Here At Cycle World

HERE AT CYCLE WORLD

UP FRONT

Allan Girdler

Brought me up short, this one did. Talking with a man who wasn't sure which bike to buy and when we had that question settled he asked with whom he'd been speaking. I told him and he said "Oh yeah. You're the only one who gets his picture in the magazine."

Uh, gosh. I never thought of it quite that way. Henry Manney says I should have replied that I am the boss and if I want to put my picture on every page I can do it. But I don't think the man meant it just how it came out, and I do think there's a useful hint for me in having this brought to my attention.

This magazine has always maintained what I think is the proper degree of emphasis on staff opinion rather than individual opinion. Wè follow newspaper style in that special stuff, personal accounts and features and Big Stories get bylines.

But the foundation for the magazine is testing and evaluation and the tests and evaluations aren’t signed.

We ride the bikes and then we put down our notes and the assigned editor does a draft and he passes that around and we, er, debate. At length and sometimes at wide open lungs. One of the ads guys wandered into an editorial meeting once and asked if I thought we should throw cold water on two of the staff and I said no, shouting “You Don’t Know Nuthin’ ’Bout Cycles Either!” is part of the everyday give-andtake around here.

So. What you get is the opinion of the staff.

What I hadn’t realized is that you don’t get background on the people whose qualifications make or break the opinions.

So. As they say on the banquet circuit, it gives me great pleasure to introduce, in order of their arrival on staff, the editors:

Ron Griewe

The title of Test Editor doesn’t tell the half of it. Ron has the most experience in terms of years, as he began riding when he was in high school and sporting motorcycles all came from England. He rode street and dirt on a series of BS As and Velocettes and started racing back when Triumphs were lightweight desert machines. Then he went with the European models, Husqvarna mostly and during his peak years as a racer was a low number guy, meaning he won a lot, and when the Big Four got serious he changed to Yamaha, Suzuki, Honda and Kawasaki.

He’s an enormously good rider. And he’s the best trailside mechanic I ever saw.

By happy accident, Ron can write. He began riding with us because he’s a better diagnostician than anybody we had at the time, then one day I asked for a couple of paragraphs and it turned out he has his own style, came natural. And he’s a good photographer, so we didn’t just hire him, we created a job so we could get him.

Ron was a package deal. Wife and sons also ride and older son Don, a professional motocrosser at age 16, is the incredible kief you see in the motocross tests.

John Ulrich

We call John our Nickle Rocket, partially because he takes everything serious and is always in a state of excitement and, partially because he’s a road racer and good at it. He began street riding, tried enduros a few years later, then showed up at a road race with his dirt DKW. They laughed until he won that race and three seasonal championships.

He was a bit embarrassed last year because he finally bought a car. Never owned one until then. He has tremendous enthusiasm. I have to take his articles away because he always wants more facts. He won’t stop shooting photos until the sun goes down and if he thinks a test bike should have gone faster than it did, noth-> ing will do but we go back to the track.

John cares. He’s a journalism graduate, earned his way through college writing magazine articles, and is a super pho-«, tographer. He knows all the racers. He not only calls them, they call him with tips and inside stuff, and he knows all the tuners. Couple months back we had his report on going to Japan and riding the factory Formula One racebikes before Daytona. I doubt any other journalist would be allowed to do that. He knows all the engineers, too, and when the U.S. office of a motorcycle company doesn’t know something John sits down at the telex and asks the chief designer and the designer tells him. Drives the U.S. people nuts. No secret is safe from John.

Steve Kimball

None of us specialize, that is, we all do a little of everything, but Steve does have an area of strength, and it’s touring. Before^ he made the big time and had to come to an office every day he rode 50,000 miles a year. California to Alaska on a dual-purpose 370, California to Calgary for a pair of socks, that sort of riding. He’s an official in the Brotherhood of Motorcycle Campers.

Steve is a former newspaper reporter and photographer but his hidden asset is that he loves to take the opposite side of every question. Hondas are reliable? Steve had one once, but it broke down all the time. Italian bikes aren’t reliable? His Moto Guzzi hasn’t missed a beat in 30,000 miles. Steve used to have an Italian clock. He gave it to John and it quit running. He took it back and it started up again. No, I didn’t make that up. With guys like this, I don’t have to make up anything.

Steve surprises people. Because he was known as a touring rider and doesn’t like to brag, they didn’t expect him to turn good times at the road races, but he did. And of course being a road guy he’d have trouble on the dirt, especially with that> dual-purpose Suzuki SP370, so he rode for three days alongside a good man on an open-class Maico.

Peter Egan

Motojournalism should have a rookieof-the-year award so Peter could win it. He’s an unquenchable romantic, the sort of person who’d set out on a cross-country trip with his Norton, which everybody said couldn’t be done. They were right and he wrote about the trip and was too shy to send it to a magazine. A friend persuaded him, we bought it instantly and when a job opening came up this year Peter was the first person on the list. His training it mostly technical, welding and like that, and he was working as a service writer when we got him.

He likes road racing, cars and bikes and ran his Honda 400F in club events back in Wisconsin, so he comes in handy for that sort of test and naturally appreciates thé touring stuff on bikes that don’t need engine rebuilds every week, so of course soon as he got out here with lines of new machines waiting to be ridden he bought another Norton. I did mention romance, didn’t I?

Hidden strengths? Humor. In person Peter doesn’t say much but he’s also the only person I know who, when you suggest, they say something funny, can do it.

* * *

As you can tell, a varied crew. But after one of our company review meetings, our president commented that I was the only editor in our vast empire who didn’t claim to be understaffed and under financed while doing everything better than the competition.

It never occurred to me. Our competition is tough. They do good work. And sure, like any manager, I’d like more peo* pie and bigger budgets.

But one on one, we have the best people in the business. EB