“Before you ride,” they tell you, “have a plan.” Big words. So big, they make you write them down—on the front of your lesson booklet, while sitting in class: B-E-F-O-R-E and so on, everyone in the room saying the words aloud, and then you are there,

Safe to say in 1962, when founding Cycle World publisher Joe Parkhurst started the magazine, he hadn’t envisioned how big a truly independent motorcycle publication that served the reader first might become. And before his death in 2000, could he hav

It is a comforting fiction of our settled life that intelligence must be identified in early childhood and cultivated by professional educators to produce the leaders and creators of the future. Yet there are schools without classrooms that focus int

Before Cycle World Vol. 1, No. 1, in 1962, motorcycle magazines were just mouthpieces for the industry network, but Joe Parkhurst changed all that. As Peter Egan once said, Cycle World was finally a magazine “for those of us who wanted to buy motorcy

If you’re into AMA Flat Track or Harley-Davidson performance, the name Steve Storz is surely familiar. The self-taught tuner, fabricator, and engineer has been involved in flat-track racing for nearly 50 years, and has developed Storz Performance pro

Here I am, writing the last print “TDC” column of a series that began by accident 38 years ago in the exasperation of the late Phil Schilling. In 1982, he planned a set of new monthly columns for Cycle magazine, to be written by staff in rotation. No

Amid the women’s suffrage movement—five years prior to the ratification of the 19th Amendment—daughter-mother duo Effie and Avis Hotchkiss took a journey that would cement them into motorcycling’s history as the first women to take a motorcycle/sidec

One thing you have to say in favor of COVID-19—if you’re semiretired and somehow still among the living—is that it gives you a lot of extra time, not only to ride motorcycles, but also to practice guitar. I was noodling around on my ancient Gibson ES

“Vintage motorcycle racing has taught me that you can’t always have absolutes in things,” Kenny Cummings says as he regards the 1936 Norton International sitting on a lift at his third-floor workshop in a massive old industrial building in Jersey Cit

Through all the business of publishing, from the shaky early days when Joe Parkhurst sold everything to start Cycle World to the time in the late 1960s and early-’70s when the magazine hit it big, his pure love of riding remained at the center of his

The defining engine of American motorcycling for more than 100 years? The Harley-Davidson V-twin. The form of this engine we know today is as expressed by the Milwaukee-Eight Big Twin—still a large-displacement 45-degree V-twin turning on rolling bea

The Hayabusa made you consider things you’d never considered before. Take the definition of “corner.” We all know what that means, right? We find them on winding back roads, or at intersections with other roads. But is there really a corner on the fr

Ahead of the R 18’s release, BMW looked to two custom shops to provide the public’s first view of the engine. As Custom Works Zon’s Departed and Revival Cycles’ Birdcage stirred our imaginations, these master makers also provided feedback, allowing f

The phenomenon of riding the 2021 Honda Trail 125 ABS off-road is that everyone you see looks like Captain Overkill. Even that rider I saw on a Yamaha WR250R. “NICE BARGE, BRO! SEE YOU AT STARBUCKS.” I didn’t actually get quite that wound up. It’s si

One Sunday morning in the summer of 1977, I was sitting in my living room in Madison, Wisconsin, reading the paper and scanning the motorcycle classifieds, as usual. One item that caught my eye that day was an ad for a 1964 Honda 50, a C100 step-thro

The adventure motorcycle segment kicked off in 1980 with BMW’s R 80 G/S. At the time, many wondered who would want an overweight, undersuspended dual-sport. Turns out, more riders wanted one than anyone would have guessed. The segment has gained more

Why would BMW, with all of its technology and engineering and forward-thinking design, build a stripped-down, black-and-chrome, big-bore American-style cruiser? Despite declining sales, American cruisers remain the bestselling segment in the States.

Just about the time manufacturers figured out basic electronic ignitions and how to keep oil inside engine and transmission cases, there began an ongoing chorus of “bikes are so good these days, you can just pick your favorite color.” Not true, never

It took quite a bit of time plus many wasted shots to get local Irish road-racing hero Derek McGee just where I wanted him in the narrow gateway. Most people are familiar with the Isle of Man TT races, but Ireland hosts over a dozen races that take p

In the mid-1980s, the Castiglioni brothers, Gianfranco and Claudio, owned the Cagiva Group and had established excellent ties with the leaders of the major Italian political parties. They liberally used their connections to financially strengthen the

The word “spring” usually applies to an intentionally created elastic element, such as the helical coil springs used in vehicle suspension or engine valve trains. It can also apply to the compressibility of gases, as in the pneumatic valve springs us

Like the rest of the world, we went from planning things, working, and living our lives to a great screeching halt. The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus meant the time between being out on the road with our testing crew to hiding out at home mos

The safety bicycle, which exploded into a popular craze around 1895, can be regarded as a confluence of technologies that matured at that time—the ball bearing, pneumatic tire, seamless-drawn steel tubing, roller chain and sprocket drive, and super-s

My normal day job is shooting all manner of car racing around the planet. From Formula 1 in Monaco to the Le Mans and Nürburgring 24-hour to the Indy 500, I’ve shot it all. I enjoy car racing, but I adore bike racing. In fact, my professional photogr

When I had accumulated some basic experience as quite a young man, I realized there were clear national styles in motorcycle engines, but in this new century, I see such diversity receding in favor of a new international style. I saw that British des