Before you mourn (or celebrate if you’re a meanie), the site is not actually going on hiatus.

For those who don’t know, the guy who runs 131 Off-Road is a college student currently working on his master’s degree in World War II Studies at Arizona State. It’s been tough at times (okay, more like most of the time) but he’s hanging in there.

Hanging so well, in fact, that the current semester should hopefully be his last before graduation. However, being a master’s program means the final semester is for his capstone project. Those of us who’ve done capstone courses can probably empathize.

In the case of WWS, the capstone requires students to write a paper between 15–20 pages and produce a presentation video of 12–15 minutes. ASU’s semester format means the course runs for about two months from mid-May to mid-July.

With this much of a workload, it only makes sense the bossman wants to focus on academics rather than racing for now, as much as it pains him. He probably doesn’t have ADHD, but chances are high that he’ll still be distracted the moment some bombshell drops.

Thus, we’ve come up with a compromise.

If you look closely at our latest stories, you might notice they are either related to history or include some sort of historical reference shoehorned in. From the very busy slate last weekend, our Baja 500 recap began with a reference to D-Day because both were on June 6, our Erzbergrodeo story celebrates its 30th anniversary with some focus on inaugural winner Alfie Cox, the Baja Greece write-up includes jokes about The Odyssey, and approximately a third of the Finke Desert Race piece is about the first edition 50 years ago. Of the articles posted since Wednesday, all but three involve talking about an old-school racer or vehicle: Porsche 964 for sale, Serge Bacou’s financial crisis, the M24 Museum, and Purdey at Goodwood.

A simple glance in the “History” tab also shows that we like to talk about off-road racing’s past as much as we do the present. This is where the compromise comes in.

To keep Justin’s sanity in check while ensuring his mind is locked in on history, we’re curtailing our standard coverage until the semester ends while increasing our emphasis on racing history. This will allow him to write about the sport he loves (and thereby keeping his morale up) but still have him in the right headspace for his capstone. Features, fun facts, anything involving museums or other exhibits, you name it.

That doesn’t mean he will be killing off all news, of course. Races like the FCP Brush Run will still be covered, as will any major stories of note. The moratorium is here to ensure he doesn’t get too distracted from his actual priorities because he wants to write a story about a rider buying a new bike or anything along those lines.

Simple enough, right? Let’s pray this idiot can keep his head in the game…