Three endings – each sad for different reasons

Superbikeplanet is a little quiet at the moment as the off-season “blahs” hit the industry, but today’s news reports  three different “endings”, each of them significant in their own way.

Firstly, Valentino Rossi ceased to be a Yamaha rider as of 31/12/10. In a career that started at the start of 2004, Rossi’s stint at Yamaha garnered him 4 world titles and innumerable accumulated records of all kinds. As of yesterday, Rossi is a Ducati rider, something that many felt was always going to be inevitable. It remains to be seen if he can bring his own brand of luck to the Italian team like he did to the struggling Yamaha team in 2004.

Secondly, the very popular RoadRacer X magazine announced its closure in both print and digital forms, citing the GFC as being the major reason. After publishing 52 print editions over the last 4 years and innumerable digital updates, Editor Chris Jonnum said in a farewell e-mail early this morning, “Thank you for reading Road Racer X; here’s to future days.”

Thirdly, it looks like they’ve finally taken our Kodachrome away. The last remaining processing laboratory in the world that processes Kodachrome transparency slide film will develop its last batch of film this week. As someone whose early photographic efforts were very much dependent on the “nice bright colours” of Kodak’s banner product, I’ll be sad to see it go, even though I haven’t put a roll of it through my camera in many a year.