Roody

Ken Kifer was an advocate for bike touring and carfree cycling, and a great writer and teacher. He was killed a couple years ago by a drunk driver. His website is the best Internet source I know of for the ideas that interest most of us.

Unfortunately the site seems to be down now. Does anybody know what's happening with this?

Nightshade

I'd be willing to bet that the lady taking care of it has either run out of money for a server or
moved on the other things. To bad.

bikebuddha 

Possibly google has the pages cached?

gerv 

WhoIs claims that Joe Gardner has the registration and it's good until November of this year

Registrant:


Registrar: 000DOM
Domain Name: KENKIFER.COM
Created on: 23-NOV-98
Expires on: 22-NOV-08
Last Updated on: 21-FEB-07

Administrative Contact:
Gardner, Joe webmaster@bikeforums.net
...

1.0000000

way124

Yeah... it's been down for a week or so.

gerv 

Since Joe Gardner is no longer at the BikeForums helm, maybe Brian would know what's up with the site? Will Bikeforums continue to host it?

HopliteGrad

Everybody buckle in for the Wayback Machine!

https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.kenkifer.com

...or the Google cache!

https://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=1&gl=us

folder fanatic

I do not think of the Internet as a huge repository of knowledge just like a library. It is not as organized or is guaranteed to be there-or accessable-anytime in the future. It is more like commercial television. Programming appears and disappears at a moment's notice or whim of the sponsors or the Webmaster. So I am not upset at the loss of this particular site at the death of it's owner. I am suprised at how long it stayed up after his death.

bikewidget

I just checked the old website thanks to Wayback Machine and learned the Kifer died exactly five years ago today. He was struck by the drunken driver on Sept. 13, 2003, and died the following morning.

Roody

It's a shame that he died, and in some ways it's even more of a shame that the site died. The Web needs to get its act together and figure out a way to preserve important sites like Ken's.

The definition of culture is the transmission of knowledge and experience from one generation to the next. Imagine if libraries threw out all of an author's books as soon as he/she died.

HopliteGrad

Heck, if someone can secure the content and the rights to it, I'll host it-- web space is cheap. I'm getting what, 450 GB for $7 a month? This isn't exactly a health club membership or difficult to do...

gerv 

Well, if you are interested you could contact Joe Gardner at the email above. On the other hand, he might not even know the site is down.

SweetLou

I kind of doubt that he does know it is down. I just checked and it appears he is in the middle of a two month mountain bike tour. And his site: https://www.joe-gardner.com/ seems to be down also.

Joe Gardner

Hi Guys, I still host Kens site. I'll jump on my webhost to make sure kens site is back up, there have been a few issues with a new VPS change. I'll also make sure the domain is registered for a few more years while I'm at it.

Thanks for letting me know its down, no internet access for the last 22 days!

Allen

Welcome back Joe, how was the trip?
(see y'all in Foo)

Joe Gardner

We just finished up the Montana Section. Going to ride out of Moab this weekend after a Bellydance Festival. The trip so far has been great, other then really bad weather for a few days.

22 days done, 30 or so more to go.

HopliteGrad

No sweat, man. If you want someone to mirror the site, let me know; plenty of unutilized web space.

Roody

Thanks for hosting this valuable site! I hope the trip goes well--we'll be thinking about you in those mountains coming on late September.

(For those who don't know, Joe is the founder and guiding light of bikeforums. The world of cycling owes a lot to this guy.)

JohnBrooking

Thank you, Joe!!

Longfemur

I'm really glad this is back up. I only learned earlier this year that Ken Kifer had died (I actually had given up any bike-related internet/usenet activity for a couple of years at that point... and I probably should have left it like that, in hindsight). It's wonderful that at least his thoughts on various aspects of cycling survive on the web. I remember when he was a poster on the rec bikes newsgroups. At least once, I was guilty of getting into a bit of an argument with him about something, but I forget what exactly. Believe it or not, there was as much arguing there 10 years ago as there is on here now, and on all the same subjects. There were a lot more really experienced and well-informed participants though. Lots of names I remember, and much advice I took from them. But overall, Ken Kifer certainly was the kind of cyclist I could relate to. His "I Don't Give a Continental" article remains one of my favourites. I also like and agree with all of his nutritional advice.

gerv 

I checked kenkifer.com the other night. It was up and running.

Thanks Joe. It's a site that has already become a classic.