I am a bit lost as to why any athlete would ever actually need a website, but who am I to question these gods of action sport? I am just here to wallow in their only link to us mortals: their presence on the World Wide Web, their personal websites where the commoner can go to grasp at any tenuous connection they can find in hopes of getting just a whiff of the stratosphere these titans of athleticism move around in. I am here to review their personal websites, dissect them down to the last kilobyte, find the good and the bad, and to save you, the reader, the incredible hassle of having to actually click these links yourselves.

So for my first review, I’m going to start with Travis Pastrana’s online kingdom: www.travis-pastrana.com (www.travispastrana.com, apparently, does not exist).

The Page:

Travis, what the hell are you thinking, man? The homepage is a press release from October of last year about you winning the 2006 Rally America Championship. A press release? On the homepage of an action sports superstar? Congratulations and all Travis, but the people want to know about what’s current, what’s hot, what the jump-off is.
The Google Ads on the landing page are also killing me. What the hell is the point of selling ads here? Do I really need to see an ad for a “Travis Pastrana Jersey” when I am visiting his website? Don’t you already have enough money, you need to start selling Google ads on your personal homepage? (one pretty humorous ad that showed up was for “BMX Motocross,” which is actually something I’d like to see.) The color scheme on the homepage also sucks, but I didn’t want to point that out for fear of sounding… well… a little too interior-decoratorish.

In the interest of saving you time, let me sum up Travis’ bio page for you: he is a Libra, he has won a shit-ton of prizes, appeared in an equal amount of FMX movies, he likes Chick-Filet, and he appeared on episode #1.33 of the Martin Short Show in 1999. Fin.

Since we haven’t seen any photos of Travis anywhere on his website thus far, let’s take a look at the gallery, yeah? And… wow! Some great shots from the 2001 X Games! But wait! There’s more! Who could forget Travis’ appearance at AMA Hangtown in 2001, or Budscreek 2002? And while you’re here, don’t forget to check out the “2001 MX” gallery! All the current, sizling white-fire photographic Pastrana pornography you could ever want… so long as it predates the US invasion of Afghanistan.

We’ve got some forums in here too. They’ve actually been updated quite a bit, some lively banter going on between crazyforbud8chevy and Suzuki_girl199. The forum actually appears to be the only part of the Pastrana online kingdom that has been updated in the past half-decade.

Speaking of updates, the last post in the official “news” section was made February 28, 2007. The “schedule” section lists the races in the 2006 Rally America Championship, the “results” section is current through 2006, and the “T.V.” section is current through 2002. The only other section on the site is the “shop,” and the “shop” is fucked. It doesn’t work.

The Verdict: An abomination of a website. But then again, if I were Travis why the hell do I care what my damn website looks like? I’m Travis Pastrana.

The Grade: D- (I just can’t give out an F for my first review… that and the one hottie he has a picture of in the gallery.)