Making progress

The new KO2 site is up and running now thanks to the fabulous Li Bromfield of Freak or Geek.

Next stop is the fabulous UnLtd who want to help "unleash my energy .. to transform the world". I hope they do cos 2 years of bureaucracy and waiting around to proceed is doing my head in!

I am forever grateful though for the help I'm given along the way, esp. Ange at Business Link, who despite being shafted by Cameron's cuts in spending, has now been able to throw me a rope with mentoring funding allowing me to sit down with an expert to guide me through the minefields of employment law, risk assessment and working with kids!!

Its just not enough in this mad world to simply be a mother who loves motorbikes??

So .. big week ahead, think I'll make it a little more relaxed by going to meetings on the GSX-R. Chances are i'll get there on time and no need for a suit.

Testing the awesomeness of Posterous

The internet is a myriad of ...I'll say goodbye to the Twitterers now unless you click the short code?

.... a myriad of branches and links going off to all kinds of places. Its hard to get your head around all the autoposting capabilities of publishing apps and its very easy to lose yourself in occurrences such as FriendFeed's double posting possibilities but I'm now trying Posterous "the dead simple place to post everything".
I'm writing this post to try and get my head around how complicated this is going to be. This post is "apparently" going to appear instantaneously all over my rather large and complicated net presence, namely; Twitter, FaceBook, my FB charity page (not the group though???), LinkedIn, Friendfeed (which could then cause infinite duplications), Plurk, Flickr, YouTube, Delicious and both the old AVIF blog and the KO2 blog .. (breeeeeathe) .. but not the main AVIF website. I won't bother putting links to all these "profiles" / places because this article is actually going to be published on each one of them, apparently?
So that means that personal stuff I want to share will go all over the place but AVIF's website articles will still have to be added separately, same with postings for the FB group (annoyingly) which still has more use, in my opinion, than a FaceBook page. Posterous also doesn't allow you to utilise FB's powerful tagging facility whereby sticking an @ sign infront of a name automatically tags the person, group, page, application, service etc. But if I stick hashtags everywhere perhaps I can throw it around #Twitter a bit more e.g. #posterous #facebook #bla bla bla
Let me get this straight? If I want to throw something out wide across the net I use Posterous, right? But then the Twitterers aren't even reading this part unless they click the short link several hundred characters back in this post. Surely the thing that keeps social media buzzing is social i.e. personal i.e. REAL stuff .. which you can't get in 140 characters .. how many Twitterers have actually clicked the short code and are actually reading this?
Do I simply use Posterous from now on? ..which is crazy as the whole point of Posterous is that I'm sending you this by simply writing an email in Gmail??
If I attach a little image too they'll somehow pass that onto you, although via email i've no idea where it'll go (at the end maybe)?
So .. let the learning curve continue ...

Posted via email from alisonlowndes's posterous

I'm so pants

I've not updated this blog in so so long but now I will as I've finally ditched my addiction to flash-based Moonfruit.com and therefore the KO2 website too. A wonderful designer in London, Li, of FreakorGeek, is, as we speak, rustling up a new look site for us but since we're still stalled in process and council ... Yawwwwwn.

I won't bore you with details but we're S-T-I-L-L waiting for a go-ahead from NYCC as to  whether or not we can join forces with their new 40-place BESD School on the Forest Moor site. when things start moving we can too.

Although the waiting around is of course frustrating, while this takes place, Zero Motorcycles are stepping up their presence with the help of the TT Zero event (Year 1) of electric superbike racing on the Isle of Mann. Since KO2 wants to use electric dirtbikes this is all good and will help bring the prices down of the units.

So .. I wait patiently but in the meantime am hoping to go get some valuable experience with Simon "Dakar" Pavey and Charley Boorman over in Wales at his off road skills school.

Route 66 with James Cargo

KO2 have partnered with James Cargo Services, world-wide freight forwarders, to offer a chance in a lifetime ride across the United States of America, by bike. James Cargo will ship your own bike and is donating to us for every bike shipped. There are 2 routes available, one taking in the renowned Sturgis Rally the annual event with races, music, food August 9th – 15th 2010, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Chicago to Sturgis is 937 miles then another 1,363 miles onto LA.

.. or take the Mother Road, the original U.S. highway of 1926 running from Chicago (Illinois) to Los Angeles, passing through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. 2,448 miles (3,940km) in total.

James Cargo have put together a draft pdf Guide, which you can download here or watch their online presentation here.

I'm personally doing the Mother Road as well as catching the end of the Burning Man Festival first week of September, in an RV, with my son and daughter.
Join us.

Technorati Tags: james cargo, KO2, adventure, bikers, route 66, sturgis

Tour d'Afrique in pictures from Simon Gardner

Simon's back, rested and put together all his photos onto Flickr of the amazing Cairo to CapeTown Tour d'Afrique 2009 journey by bicycle. His full blog is here. Simon incredibly fundraised for AVIF, enough to cover another years secondary education for Pius and Norbert, 2 Yala boys, who he met when riding through Kenya March 5.



The images speak their own words and give incredible details to the road conditions so make a coffee and scroll through by clicking here to take you to the full photostream.


Namibia desert



Technorati Tags: simon gardner, AVIF, roads, conditions, africa, tour d'afrique, mountain biking

An engineering specialist school

This morning I went to see Skipton Girls High School, just down the road, about collaboration with KO2. They are an amazing school, dealing with all the normal curriculum as well as encouraging girls to get involved with engineering.

Last year they became TV heroes when they competed on the BBC with Top Gear's James May and others, building an old-style "bogie" or go-kart from a Silver Cross pram. The girls were given only 2 weeks and had to work flat out even at weekend cutting, hammering, bending, drilling, welding and finally painting the go-kart. Local boys school Ermysted also competed but the girls won by average, beating even Silver Cross's own commissioned bogie raced by James May.



SGHS are now interested in taking part in the programmes of KO2, to introduce electric powered dirtbike engineering to their pupils. We're talking with Zero Motorcycles about a franchise with their fab bikes, competing in TTXGP next month.



Hopefully soon we'll be pushing ahead bringing more and more kids into dirtbiking outside and inside school!



Technorati Tags: engineering, dirtbikes, Skipton Girls High School, electric power

Biking for Charity

In less than 2 months a team of motorcycle riders, including lickle me ;-) will ride from the UK, down to France, all around the border and back again covering over 3600 miles in less than seven days to raise funds for St John Ambulance.

We are a volunteer organisation of over 20 members who help other charities raise money to carry out their good work. Since September 2008 One Way Round has attended almost 20 public collection days, motorbike events and various training days.

 

 

We are currently in the progress of organising a charity dinner at the end of 2009 where we hope to have some of the biggest riders in the UK attend.

 

We need your help.

If you can donate a product, service, advertisement or funds it will help us so much.

 

 

St John Ambulance helps not only motorcyclists throughout the UK at race events such as the TT and BSB, but also attends hundreds of public events all over the UK every year to help those who need their help.

 

We are trying to give them back just a little bit of what they give us.

 

Please take five minutes out of your busy schedule to look at our web site www.onewayround.com.

 

If you can donate, please visit the JustGiving site where we can obtain a further 28% on top of any donation via GiftAid.

 

Kindest regards
The One Way Round team