Hoka Hey Story Takes on a Life of Its Own
We all know about the best laid plans of mice and men. Well, I had the idea in my mind that my main focus this week was going to be the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, preparation and practice for which are currently underway down in Colorado Springs. I was down there Tuesday, I’ll be down there again tomorrow, and once again for the actual race on Sunday.
It was inconvenient that the Hoka Hey Motorcycle Challenge, which I also had plans to cover, was set to run through the same time period, but I figured no problem, I’d do a piece on the start of the race, try to touch in with my rider contact sometime this week, and then turn more of my attentions in that direction once the Pikes Peak was over.
What I didn’t count on was the huge amount of interest there would be in the Hoka Hey, and the surprisingly slight interest in the hill climb. I should have had a clue about a month ago when my web stats started showing a lot of traffic on the story I did about the Hoka Hey back in February. When I put up my first story on Examiner.com about the Hoka Hey it was like an explosion. Within a few hours that story drew more traffic than my Examiner page normally gets in two days, and generated more comments than I usually get in a week. And that was just the beginning.
A key to all this seems to be that very few other news sources are following this event. I put up a few articles and by default, the crowd came to me. The Hoka Hey organizers have links on their home page that presumably should go to their Facebook page, their MySpace page, their Twitter feed, and other places. However, while the anchor text is there, and the various pages they should point to are there, the code is not. Those links are dead. So the organizers are providing almost no information about their event.
In the meantime, my planned coverage has been thrown out the window. I planned to track Bob Peterson as he made the ride and he gave me the cell phone number of the main phone in the camper his support team is traveling in. I was to call them periodically and get an update on his progress and condition. After repeated calls, and leaving messages, I have never gotten hold of anyone. And Bob is French-Canadian, so his Facebook page for the ride is in French. I don’t speak, or read, French.
But hey, it’s OK, I’ve got other aspects of the ride to cover. For starters, it appears to many people that the whole thing may be a scam. It seems the organizer has a bit of shady history, and he definitely seems to lack in public relations skills entirely, at the very least. Some followers of the race are telling the naysayers to show proof or shut up, while others just don’t care. Truth is, there probably weren’t that many riders who truly thought they might win that $500,000 purse. For them, the ride and the adventure is the whole reason for doing this. And no matter what happens when they all reach Homer, AK, their experiences will be theirs for the rest of their lives.
So I have no idea where this story will lead next. And heck, at this point I don’t even know where the riders are. But it’s the Pikes Peak hill climb that is now more of a distraction, while the Hoka Hey is front and center.
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July 4th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Excellent post thanks!
Sent from my iPhone 4G