This might serve as future reference for newbies (like me) who'd like to know how much the actual expense of a bike can come up to be before purchasing it...

$2,000 Feb/6/09-2007 Kawasaki Ninja 250 ~ brought from an ad on Craiglist. Less than 2k miles, spotless, completely stock, Kawasaki extended warranty until 2011.

$105 AllState 1 year liability insurance (the NC state minimum), might add more features later.

$140 MSF course at a community college nearby. With certificate of completion the driving test at the DMV is waived.

$111 Registration, License plate, Title transfer and other minor stuff at the DMV.

$30 Motorcycle half-cover. It keeps my seat dry, and I don't have to wait for the exhaust to cool- just cover it and walk away.

$120 Bell Sprint Mako '09 Helmet - fits larger than other brands I tried in Small size. Decided to keep it for "practice"... once I'm put it on I forget it's...

So I've been thinking for a while about typing out all of the events that are taking place in order for me to get my ninjette, but I'm not what you'd call a "blogger." In fact, my existence on myspace and facebook is only because of my wife who consistently checks our accounts.

So, here it is: my first blog.....ever....

Many of you may already know that I received a nice bonus from Uncle Sam this year on my tax return because my wife and I just bought our new house a few months ago. Well, we just received our check last week. And before we even had the check, we began car searching for her (you see, getting my ninjette was solely dependent on getting her a car first and only if we had "left overs" to spare ). We've found my wife a car, we're picking it up this weekend, and -yes- we have "left overs" to spare. However, it's not quite as much as I was hoping.

So, now we've got my wifes car to sell that...

Well, things are just trucking along! 330+ members as of this week, and more joining us each and every day. I'm excited about the logo contest, I'm excited about the Area P raffle, and I'm most excited about the amount of new and interesting posts I find every time I visit the site. For the past week it's approaching 300 posts per day! Volume alone isn't the only measure of success, but the absence of volume could certaiinly be the inverse. And I'm glad that's not a problem.

Thanks for all of the suggestions and comments so far; each of them have helped make ninjette.org just a bit nicer for the rest of us to enjoy.

EDIT: ============================
Woke up mega early today and headed over to the DMV to get the license plate along with the title transfer. Need coffee...

Right after, I called CPCC (they're about 20min away) today and they said they were booked until March 13th!! F-that, I'm driving to another community college that is about an hour away... because I want to RIDE!! And thus the class is this weekend... phew!!
==================================

To Do List:

1. Decide on the kanji symbol I want to put on each side of the tank. For now the ones I'm considering are 'cute', 'seductive', 'mischief' and 'sexy'... couldn't find a kanji for 'lovely' boohoo.

2. Install the Japanses symbol/s.

3. Get estimates to get the rims (and the exhaust?) painted black.

4. Either have a pro do the rims (lotsa moolah?) or DIY them with some high-heat engine paint... and if that's the case then...

Funny story is I went to a Kawasaki dealership where I was tempted into getting the 2009 special Monster edition 250 (black and green = super fast?). Anyways, I decided to get on a couple of bikes and being a mere 5'5" I couldn't climb onto most of them (even though they were on their side stands!!). To make a long horror story short, I sat on a 650 and as I attempted to get off it... well it started to fall on the opposite side of it's stand!! To make sure it didn't scratch the bike next to it I placed my hand in between... OUCH!! Luckily I went with a friend and he caught the bike before a domino effect took a couple of them down!!

Posting images for the gallery.

Beats me. But I'll give it a shot. I know what I like on other forums. I know generally what seems to work well. I've seen some great moderation, some non-existent moderation, and everything in between. I've seen boards with great user interfaces but no real content, and boards with terrible interfaces that have incredibly rich and useful content.

Can't hurt to start with a decent interface and work carefully to build the content by getting a friendly and helpful group of folks to the site. And we've been lucky so far to get exactly that!

From a technical side, software improvements and hosting improvements have made much of the nuts and bolts a little easier than they once were. Still needs some care and feeding with upgrades and monitoring, but much less than was necessary in years past. I've used similar software and implemented similar modifications on another board (montgomerybikers.com), and I'm reasonably comfortable with most of vBulletin's...

Here are a few blogs I have on blogspot. I try to keep things sorted...

http://zg250.blogspot.com/
For Ninjette-specific stuff.

http://sprale.blogspot.com/
My personal blog, no idea what might turn up there...

http://adv-moto.blogspot.com/
Ride reports.