Well, I'm on to my next project and out of here...kind of...

It's come up in a few topics as of late, but I figured I'd get around to this eventually. But after an awesome five years working here at Vital, I'm no longer a staff member (per my own choice). Honestly, getting this job was a God send at the time as I had literally no clue what to do with my life and was within a day or so of going back to school. I had jumped around some pretty cool gigs before that but none could give me full-time work and I was just getting by per se. While I've dabbled in a ton of aspects of media life here, testing and building cool bikes is of course the best part...along with some of the amazing places I get to go to. So I figured if there was a way I could focus on bike intros, builds, shootouts, and tech I would make it happen.

So in December I came up with a plan to step out on my own and thanks to the generous support of a few brands who see what I'm trying to accomplish (Race Tech, Fox, Alpinestars, Chaparral, Specialized, and a few others in the works...) I now have a great opportunity to do so. Building a media website sounded like an absolute hassle and for any one has met me they know I talk...a lot. So for the time being, all the content I'm generating will be video based and hosted on YouTube....so I get to just keep talking. And thanks to the support of the big OEMs, I'll be hitting the same bike launches and intros I've been for the past five years, so I can continue to build on what I've started.

I'll try to keep this from being a novel but I just wanted to thank this community for the support of my prior work and for a lack of a better term, clicking on what I typed up or talked about. I'm using the term "Journalist" loosely, but I never figured my job would relate to anything like that. While I may have lost my "moderator" powers, I won't be leaving the forum. I was a member of this community prior to my job here and will continue to afterwards, so I'll still be posting...probably daily. However, I don't plan on going full spam here so don't expect a "look what we tested this week or day" style post. If someone asks about a bike and I have something that fits the answer, you might see a link from me but still I'm more likely to type out my response with some info anyhow. Outside of bike intros, project bikes, Shootouts (I'll be doing a lot more off-road, dual sport and adventure bike stuff then I used to) product intros, etc...I'm also launching a podcast which should be up tomorrow. First episode is with Donn Maeda, mostly covering what the heck happened with Transworld.

Like I said above, I don't want to be a full-time spammer here. So if you care to keep up with what I'm doing, the easiest way is to subscribe to my YouTube channel and I regularly post up what new content I have on social media under my name. If you're not the social media type or don't have an account on YouTube to subscribe with, the URL 512Testing.com redirects you to my YouTube channel as well.

Also a big thanks to Vital's owner Brad and my prior co-worker GuyB for giving me a shot at this stuff, and my good buddy Michael Morgan for being a great friend outside of the best co-worker I've ever had! See you guys on the road bikes next week.

So this is goodbye, but not really since I'm actually not going anywhere, just not working here any longer. But who knows, maybe I'll be a contributor again one day too. Never say never.

One last time, thanks to this amazing community. It made me pull out my hair some days, but there's some seriously cool people here and I've learned a ton thanks to you all.