The Axeman Cometh

A few months ago an acquaintance told me that it’s a recession when your friend loses his job and that it’s a depression when you lose yours. Well, I guess today can be called the first day of my depression. Funny, I don’t see it that way.

I haven’t actually lost my job yet. But if you’re a betting man, I’d recommend putting your money on the favorite, which in this case is Paul Is Out Of Work in the fifth. The axe will likely fall at 10 a.m. tomorrow as that’s when my meeting with “The Man” is scheduled. And I’m fairly certain this one won’t end in hugs and handshakes.

Let’s back up a minute here. Actually, let’s back up some 25 years. Fairly fresh out of college and working at a local newspaper chain in the beach community of Encinitas, California, I was married, living in a luxurious one-bedroom apartment and covering high school sports. At the time it was exactly what I wanted. A real job working for a real newspaper. Then I got the call.

I’d read Cycle News for almost my entire life. At least the part of my life in America. My father raced “a little bit,” winning a World Championship in 1969 and I’d grown up with the sport. My first race was in mum’s tummy and it went from there.  So the call came from the then-editor of Cycle News to see if I’d be interested in helping him with a freelance story in which I would fly to Northern California to cover an AMA National at Sears Point. As the Poms would say, I was “chuffed.” As a teenager from California would say, I was “stoked.”

This was big time. And I have to admit it came rather easy for me. Despite being thrown in the deep end, I sucked it up and got the job done. It helped that I knew the Wayne Raineys of the world and they knew me. I enjoyed the experience, stayed up all night writing my stories on a portable typewriter and flew back south the next day to my job of covering the Carlsbad Lancers and the occasional city board meeting.

Cycle News must have liked my work because I got a second call, this time to cover a big amateur motocross in Texas. This one was a bit tougher. You know… with a zillion kids, two zillion parents and 10 zillion races to watch. Again, I enjoyed it and again I got the job done.

In June of 1985 I started working full time at the old Cycle News offices in Long Beach, California, sitting at a desk with a typewriter (yes, a typewriter!) with no idea of what I was doing. Did I mention I started on a deadline Monday for the weekly publication? Again, I got the job done.

So here I am: 25 years later, feeling fresh, tanned, rested and ready after four days of furlough (my favorite definition is “a leave of absence from prison granted to a prisoner”) and missing a Monday deadline day at the Cycle News offices. It will mark the first issue that I haven’t had some sort of a  hand in producing in 25 years. I’m not a mathematician by any stretch of the imagination, but my little calculator here tells me that’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 1250 issues.

And those are 25 years I wouldn’t trade for anything.

So what are the chances of the boss man calling me in tomorrow, putting his arm around me, telling me how much I mean to the company, that this has just been some cruel joke for which he’ s sorry and let’s sit down and figure out how we can fix this mess? Ice to an Eskimo, condoms to the Pope… it ain’t happening.

So what’s next? Wonderful question. I’m quickly finding out how many friends I have in both life and the motorcycle industry – and not everyone knows yet. Hell, I don’t even know, do I? So if the axe falls somewhere between my hairline and my spine tomorrow morning, I’m hopeful that this isn’t the first day of depression. Simply the last day of it.

Stay tuned…