Suzuki Across GSX 250 F

I have started this blog with the intention of turning it into a helpful, interesting, convenient and reliable source of information for the Suzuki Across motorcycle (GSX 250 F). This has been a “dream” of a few members of a small unofficial Australian Across “club” who call http://www.twincam.info/index.php?showforum=33 home. Mostly comprised of people who had an Across but have since upgraded (including myself) and even a few people who never had an Across, haha, go figure. The group does still however attracted a few Across owners seeking information and advice. Over the years the quality and convenience of this information and advice is somewhat unreliable, since things are constantly repeated, details are lost, people with certain knowledge or skills are lost, and so-forth. Therefore, we saw a need for some sort of website like this, and hope to carry on the wealth of online-knowledge provided by greats such as Crazy Ivan (who’s website has now departed), Peter (http://www.dixonarchive.com/across/default.htm) and OzBrickie (http://au.geocities.com/ozcross250/index.html).

The big question… Why? And it’s a good question, since most of us (especially those of us with “a lot of experience” with the Across) have had a few other bikes, members of various other clubs with plenty of other things to do… Why would we spend our time with something like this? Well, because the Across deserves it! It deserves to live-on as long as it’s materials will allow. Now becoming an aging machine (~16 years at the time of writing), helpful information on it could easily be lost, leaving remaining owners -however dedicated- with a lack of resources or -worst of all- a sense of community, which is really what riding a bike is all about. The Across is also an excellent learners bike, with enough performance for anyone to hone their skills on the race track, comfortable enough to get a taste for long trips (aside from that seat), very easy to work on and learn valuable ($$$ saving) mechanical skills and available for a great price nowadays, since it doesn’t have the ‘cool’ image of “race replica” learners bikes like the ZXR250, CBR250RR, etc.

Anyway here’s how I invision this blog working;

• A few members of the Twincam Across group (and hopefully one day other knowledgable people) contribute to the blog.
• Posts are published on the blog; posts may be technical how-tos, tips, mindless ranting/winging, reports of rides or meetings… basicly anything. Importantly, posts will be indentified as accurately as possible using Tags. This is esspecially important for technical how-tos.
• Visitors must be able to find the information they want as quickly and easily as possible. That kind of navigation in not inherint in Blogs (obviously chronologicaly focused) so we’ll need to develop a bit of a system and posting/Tagging standards to ensure information is easy to find.
• ALL content in the Blog must be hosted at reliable, long-term locations. This is the reason I decided to use a Google Blogger blog. I will also use Google Web Picasa for picture hosting, Google Video for videos, Google Documents for documents, and so-on. Google are not known for terminating any of their services. So this blog (and it’s included content, photos, videos, etc) should live on for a long long time, even if we stop maintaining it for some time.

So I’ll leave it here and wait for comments and suggestions from my good friends at Twincam. Cheers, happy riding, James.