My thoughts...
I appreciate the fact that this site is available, the effort Frostbite must put into keeping it available, and all the great people who post and share information, making this the best place I have found on this subject.
I think it's easy for some to confuse 1 million hits with 1 million unique viewers. A hit is counted every time a page is refreshed. Not to imply this site is any less popular, or that it matters....I just think it can be misleading. 1 million hits is still impressive....and along these lines, I notice the 1000th user is about to register here. Very nice!
I too wish the main index page made it a bit easier to locate the various forums. I simply bookmarked the forum page to help my navigation, but I imagine there's always a few new viewers who will have a little more trouble.
On the logo image...the only change I'd make personally, is to add "network" to the end, to help brand this domain extension since it isn't the more common .com domain. I know someone was posting links to the .com site as a joke...but for the less web savy, looking at a page that says "China Riders Network" instead of "China Riders" could be the difference in returning to this site or settling elsewhere.
Like most, I'll take the quality content any way it comes. Looking good is nice, but it's secondary....and IMO, should remain secondary. If you can accomplish both, that's great, but if there's a chnace it'll detract from the core purpose of the site...no thanks.