It’s been a cloudy start to the morning, but the forecast says it’s supposed to clear up and hit 80 by this afternoon. I’m taking the gamble and riding in anyway. We’ll see if that pays off or if I end up regretting it by lunchtime.
This is another installment of the personal best and business best segment, where I take a step back and talk about something good from the past week. I’m still figuring out if this is going to be a regular fixture, but I like sticking with it for now. The whole point is finding the positive in your week, even when what you’re looking at is something small.
So with that in mind, here’s what’s been going on lately, both at home and on the WaltInPA side of things.
Table of Contents
My Personal Best This Week
Both of my younger daughters wrapped up their dance season this past weekend. My youngest took tap and ballet this year after taking a year off. She wasn’t fully into it honestly, she has been running hot and cold on the excitement level, but she had her recital on Saturday and did pretty good. Her tap class only had one other student in it, so it basically turned into a duet, and I think she actually did better in that one. She’s young enough that she spent a good chunk of the recital looking around to make sure she was doing things right, but that’s part of the fun of watching them at that age.
She’s already said she doesn’t want to dance over the summer, and she’s leaning toward soccer instead. We’ll see how that goes.
My middle daughter is a different story. She’s been dancing for six years and she’s all in. She’s hit the max number of classes the studio will charge you for and then some, so she was in the studio four days a week. She’s on the competition team and she loves acro, which means a lot of cartwheels and handstands around the house when she gets home. You’d think dancing for three hours straight would tire a kid out, but nope, she comes home and starts bouncing around the living room because she didn’t get enough yet.
The recital itself was four hours long with somewhere around 44 numbers. That is a long sit watching dances that aren’t your kid, but the music selection is usually decent and there’s always a handful of really talented kids mixed in with everybody else. It’s not my favorite way to spend an afternoon, but I don’t mind it either. That’s the personal best for the week, dance season closing out and both girls doing their thing.
My Business Best This Week
On the WaltInPA side, things have been quieter than usual, mostly because I’ve been heads down doing housekeeping work on the back end of the blog instead of pushing out new content. I went through and weeded out a bunch of old content that wasn’t motorcycle related, so Google would start prioritizing the motorcycle stuff in search results.
Watching the traffic numbers drop after doing that was a little uncomfortable. Nobody likes seeing their visitor count go down. But I’m already seeing site visits run longer and people spending more time actually engaged with the motorcycle content instead of just passing through. From what I understand, a blog typically takes about eight months to build a real following. My blog itself is old, nearly 20 years at this point, but the motorcycle side of it is young, and after the cleanup I did, it’s almost like starting over from scratch. So I’m giving it that eight month window before I start making bigger changes based on what the data tells me.
That’s the business best, slow and a little unglamorous, but it’s the kind of work that should pay off down the line.
What’s Next: A New Restoration Project
The other thing worth mentioning, even though it’s still early, is the old Honda my dad dropped off. I’m just getting into the project, and I already know it’s going to be a long haul. I had originally hoped to have it rideable by September 19th for the Martin Moto Modern Classic ride in (you read that date right – I’m writing this months before this article actually posts), since that event draws a lot of vintage bikes and it would have been fun to show up on mine.
After actually seeing the condition of the bike, I’m not so sure that date is realistic anymore. There’s rust to deal with, parts that need cleaning and repairing, and honestly I’m probably tearing the whole thing down before I can start putting it back together. I’m planning to introduce a third weekly posting day specifically for the restoration content, though I haven’t nailed down exactly when that starts. I want to make sure the timing lines up right so nobody watching thinks there’s a second restoration project happening somewhere, since there’s only ever going to be one going at a time.
I do have ideas for what bike comes after this one, but given what I’m looking at with the 750 right now, that next project is a long way off.
Ride With Me
If you want to keep up with how the CB750F restoration turns out, along with everything else going on around here, subscribe to the WaltInPA YouTube channel
for more riding content. If you know someone who’d get a kick out of this kind of update, share this post with a friend who rides. And if you want to talk shop or just hang out with other people who ride, come hang out in the WaltInPA Discord where good people talk about riding.
Tell me in the comments, what was the best part of your week? Doesn’t have to be big. Sometimes it’s just nice to say it out loud.
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