
Fast forward to December 2010. I am 33 years old, married, a home owner, a father to a two year old, and I have three girls on the way (yes you read that correctly). I still have the Warrior and put a few miles on it a year back and forth to work. However, my life has changed. I have responsibilities that life insurance just won’t cover, many of my friends no longer ride, and my passion time for motorcycles has dwindled.
I’ve been a fairly silent member on rswarrior.com over the last five or more years. There has been a great moderator team and, to be honest, they’ve ran it so well that I’ve been able to be silent. As silent as I was, I did always have my hands and eyes on it. The site had grown to over 21,000 registered members making about 30,000 pageviews a day. However, as my time for riding has dwindled so has my time for running the site. Even with the moderators doing a phenomenal job I just can’t help but feel that the site would be better off under someone else.
In light of the recent changes in my life, and changes yet to come, I’ve decided to let the site go. As of November 1, 2010 I am no longer the owner of rswarrior.com and by the time your read this you will have noticed that the site has changed hands.
I know that many of the 21,000 rswarrior.com members reading this are wondering what this means for them. I sincerely hope that it means you have a much better experience using the site. I created the site with a lot of blood, sweat, and tears and I know the moderators put in countless hours to keep the site running. I wouldn’t turn the site over unless I thought it was for the better. I still have the Warrior and will continue to be a member on the site.
Reflecting back, the site has had its share of bumps along the way. Very poor web hosts, server upgrades, weekend long down time, lost members, fighting members, thieving vendors, design and software changes, etc.. ultimately the community got through it all. I really do hope that the ownership change is just another small bump in the road and the community continues to grow.