Welcome to Home Base for Ride with Joe….
Not sure how you ended up here but I’m glad you did. You may be asking yourself “What’s the point?” Well let me help you out with that. I the first version of this site was started in July of 2008 with a desire for an adventure the idea of doing something useful and unique. I wanted an opportunity to do something that would allow me to do something I’ve always wanted to do and help others at the same time.
Let me give you some background about me and then explain what I’ve done so far. I’m a successful entrepreneur and in my spare time (what little I have had) I’m a Biker. I love to ride my motorcycle. It’s my therapy of sorts. Life has a tendency to throw us all curves and I prefer to ride the curves on two wheels. That is much easier if you only have two to start with. Mid 2002 I was laid off of work after the .com cave-in that affected many in the technology arena where I had been working (did I mention I’m a geek as well?) I had the opportunity to start a business, which I did and was able to build it over the past several years amidst many of the aforementioned curves that life pitches at us all. I was lucky enough to be able to sell it and take a bit of a sabbatical.
While pondering what I should do with the rest of my life, it occurred to me that I should take a break and do something I’ve never done before but always wanted to do. I always wanted ride across country and see as many states as I could on my motorcycle which I did. It was a tremendous experience and has been transposed from the original blog site and is chronicled in the archives here on this site. It is complete with pictures and a blog of the interesting places I visited and people that I met as well as several interesting “challenges” that I had to overcome along the way. So now what…….
Ride with Joe 2.0….
One of the benefits of riding thousands of miles on a motorcycle is that you have A LOT of time to think. So as I was riding I came up with all kinds of ideas on what I wanted to do a with Ride with Joe. Having the ideas is the easy part. The hard part is the execution. Like a lot of ideas, it may seem good at the time. When you actually go to implement, you find that it isn’t as easy as you originally hoped. Since returning, I’ve mulled over, investigated and tested many ideas. Some work and some don’t. A lot of them are outside my area of expertise. Those hopefully will come to pass as time goes and I either learn how to implement them or find an interested expert that wants to jump in and help. Like many projects, it’s easy to get bogged down in the details and the desire for “perfection”. Recognizing that, I finally boiled down the pieces into what you see before you. Ride with Joe 2.0, if you will. More or less this will be the melting pot of future ideas, information, and general geekiness as it relates to me and my exploits. For now, it will be pretty much a personal blog with the hopes that Ride with Joe will become more focused, organized and grow into something bigger than just me. I hope that everyone enjoys what they find here. As always, I’m open for suggestions, comments and feedback. If you are interested in contributing drop me a line.
Keep the shiny side up.
Joe