As I sit here and procrastinate in doing my actual work, I decided since I just celebrated my one-year blogoversary I thought it would be cool to look back on the past year and highlight ten of my favorite posts.

10. If she can do it, I can do it
This was one of the first posts I wrote that tackled my internal struggles of “women only”-type things. My favorite quote (still to this day) is a quote from the Suzuki spokesperson who said “we think [what] we know is that women motorcyclists don’t want to be called women motorcyclists. They just want to be motorcyclists. They don’t want a women’s motorcycle.”

9. I’m richer. Well, my motorcycle is anyway.
Last summer I made a lot of modifications to my bike-mainly because I was having airflow issues. Of course it’s a slippery slope when you start doing mods because once you alter one thing a chain reaction of other things needs to happen. But this post details one of my first adventures of tearing my bike down, drilling out the carburator and putting it all back together.

8. Video Tuesday: Laconia Bike Week 2007
My photo slideshow from Laconia NH bike week last year. I had such a great time, the highlight was riding all the way up Mt. Washington with all of the other bikers. What a view from the top!

7. “You ride your OWN?” (and other famous quotes)
I think the title says it all, some funny ones in there.

6. & 5. Kawasaki Vulcan 900 Custom Day 1 and Anatomy of the Kawasaki Vulcan 900 Custom
I’m putting these two posts together because they relate to each other. This was a very fun time from last summer cruising around on this motorcycle.

4. October 14: a day I can’t forget
This post chronicles one of the scariest and most trying times in my life. I truly believe this was fate testing us. I hope we passed.

3. Bikers and tattoos
Two great tastes that taste great together.

2. My first motorcycle love
A fantastic guest post written by Mr. Forrest Frazier.

1. Steampunk motorcycles
Perhaps I’m biased and this is too obvious, but because I love the steampunk movement this is my top pick. Also the most popular post on this site to date.

So now I ask you guys: is there a particular post that you really like from the past year and if so, which one is it and what makes it your favorite?

This is a very interesting approach to test people’s awareness and to prove a point. I’ll let the video speak for itself but I was pretty amazed when I watched it. I was so focused on what was going on that I litererally did not see what was right in front of my face.

Good thing there wasn’t anything red, shiny and candy-like. I’d be all done then!

That’s right boys and girls. The eagerly anticipated (at least by me) Quentin Tarantino produced film, Hell Ride will be in theaters this summer on August 8th. As you know I’ve been keeping my eye out for this movie, my last post was back in January and the first time I wrote about the movie was back in December.

Now, i don’t know how good this movie is going to be, but I’m hoping for high camp factor. I figure with the likes of Dennis Hopper, Michael Madsen and David Carradine there’s definitely a good chance!

Linda over at Raven’s Rides is giving away a copy of Triumph Around the World by Robbie Marshall.

To enter the giveaway all you have to do is go to her site and post a comment! She’ll pick a name at random on May 1st. To qualify, your comment needs to have an April date. Pretty easy!Here’s what Linda thought of the book:

“The story is amazing: I could not help but admire his courage, sheer bloody-mindedness and his soul-searching. His insights were deep and this was the aspect of the book that I enjoyed the most…Read her full review here.

I normally don’t post news stories like this but since it practically happened in my backyard I’ll make an exception today. This is the kind of news story that would make a resident want to crawl down into a hole for a while:

From boston.com:

April 21, 2008

GLOUCESTER, Mass.—Sandra Bullock and her husband were unhurt after a head-on crash with a drunken driver, police said Saturday.

The actress and her husband, Jesse James of TV’s “Monster Garage,” were being driven in a sport-utility vehicle Friday night when a station wagon crossed the center line and hit them, said Gloucester police Lt. Jerry Cook.

Both vehicles were totaled, but no one was hurt. The vehicles were traveling 15 to 20 mph, Cook said.

The other car was driven by Lucille Gatchell, who registered a blood-alcohol level of 0.20 percent, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08 percent, Cook said.

She was held by Gloucester police overnight and released Saturday on personal recognizance. She is to be arraigned Tuesday in Gloucester District Court.

Gatchell did not immediately return a call seeking comment Saturday. Calls to representatives for Bullock were not immediately returned.

Bullock, 43, was “gracious” and concerned about whether Gatchell was OK, Cook said.

The actress, who starred in such films as “Speed” and “Miss Congeniality,” is in Massachusetts filming the romantic comedy “The Proposal.”

When I started this site a year ago, I really didn’t know what the goal of the site was going to be. Initially I wanted to put the call out to other young, rockin’ biker women (like me!), who maybe were part of Gen X and not quite ready to be a grown up (like me!). And quite honestly, I wasn’t even sure if I could maintain posting consistently week after week (I’d be out riding in the summer and motorcycle news is scarce in the winter months-or so I thought) to make this blog worth reading. It was difficult in the beginning: I would sit in front on my keyboard, staring at the screen wondering what the hell I was going to write about.

But something weird happened: I finally found my groove, my posts started getting attention and I found not only was I enjoying the whole blogging thing, I was “meeting” a lot of other my fellow biker bloggers and people who were becoming regular readers and I was also getting great blog reviews and awards from my blogging peers.

I didn’t really know the first thing about blogging. I’d kept a personal journal but a motorcycle blog is different. How would I find people to read my blog and who would care anyway? Through some cool blog communities like BlogCatalog I met a bunch of people and learned lots of things about writing a blog. And through social networking sites like myspace and BikerWorlds I found other bikers who are interested in the same things I am.

Traffic started increasing, people were linking to the site and honestly the highlight for me last year was when Greg White and Kawasaki asked me to test ride a Vulcan 900 Custom. I mean, who the hell was I? Just some biker girl from MA who happened to start a blog a few months before…

In one year, I’ve gone from a few readers a week to tens of thousands of page views. I’m not going to make any grand claims like you see on other blogs, but I will tell you that I’m happy to see my google page rank on the rise (link to me!), my Alexa rank continues to move up and the number of people who view the site goes up almost every week. Fellow bikers in 114 different countries have checked in on the rippin-kitten.com blog. And I’ve been getting inquiries from major companies regarding advertising opportunities. Not too shabby.

Anyway, enough of boring blog stats and me marveling at my own success. Stay tuned later this week as I roll-out a new feature for Rippin-Kitten.com and share some other things that I’ve been working on.

Thanks to everyone for making my first year of blogging a great one. It’s been a great learning experience and I’ve enjoyed our many discussions. Looking forward to another year!

It seems to me that women-only motorcycle events are starting to become a big trend in our motorcycle world. I’ve always struggled with women specific events because for me, personally, I don’t think they’re necessary to make me proud of being a female rider. I like to hang with the boys anyways!

I was perusing my news aggregator this morning and Steve over at Biker News Online mentioned the second annual International Female Ride Day on Friday, May 2, 2008, with lots and lots of sarcasm and even raised the question: Why do women riders need a special day to celebrate themselves?

Now, here’s my disclaimer: I’m not attacking or singling out Steve’s post for any detrimental reasons, I’m merely highlighting it because for the first time, someone posted about a women-only event with the question: Who gives a f**k?

That’s what I’m wondering. While the women’s ride to Daytona was kind of a cool thing, I also just read on Women Riders Now about the Diva Custom’s Divas Only bike show that’s happening at the end of May. Are these events a good thing or is this women-only madness spiraling out of control? Is it helping female bikers or is it setting up a precedent for women to segregate themselves from the biker community rather than being a part of it?

And just like Steve at Biker News asks: If a chick can master a motorcycle and hold her own among the biker crowd, does she need empowering?

Hello all,

I just wanted to let you know that the reason Lizzie hasn’t posted in a few days is that she is in the hospital. She had been sick and was misdiagnosed, this lead to a rush to the ER the other night. Right now she is resting and doing well. We expect her to be coming home this weekend. She misses you all and is looking forward to posting again next week.

I admit this is not the most exciting video in the world, but recent news indicates that American IronHorse is a fast-sinking ship. Reports say that the company is being forced into bankruptcy to pay debts to investors. The company ceased production last month and they pretty much fired all of their employees.

But I guess we can’t write them off just yet. They do plan to sell their assets to new investors and continue with their operations. We shall see.

I opened up a pretty big can of worms when I tackled the subject of social networking for bikers. Back in August I wrote a post about Bikerworlds, the first social site I found geared toward the biker community. In October I wrote a follow-up post regarding BikerOrNot.com, which is another very popular social network (and also a very popular post for this site).

For part three of this subject matter I’m going to highlight a few more sites that I’ve found since I last wrote. One thing to keep in mind, not all of these sites are created equally. While a lot of them share the same basic idea and similar buckets of content, some are technically easier to use and more thought out than others. It all depends on what appeals to you in the end.

Motorcycle Syndicate: This site has been around since summer ‘07. I’m not quite sure what their member base is, but according to their site they “strive to be the premier interactive online community for motorcycle enthusiasts worldwide.” They also use other social networking sites to their advantage when trying to get the word out. You can also win a free T-shirt if you’re a registered member and help spread the word.

Hogstr: I got an email about this site a few weeks ago so I thought I’d check it out. Seems this site is a brand-spanking newbie, having only come into existence in the beginning of February. Not a lot of members or content yet and now that I look at it I’m not even sure if it’s officially “launched.” I see lots of profile pics with half-nekkid chicks on bikes, which kind of turns me off. I’m going to file this one under “wait and see.”

Harley Social: I think the title for this one speaks for itself, but this social network is for HD enthusiasts. It looks to have launched early this year and encourages it’s members to upload photos, videos and to post blogs. It’s a visually robust site, almost to the point where I don’t know where to look first, but the emphasis on this site seems to revolve around just having a good time.

Biker Nation: From what I can tell this site has been around since late 2006. Like all of the other sites it has forums, news feeds, blogs, classifieds, events, pictures, videos and music. It also has a “babes” section (if you’re into that sort of thing) and online auctions. For the amount of time this site has been in existence I guess I expected more. Perhaps they’ve been spending more time focusing on their heavily-tattooed, sister site Inked Nation.

If I had all the time in the world I would love to join all of these sites, but I just don’t. You can still find my profiles on Bikerworlds, BikerOrNot and of course, good old myspace.

Do any of you have a favorite social networking site that you use regularly?