The Kneeslider’s 2005 Review

2005 was quite a year for motorcycles and The Kneeslider. A lot of new technology, new motorcycles and generally really cool stuff.

The U.S. finally saw the return of MotoGP at Laguna Seca. For those of us who follow the series, it was great to see it back on our home turf and watching Nicky Hayden win made it even better. We’re looking forward to seeing it return every year.

We covered the Thunder Star diesel sportbike. It shows great potential and there was certainly a lot of interest from our readers, we only hope that something comes of it beyond the one off concept.

The Hayabusa V8, used by Radical for their racing sports cars, was another popular topic here. Seeing its inclusion in Dennis Palatov’s DP1 will be another showcase for the powerplant.

Of course, the Smartuki, Peter Bee’s incredible little Smart car with the 180hp GSXR1000 engine, brought loads of visitors who are absolutely fascinated by the combination. As we also mentioned, Peter sold the car and we’ll be following the rebuild as it’s transformed.

Hurrican Katrina brought devastation to New Orleans and Confederate Motorcycles stalled when their factory collapsed. Now with their relocation to Birmingham, Alabama, we’re looking forward to seeing them get back on their feet.

The Tokyo Motorcycle Show brought us a number of motorcycle concepts that grabbed everyone’s attention. The Honda DN-01, the Yamaha Gen-Ryu and the one that really excited a lot of folks, the first public showing of the new V-Max.

The Kneeslider’s recent redesign and software upgrade makes it much easier to administer and operate on a daily basis, and that’s a good thing because our traffic has absolutely skyrocketed this year. The graph recording visitors and pageviews is a steep positive slope. It seems more and more of you are finding this a pretty nice place to visit and check up on whats’s happening in the motorcycle and tech world. I have to admit, we feel really good about that and very grateful to all of you who have made The Kneeslider the growing site that it is. We also very much appreciate the regular visitors and commenters who keep things lively and interesting. Many of you have added comments and information that none of us alone have access to and that benefits everyone.

We have plans for many new additions this year and we’ll be working like crazy to make The Kneeslider even more interesting and informative. As I mentioned before, although we can’t always respond to every email, we read it all. If you have any questions or comments about The Kneeslider, send a note. We’ll take a look and see if we can work them in.

Thank You again to all of our readers. I hope the past year has been great for you and I wish you the very best possible New Year.