Greatly EXAGGERATED You’re fired!

BY JOHN BURNS

Bear with me…I’m working on a silver lining kind of a theme here: It hurts every time they kick you out of the club, but that just makes it feel all the better when that next door swings open. I mean, if it does. NO! Think positive! It always does.

I know this riding-borrowed-motorcycles and attending-great-press-junkets thing doesn’t sound like work to most people (including me), but there is a big component of gathering information and slaving away over a hot laptop with a cold rice ball that comes with the job — and way more so in the internet era, since the publishing schedule is non-stop. I was fully prepared to keep doing it at least another few years to max out my Social Security check and let my 401(k) recover (cross fingers), even though it was steadily becoming less fun-withmotos and more listicle drudgery at my last job.

After haggling a bit with Mitch and my own brain, we figured out a plan that worked for both of us…and so I’m basically semi-retiring young and beautiful, but still getting to do what I love. And Mitch is getting a bargain, since Social Security only allows him to pay me a fraction of what I was going for on the open market. It feels like a win/win. The obstacle is the way, my children.

I hope nobody reading this will remember I already announced to the world 20 years ago I was retiring from motojournalism when I went to work writing copy for Yamaha’s ad agency. That lasted five years before I got laid off in the Housing Bubble collapse, but those five years in a dark (yet stylish!) cubicle reminded me how much I missed riding motorcycles. Thank God my boy was just getting started on KTM 50s and

California’s known as much for its grapes as its great roads, so celebrate me home at Hatch the Illustrator’s Solvang digs after another great ride on another great motorcycle. Cheers!

Suzuki RM65s and things of that era. I bought a Yamaha TT-R125L, and we had epic battles on various SoCal vet tracks on the weekends.

What’s that? Who’s Peter Egan? (How old are you!?) Think of PE as the Frank Sinatra (or maybe the Tony Bennett, depending on your taste) of motorcycle writers — though he was knocking out plenty of car stuff for Road & Track concurrently. And if you don’t know who Frank Sinatra is, just let me leave you with the gist from his big hit That’s Life: “Each time I find myself layin’ flat on my face, I pick myself up and get back in the raaaaaaace. That’s life.”

That’s Life could’ve been written about motorcycles, too. Let’s all keep riding as long as we can, eh? Thanks for letting me into your excellent club, Mitch — the Biggest Print Motorcycle Magazine in North America!