Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/887961
VOL. 53 ISSUE 41 OCTOBER 17, 2017 P131 of working at Cycle News is a dream of many and the reality of very few. As the late, great, Nicky Hayden once said of rac- ing in MotoGP, "It's not like I'm digging ditches." When the CN team and I concluded that particularly tax- ing deadline day a few weeks back, the first thing on my mind was I needed a drink. I try not to drink too often during the week, because I find when I start drink- ing it's hard to stop, so I try not buy any more than one of those three pack of big Coors cans at a time. When I arrived home, Del Taco and Coors in hand, the wife and the baby were asleep, their bed times of 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. not conducive to a life of Cycle News deadlines. One thing about deadline day is your brain is going like it's on speed for a while after it finishes, so sleep for me was not in the cards for a few hours. We don't have what I guess people call normal TV—no cable, only sub- scriptions to HBO, Netflix and Amazon Prime TV—so I began perusing what was available for an hour's wind down. I absolute- ly did not want to watch anything that had motorcycles in it. Maybe a documentary on "African wild- life" or the rise of "Stalin in pre- WWII Russia." Then, in that little "something you may like" sec- tion, or whatever Amazon calls it, pops up "On Any Sunday." I'd seen the original "On Any Sunday" only a couple of times in the past, but I've seen On "Any Sunday II" the best part of 1000 times because as a child we had it on video cassette in Australia. I can recite that movie word for word even now. I was so in love with that film that when I became quite sick as a seven- year-old and had to spend a year in hospital, my friend Martin bought me a huge blonde teddy bear that I named Bruce after speedway star Bruce Penhall, one of the three main characters in On Any Sunday II alongside Kenny Roberts and Malcolm Smith. I still have Bruce. Don't ask me why, but even though I didn't feel like watching something with motorcycles in it, I still pressed play to watch Bruce Brown's seminal 1971 classic late that Monday night. I'm glad I did, because the film gave me a gentle reminder as to why I have chosen a life dedicat- ed to two wheels, the industry and the people that support it. "On Any Sunday" has a charm to it that's absolutely impossible to recreate. Scenes like the lady watering her plants as the field of the Elsinore Grand Prix go skittering past; Malcolm Smith grinning like he's on happy gas as he effortlessly decimates the day's best off-road racers in the International Six Day Trials in Spain; and the classic cool of Mert Lawwill as he loses the number-one plate in the GNC to a young hotshot named Gene Romero. The film is shot in such a way that makes you think ev- eryone who rides a motorcycle is a good guy, which, at the time of the increasing notoriety of gangs like the Hell's Angels, was far from the case. As I sat there late on Monday night, exhausted from racing, typing, researching, doing all that Cycle News demands, watching "On Any Sunday" made me realize just how incredibly lucky I am to be able to do the job I love, in a country I admire and surrounded by the people that make the U.S. the biggest motorcycle industry in the world. Sometimes you just need a little reminder that even though it may feel like you're swimming against an ever-increasing tide, a good day, feeling or event is al- ways just around the corner. As I went up to bed at 11:30 p.m. that night, I saw my little boy and wife sound asleep, realized I needed to stop feeling pity for myself, man up and take charge of my responsibility towards them. And if I can do that by riding and writing about motorcycles, I am a very lucky man indeed. CN