So now that DBT is up and running the totally predictable has occurred. “Hey Jimmy, you need any Test Riders?” Emails and messages on Facebook mostly, the occasional phone call from someone who got my number from this guy who knew this other guy. Whether it is a kid with stars in their eyes or someone more seasoned, the lure of riding brand new bikes and having your picture flashed in front of thousands, quite possibly millions these days has a lure.
I was that kid from the first time I saw a motorcycle magazine. It hit fever pitch when I saw Minicycle Magazine one day at the supermarket on the way home from soccer practice. If those kids could be in the magazine, so could I, I thought. I was just a squid on an XR80. I believed my bike and lack of cool gear was the only thing holding me back. I’d seen Kenny Zahrt and Jimmy Holley airing out bikes in Dirt Bike Magazine. I’d practiced slamming berms like Lance Morewood in MXA. Even in Dirt Rider, a magazine I would many years later be the Editor of, I saw riders like Willy Simmons twisting it for the camera on a brand new bike. I’ll be the first to tell you I practiced everything I saw in pictures.
But sending a letter to the editor was not my method. Even though my mom tried to get me to do it multiple times. Of course she was just trying anything to get me to do something she saw as constructive and educational, writing being one of them. I was close enough to the So Cal world where a lot of this motorcycle testing was going on that I’d just find these guys and get in. And somehow I did.
I was lucky enough to live where I had a track down the hill from my house. Combined with local riding in different places around Ventura County I ran into riders who had been in the magazines, like Lance and Brand Johnston. I watched, or rather stalked these guys to see how to get into the mix. It was a protected club for sure, or so I thought. I invited these guys to ride at my track hoping they would come and shoot photos there. After some time they did. When the elusive “magazine guys” showed up I was itching to show them what I could do. Maybe I did try a show-off move or two on my own bike but they were not impressed. I now know why. They’d seen much better and seen it all the time. Yet when I offered to wash the bikes when they were done riding and volunteered to change a tire (quickly) when they got a flat, well that got me on the radar.
My luck came in two forms. One was when an editor for Dirt Wheels (a quad magazine) needed a rider in a pinch, my local shop called me asking if I could ride for some photos. Green as an early tomato I jumped at the opportunity and the editor at the time, Hoyt Vandenberg, really taught me one of the keys to being a photo model. “You just need to look good for 1/500th of a second, the rest doesn’t matter.” Brilliant and quite possibly the best advice I was ever given for getting in pictures. Hoyt taught me how to hit the same spot repeatedly. How to look fast going slow. He explained all the stuff I’d never thought about. Things that are now so obvious and useful if you ever have to try and shoot a pip-squirt kid who is ready to be on the cover of every motorcycle magazine known to man.
My second chance came when a rider failed to show up for a Dirt Bike Magazine 125cc shootout. Not surprisingly I was there and ready to ride. They dressed me up and put me in the mix for photos. I pulled it off like I had done it a hundred times before. I had, in my mind! I didn’t crash the bike, I was where I needed to be in the group photos and I looked good. And I washed all the bikes when we were done. Then I started getting calls on a more regular basis.
So the rest is history. If I started to tell you about it, this story would be like so many others–Do you know how rad I really am? Or preaching to the kids how I walked to school uphill, in the snow, 20-miles each day, and 20-miles each way. Except for the summer where it was 120 degrees. You get the idea.
What DBT really needs is test riders. Riders who know how things work and can tell the difference between adjustments made to the bike. Riders who have a feel for suspension changes, power differences, how tires work, how a properly tuned FI system feels. This type of attention to detail is what we are looking for. We need riders who can explain what they feel and then write that into complete sentences with some punctuation. All that stuff you were supposed to learn in English class. Someone who can take notes and keep track of time, compare things in a relative manner and understand the value of things beyond what they are told or have heard. Someone that owns their own motorcycle and takes care of it.
In wanting to become “that guy” in the photos I fooled myself into thinking I was “test riding”. In reality I was just riding the motorcycles to get the pictures needed. I would then spit out a quick opinion about how the bike worked so the behind deadline editor could slam out a story and still hit the bar to pick up a girl. To become “that guy” in the photos,I took my own bike, turned every clicker every which way, in and out, to see what it would do. I wanted to feel the difference just incase they asked me about something,I would not look like a dumbass in front of the experts. I tried different tire pressures, mixing my gas at different oil ratios and messed with everything I could on my very limited budget using my seemingly unlimited time. I even tried all the things I had read about in the magazine (yes, I ported a cylinder or two) to see if I felt the same things they said they felt. I was pretty surprised. At the time I felt offbeat for getting much different results compared to the so called experts. But in learning how to test I also learned how important my opinion was. Even if it was different than what I read in the magazines.
I continued on to being a test rider, more of a photo model really. Later I worked my way into writing tests and eventually working full-time for some of these magazines. As an Editor I came across 100 guys who wanted their picture in the magazine. Out of that 100 only one was willing to put in the work to be a test rider. Trust me there is plenty of room for test riders. But,there are 99 other riders out there that look better than you in a photo. They want to ride the brand new bike, get free gear and leave before the work is done, just as bad as you do. Figure it out, don’t ask to be a test rider when really all you want to be is a photo model.
