The Man in the Window
Where the World Ends
Words & photos by Christopher Nelson | May 2020
The world ends at the edges of my front window because it has to, because if it doesn’t, I oppose everything she is working toward. Three mornings each week I stand in our street-level living room and watch as my partner walks to our truck in her nurse scrubs and leaves for a 12-hour shift at the hospital. Some mornings after I watch her go, I do nothing but sit behind the glass and slowly drink my coffee and stare out at the street.
All day people in masks walk by our house, and all day they stop to gawk at Luci, our adorable 16-pound tabby cat who lives in a suction-cup hammock that hangs in the front window. She woos with dreamy smiles and bulbous contortions, and disgusts when she pushes her hind paws against the window and splays spread eagle, licking clean her hairless panniculus that hangs low like udders.
I forget that people fawn over my fat cat, and soon I realize that they’re no longer looking at her but at me, like our living room is a bohemian diorama and in it stands a tall, bony man in too-short jean shorts, waving like he is on a parade float, obviously stoned at 8 a.m. and two bites into a white-bread turkey sandwich.
Some days I watch her leave and immediately feel trapped, like the world outside very well might be only as big as our front window, and on those days I indulge fain desires to return to some sort of normalcy by throwing a leg over one of my motorcycles, because since before coronavirus came to California, riding a motorcycle has been the best way to enjoy an adventure while maintaining social distance.
The morning after the state issued its stay-at-home orders, I rode up Angeles Crest Highway on my Sportster chopper, and it was one of the best rides of my life, because I was all but alone on the idyllic mountain road, and the freeways to and from were empty, too, and the bike performed wonderfully. Two weeks later I rode back to Angeles Crest, but by then the gas station at the mouth of the road was overcrowded by humans with exposed smiles, and the road was rife with squids and pricks, and I haven’t gone back since.
Some days I wilt by the glow of the television and order fried foods and destroy myself wondering what comes after this, if this world is worth the effort. I think about the righteously airheaded, the selfish, and the dicks, all of whom ignore self-distancing guidelines because they can’t be inconvenienced, and I think of the opportunistic, the idiotic, and the privileged, all of whom use a matter of global health as a means to protest the pansy-ass civil liberty impingements made by a depressingly inept White House.
I feel hopeful again when I look through the front window and see craft-paper signs hung from the neighboring houses: “I stay home for those who cannot,” and I think of her and count the hours until she comes home.
Some days I bask in this macabre opportunity for personal reflection and creation, now given the chance to do everything I said I would do if I only had the time to do it. I started drawing, every day, and discovered that I really enjoy abstract portraiture. The process of drawing is meditative, and because of that I am a happier person, and I like what I’ve drawn so much that I printed a few of my odd, colorful characters as stickers, which I now slap on street signs when I take our new puppy for walks.
Blue is a 12-week-old runt of the litter that came to us from a town on the U.S.-Mexico border after we decided that there is no better time to transition to life with a puppy than when you’re quarantined during a pandemic. “Blue” because he has a blue tongue, so we think he’s part Chow-Chow, but his face is retriever, his sausage legs are Basset, his tail is salamander, and his fur is rat, and he is so squat that he can comfortably sit beneath the bottom frame rails of my Sportster. Loveable freaks, the both of them.
The more I do to forget about normal—to enjoy this moment and appreciate the world that ends at the edges of my window—the less I want for the world we left behind. I sit in awe of how calm my life feels at this time, and I sit in horror when I think of how many people had to die to slow the pace of life to something more sensible, even if it may be fleeting. I hope it isn’t, because there is nowhere to go, and everyone to see, and nothing going on, so there is no excuse not to stay home, slow down, teach ourselves, write letters, shift our perspectives, realign our priorities, and accept that normal is a perversion of our expectations, and that what we knew as normal is dead, and that death is dispassionate, and that the world is small, and that we are not as free or as in control as we like to believe we are.
Every night at exactly 8 p.m., the people on our block begin to cheer and whistle and bang cooking pans as a “thank you” to healthcare workers. The love of my life, Mallory, arrives home soon after, and the animals and I line up in our front window, and we jump and whine as she comes up the front stairs. It never matters what sort of day I had, because she’s home, and it doesn’t matter that the world ends at the edges of my front window, but she loves being stuck inside with me and our freak-show pets.
High-Speed Slowdance
Fragments in Time from the 1980s & 1990s
Photography by Richard Chenet
Hello Engine
Hayden Roberts’ California Dream
Words by Joy Lewis | Photos by Dylan Gordon
One day I was hit by a car – Hayden, whom I’d been making out with for just over a month, got the call. Apparently, in my delusional state of being loaded into an ambulance, I mumbled something along the lines of, “Don’t call my mom.” I’m still a little fuzzy on the details, but I remember waking up with Hayden standing over me, Pellegrino in one hand, Sour Patch watermelons in the other. I remember feeling tears running down my cheeks and not being able to move or hug him, but feeling a huge sense of relief – maybe it was for sparkling water, but I think it had more to do with being alive. “I know we both said we’d never get married again, but can I keep you?” He took it as a proposal.
The next couple of months flew by, as they do when you’re (hopped up on morphine) in the honeymoon stage of a new marriage. I slept 20 hours a day. Hayden moved in and played nurse – having to do and see things no man should so early in a relationship. At some point, he ended up at a shop across town; the guy who ran it, John Ireland, was in his late sixties, and had been the local Triumph dealer up until things went belly up, and he had set aside his heathen ways and moved into a one-man shop servicing all old British bikes. The day he met Hayden, he let him know that he had a year’s worth of work piled up and asked if he’d lend a hand. His first test was to remove and take apart a motor of a ’60-something Triumph – Hayden had the thing done before John finished his burrito.
Hayden grew up in a small town called Willenhall, outside of Birmingham, England, which happens to be smack in the middle of where so many British motorcycles came from – defunct Triumph, Norton, Velocette, and BSA factories were all within 10 miles of his house – and he lived in the old Rubery Owens housing (I’ve come to learn that RO provided bolts for many British bikes.) He always told funny stories of playing in and around the abandoned industrial plants: Every so often, someone lost a leg, but it sounded like a great childhood. I picture Hayden in plaid flare pants and women’s blouses with a head of black curly hair, smoking fags and bopping from show to show on a Lambretta. And by “picture it,” I mean, I’ve seen the pictures and heard the stories. While his vehicle of choice was a Lambretta, he’d take whatever he could make run from the local scrapyard.
As long as he can remember, he wanted to come to America. He always loved the music – not because it was American, but because he loved it and then it was American. Fast forward to adulthood, and he’d completed an apprenticeship in Marine Engineering – the gist of it being machining parts – and was working on a rig for a bit before receiving his redundancy (the U.K. has a way of making being laid off sound less miserable.) He took the severance and bought a ticket to New York City, with the plan of renting a car, seeing the East Coast and then driving to the desert.
I guess you underestimate just how far California is when your entire country is drivable in a day. A pitstop in D.C., where he met a beautiful California girl, turned into the next chapter of his life. Sometimes I try to picture Hayden during this time – working a ton in a very adult and corporate career, both he and his wife making good money, babies raising babies, traveling all over the place to see his favorite bands, collecting all the pretty bikes, and having a great time on the other side of the world from where he dreamed it all up.
At some point the hobby became the full-time gig – Hayden started wrenching on friends’ bikes, just enough that they’d have something to ride over the weekend. There was a whole lot of them getting together to run ridiculous races – flat-tracking in jeans and T-shirts, hill-climbing in Halloween costumes, TT races through massive mud puddles. No tough guy stuff or cheesy sponsors, just friends on old beat-up bikes, and it looked a lot like California from the ’60s and ’70s, all in good fun. I knew of Hayden at these races; we never met, but he took my entry money a couple of times and recognized me as “Twiggy” during a hill-climb. We didn’t formally cross paths until we were hired to shoot a commercial for BMW. We became fast friends and stayed in touch over the next few months – at some point there was making out, but no expectations it would go anywhere – and before marriage was ever on the table, we got matching tattoos of a rocket because we loved the Jonathan Richman song about being together “just for fun.”
FUN
more like a rocketship and not so much like a relationship
we got together just for fun
yeah yeah
It wasn’t until our third anniversary that I found out that those aren’t the lyrics at all: rocketship = rockin’ trip. It makes way more sense, and now I love that tattoo even more.
Several months after my accident, when I was learning to walk again, Hayden built me a little Triumph Cub – it’s like a mini version of the Triumphs he builds today, only it’s 200cc, weighs about 200 pounds and shifts on the right. It was my birthday, and I was having a pity party because I couldn’t walk; my head was still messed up, and I was sitting on a beach where it had just gotten cold, when Hayden showed up with this cute little bike. He started it for me, carried me over and steadied me on it, and for the first time since being taken out by a fucking minivan, I was able to ride around a parking lot and feel like myself again.
We fell into a routine after that day. Little by little, I was getting back to normal, and Hayden was catching his stride at the shop. John and Hayden ended up being great for each other – Hayden has an encyclopedic brain and is obsessive about everything being “as it was intended,” while John has seen everything and has amassed a collection of any tool or part you could possibly need to rebuild a British bike. Not to mention that John doesn’t hear well and Hayden doesn’t talk much – they quickly caught up on the backlog of work, and Hayden started bringing in new customers. Somewhere along the way, people started to take notice of the bikes he was building for himself – period correct, and purpose built – and with that, Hello Engine was born. He doesn’t always understand why people look to him, but he does recognize that there’s a community of folks, old and young, that appreciates what he does.
Hayden comes off as pretty quiet until you get to know him. I asked him about this forever ago, and he mumbled something about people not understanding anything he says– at least I think that’s what he said, but I rarely understand him, either. One time he asked if I wanted to make love – turns out the restaurant in town was serving meatloaf for dinner, and I got it all wrong. All to say, if you’re reaching out to Hayden about a bike, you’re likely hearing from me. I’m the first stop to make sure you aren’t going to ask for a black bike (he won’t do it), that you understand an old bike will require maintenance and will most certainly leave oil in your driveway, and will cost you just as much as (or more than) a new one. If you meet Hayden in real life, you’ll get a shy hello and a small wave, maybe a handshake. It’s not until you get to know him (or invite him to a wedding) that he cuts loose.
Nearly four years since that emergency room proposal and trip to city hall, we are living in a small town, off the beaten path. When you get off at our exit, there’s a feeling of stepping through time, likely not far off from the California that Hayden pictured as a kid. I appreciate this place for the quirky charm, and you can’t beat the riding – take a left out of the driveway and you wind up the mountains, while a right will take you through the orange groves. Hayden has a workshop off the side of the house and has sequestered a room solely dedicated to listening to records.
If the little boy in the plaid flares could see him now, he likely wouldn’t be surprised – less hair and no smoking, but not lacking any style, still bopping around on his favorite bikes, listening to his favorite bands.
Joy
A PACT Between Friends
Intro by Andrew Campo | Words by Walt Siegl | Photos by Ben Giese
Intro by Andrew Campo:
Joy is an intense momentary experience of positive emotion. A feeling that inspires confidence and the desire to return for more.
How do tangible things create intangible joy? Through the embodiment of good design is the obvious answer. Design is so much more than just the idea of personal expression. Good design is bigger than the people who execute it and when achieved can be very rewarding. This was the ideology at the core of a PACT formed when Walt Siegl, artist and craftsman of WSM Motorcycles, and Mike Mayberry, industrial designer and co-founder of Ronin Motorworks, joined forces on a special project in effort to explore their collective interest in electric motorcycles by way of a limited series of purpose-built bikes.
It was January 2019, and the plan was to unveil the completed motorcycle at the Electric Revolution Exhibition curated by Paul d’Orléans on April 6, 2019, at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. From my perspective, three months is roughly what we have to produce each volume of META, and for the most part it is usually gone in the blink of an eye. Designing and re-engineering a motorcycle from the ground up, manufacturing parts, and assembling it all within that same time window is hard to comprehend. It seems like an impossible task, and the fact that they pulled it off in such spectacular fashion was extremely impressive.
Following the completion of the project, I was given the opportunity to ride and personally experience the joy they set out after. Simply put, I feel blessed to be one of a handful of people to throw a leg over the PACT and honored at the opportunity to learn from two incredibly talented minds. After getting an inside look into the project, I felt strongly that I wanted to share this with our audience, and so I asked Walt to give our readers a little insight into the process. It’s with great pleasure that we share his recollection of this special project.
Words by Walt Siegl:
The PACT is an agreement I made with my friend Mike Mayberry. An agreement between a motorcycle builder (myself) and an industrial designer (Mike) to work together and create something that was bigger than either of us as individuals. It represents the power of a friendship, and of collaboration. It also represents a pact with the future.
Mike and I have had many conversations over the past few years about the state of and the direction of the transportation industry. That, of course, included the push for electric motorcycles, mainly by small, new brands. Both of us have long voiced interest in electric motorcycles. At the time, there was nothing on the market that either of us would have loved to own, so we decided that we just needed to build our own. Mike already owned several electric bikes that I had the chance to ride when I visited his Denver workshop. I was so impressed by the sensation that I decided my next design challenge was going to be an electric bike. I had already been thinking about building something smaller, something that represents the future, something with two wheels that many people have access to, even without a motorcycle license; maybe a moped or a scooter, something relatively affordable.
Even before I road-tested Mike’s electric bikes, I had been interested in the e-motorcycle challenge: to create a machine that is devoid of all the familiar components that make up a combustion engine motorcycle. A lot of companies were (and still are) trying to compete with gasoline-powered bikes through design and performance output. By simply adopting the key design elements of gas-powered bikes – like fuel tanks, air induction systems, fake engines, etc. – they end up being dishonest products. The other end of the design spectrum are bikes that dismiss ergonomics and geometries that are foundational for safety, rider confidence, and rider enjoyment, as if they can start with a blank canvas because they have gone electric. So many factors have to come into play on a motorcycle for it to work right. When the right boxes are checked on a motorcycle, when you get on it, it just comes together. All the design and engineering decisions come into focus, and it becomes a beautiful experience.
We wanted to build a light, focused, urban bike with enough power, but with as little overall weight and size as possible. What we had in mind, which has always been my mantra, was to use as few components as possible, and keep those components as honest as possible. That thinking makes for a machine that is easy to use, easier to maintain, and visually uncluttered and light. The key to a good-functioning package, which automatically makes it visually cohesive, is that the design of each element has to be honest and purposeful. We wanted to design a modern machine that is visually understood as e-powered, but also pure in its form. We both agreed the Alta Redshift platform was the most successful product on the dirt bike market through its high build quality and performance levels. Alta went out of business before they had the chance to build a bike with geometries for the street and track. Mike and I agreed on building around the Alta platform, as we both felt it got as close as possible to our mission:
We wanted to build a bike that spoke to us and was a beautiful experience to own and ride.
I started by sketching the principal gestalt of the bike in pencil, and then sharing that design with Mike. Since we both were busy during workdays, we spent countless hours in the evenings and weekends sharing sketches – mine on paper, his on an iPad. The key design decision that we made early on was to fully embrace the battery pack as the power source for the bike instead of trying to hide or cover it. We wanted to celebrate the essentials of the electric motorcycle, much in the same way many brands have celebrated their gas engines. Mike and I agreed that our design aesthetic would resist the impulse to create novelty by designing something that was honest, user-friendly and durable, while using as few components as possible.
There is no misunderstanding of what this machine has been designed for: pure business.
The show was only three months away, and we didn’t even have a bike yet, but we had a solid idea at this point – and there’s nothing like a deadline to get you motivated. Every day counted now, and we had to stay focused.
After countless emails, and texts sharing sketches and ideas, we sat down in front of Mike’s computer over a weekend to try to digitally capture what we had crafted on paper. We needed to create an initial computer model to work with, but we quickly discovered that our sketches didn’t work in 3D space as well as we had hoped. It’s one thing to draw cool profile views of bikes, but it’s something very different to resolve a design thoroughly from all perspectives in 3D space. It wasn’t long before we had completely scrapped our initial sketches and found ourselves with pencil and paper again. We had designed largely around the beautiful forged aluminum front frame of the Alta but were quickly coming to the realization that its geometry and proportions were ill-suited for our vision of a nimble street machine. The frame and fork geometry had to meet our performance requirements, and the only solution was a new front frame.
With new sketches in hand, Mike went to work on building a complete computer model of the bike in Solidworks. He scanned the Alta transmission and battery, and we then proceeded to design a whole new bike around those parts. My experience in road racing taught me frame geometry, and I drew on that as we settled on rake, trail and wheelbase numbers for this bike. It had to handle light and neutral, and it had to perform. Very little of the original Alta remained at this point. After deciding to design our own front frame, we were left with only the central motor housing, and the battery pack from the Alta donor. We would have to design and build the new carbon fiber subframe, carbon seat, seat foam, carbon bodywork and fenders. We would also have to machine new billet triple trees, wheels, and a new 3-piece swing arm that helped us achieve the geometries and handling that we were after. We knew the trellis frame had to be designed and built first so that we could mockup the bike on two wheels as we moved through refining the bodywork – a chicken-and-egg scenario. We needed the frame to visualize the bodywork in real space, but the bodywork affected the lines of the frame. We had no choice but to commit to a design before the final decisions were made on the bodywork and suspension.
Mike’s shop is in Denver and mine is in New Hampshire, so that meant nearly all work was being done separately from each other. Mike would post updates of the model every few days, and I would download them for review or as needed for tooling and fabrication. One of the advantages of working digitally is that we didn’t have to be in the same shop to be collaborating. Mike sent images of the design several times a day. We would discuss and critique together. Mike could post a 3D file of the final trellis frame design, and Aran Johnson, my lead tech at the time, could be building the jig for it in my shop that same day. In some cases, 3D-printed parts were used as weld fixtures, as well. Aran was pivotal in finding mechanical as well as electrical solutions that expedited the completion of the first PACT.
Forms designed purely in digital space can sometimes be misleading, so we spent some time making preliminary bodywork out of cardboard and foam before we made the final decision on the trellis covers. Some of the components were 3D-printed at Mike’s shop, then sent to me to check fitment or to be installed as production parts. Only then could we start machining the urethane mold plugs for all the carbon parts back at Mike’s workshop in Denver. Once completed, the mold plugs were shipped to California to be turned into molds, and then into finished carbon fiber parts. We had decided early on that we didn’t want to use traditional woven carbon fiber cloth and had instead designed the subframe and body work around a newer process called forged carbon fiber. This process has advantages over traditional carbon composite that allows for better optimization of weight, structure and stiffness. It also looks really trick.
Mike had the disadvantage of not having the prototype in front of him and so was not immediately convinced that everything we came up with together would come together. There were some hiccups with the finish of the prototype that were not of our doing, and we were both not 100% happy with it (as is so often the case with prototypes), but once bike number one was completed, we both were thrilled with the product. The first time Mike got to see the prototype was at the opening night of the show in L.A. Now, a year and a half later, we both still agree that it’s our favorite bike to own and ride.
Since the Petersen show, I have built a second bike and have three more in process. The plan was always to build eight bikes, one for each of us and six more to be sold. This was a very personal project. It filled a void that we saw in the e-bike industry, and it served our personal needs. I think so highly of Mike: his moral compass, his intellect, his complexity without bullshit, his kindness and sense of honor. For all these reasons, collaborating with him was simply a great and rewarding experience. Our individual strengths as designers and builders clicked in all the right places.
Taking what we learned creating the PACT, I want next to use the flexibility I have as a small company to develop an e-bike that serves the needs of as many people as possible – people of all ages. I also want to use this platform as a reminder that two-wheeled transportation makes absolute economic and environmental sense, and is tremendously fun. E-bikes are so much less intimidating than fossil-fueled power bikes. They’re not less fun because they are electrical. Quite the contrary! Every time I ride one of my e-bikes, I’m met with smiles and positive curiosity by people of all ages. There’s an inclusivity about them. To me, e-bikes offer a new kind of freedom, accessible to many.
The more two-wheels there are on the road, the better off we all are, and that can only be accomplished by building bikes that instill confidence while evoking smiles and the desire to experience more.
Chapter 4
A Ricky Carmichael Story
Words by Brett Smith | Photos by Jordan Hoover
Ricky Carmichael is pissed off. He’s on his feet with his arms extended, his hands open and fingers outstretched. It’s the kind of gesticulating you’d expect from a rider unjustly taken to the ground by a rival or one who experiences bike failure while leading. But Carmichael isn’t trying to win a race today. He just wants the damn replay.
The right replay.
Here’s what happened: At precisely two minutes, twenty-six seconds into the 250 Main Event at MetLife Stadium on April 27, everyone sees that Austin Forkner’s 2019 Monster Energy Supercross season is officially over. He rolls off the track, hobbles next to his motorcycle and doubles over in pain. Clearly, the ACL in his left knee waved the white flag.
In their ears, the NBC Sports on-air team of Carmichael and partner Ralph Sheheen hear their producer Chris Bond say “here comes another look.” On the television screen, the NBC replay chip flies into place, touches down just long enough for the scene behind it to change, and zips away. Carmichael, the analyst, stares at a tight slow-motion shot of Forkner sailing through the air and then pulling off the track at the end of the lane. It’s not the right moment, and he knows it. But he has to say something.
“Here’s what happens, okay?” he begins. “He goes over the triple, pulls off… where it really happens is when he jumps back across the start straight…” Carmichael stops talking. The shot dissolves to Forkner’s Team Owner, Mitch Payton, whose hands are on his knees, his head dropping into his lap. Sheheen picks up for Carmichael, who goes into a silent but active rage. He smashes his finger into the talk-back button, which allows him to speak directly to the TV producer, Chris Bond without his words being picked up on air.
He wants another shot at explaining what happened to Forkner, who led the championship by three points coming into the race. But “Bondo”, as his friends and coworkers call him, has to choose between showing the real-time agony of Forkner, going back to the race leader (who is now engaged in a battle), or going back in time and showing the correct replay of Forkner’s crucial moment.
Making live television is like trying to construct a skyscraper at the same time the tenants are moving into their offices. The audience experiences the show while it’s being built. Mistakes are inevitable, but there are no mulligans. To put Monster Energy Supercross races on television, a crew of 90 works in dozens of different positions. It’s an organized chaos that almost has to be seen to be believed. And once a race starts, the sport is unique in that it lacks the regulation pauses and dead time of other sports.
Bondo finds time to squeeze in the replay for Carmichael, but it takes 90 seconds from the original incident to get there. That’s an eternity in live-TV land. Carmichael dives into his analysis, drawing on personal experience from his own knee injury 15 years earlier. But his message is cloudy and sounds choppy.
“Right when he impacts right there, there’s so much driving his tib and fib forward in that top…that’s where the ACL isn’t connected and it, just that, that, lowered, that tib/fib moves forward and just grinds the knee…”
Sheheen cuts in to mention a track change implemented earlier in the day that may have had an indirect effect on the moment. Carmichael stews because he knows he botched the analysis. In his head it all made sense. Just as if he had been in a race, he shakes off the mistake and moves on.
The viewer at home noticed none of this, of course. But sitting 18 inches to the right of Carmichael, I could tell this: He’s far from perfect, but he deeply cares about the quality of the product and his performance. He could have let the original replay slide by, let the race continue. It had been a long season already, and it was almost over. But that’s not how he works.
As a racer, when he failed to succeed the way he wanted, he made commitments and changes to ensure improvement. He brings the same attitude into the supercross analyst role, a position he had no plans of taking just weeks before the 2019 season began.
Seven months later, at 7:30 on an early November morning, Ricky Carmichael tries to fix the Internet in his Tallahassee, Florida, home. It’s a 10,000-square-foot house, and the complicated home automation system has its own room and looks like a miniature data center. Carmichael has the resources to find someone to handle this for him. He made a lot of money riding dirt bikes, and three of his favorite championship motorcycles hang on a wall next to the staircase to the trophy room. But as annoying as it is, he actually gets a mild thrill from handling a mundane Internet issue that, yes, would have been handled by someone else in his previous life. Carmichael’s time as a professional athlete was so structured, so regimented, that he enjoys the discomfort that comes with handling the unexpected issue, such as a homeowner’s insurance claim, or, like today, the WiFi connection. He likes the process of figuring out something new.
What he doesn’t know at this point is that 12 hours later, his system still won’t work. He’s on the phone with a Comcast agent when I walk in. His 12-year-old twins gather their backpacks and prepare for their school day. Buckets of Halloween candy sit on the kitchen counter, and they debate peanut M&Ms versus plain with me. His daughter, Elise, says nobody gives out peanut M&Ms. I declare this a scandal. Their dad sits at the opposite end of the table and runs his fingers through his dark-auburn hair. It stands up tall, like Cosmo Kramer’s from Seinfeld. If he’s annoyed at being on the phone with customer service, he doesn’t show it. He asks the representative if he can take the satisfaction survey before hanging up the phone. We glance at each other. He chuckles knowingly and tosses his free hand up off the table a few inches. There was no way in hell he is actually going to stay on the phone to complete a survey, and he’s not sure why he bothered to ask.
Since he wound down his professional motorcycle racing career after 2007, he’s been anything but idle. Between 2008-2011, he competed in just over 100 stock car races. His career-best finish was a 4th at Dover in the 2010 NASCAR Truck Series. In October 2012, his next major chapter started when he announced his partnership with Carey Hart to form RCH Racing, a beefed-up version of the race team Hart already ran. Carmichael brought Suzuki support and valuable knowledge, and over the next five seasons, they won supercross races and the 2016 Lucas Oil Pro Motocross Championship.
The plate stayed full away from the races, too. Annually, he designs the Daytona Supercross and Monster Energy Cup tracks, puts his name on an amateur supercross championship race at Daytona, is part owner of a car wash chain and has a minority share in Fox Racing, the apparel maker he’s been with since middle school. The “Goat Farm” riding facility in Cairo, Georgia, once his private training ground, is now open to promising amateurs and professional riders looking to improve their skills. Carmichael’s mother, Jeannie, coaches. The Goat Farm has the same dirt that Ricky rode on for the majority of his professional career (1997-2007).
Carmichael appears often at the property, rides with the trainees, gives out bits of wisdom and even occasionally runs the bulldozer and water truck. As part of his role as an ambassador for American Suzuki, he holds an annual riding camp where a small group of students of all ages gets the chance to be coached by him over a multi-day session. He’s also still taking advantage of his brand as the G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time) while he can and makes appearances at races like the Australia SX-Open, where he competes in an exhibition role. Days after my visit, he made round-trips to Auckland, New Zealand and Melbourne, Australia, and jammed in the Suzuki riding camp at the Goat Farm in between.
Busy schedule for a retired guy.
He’s also preparing for his second year as the full-time analyst for the 17-event Monster Energy Supercross Championship on NBC Sports.
By the age of 26, Carmichael had won ten Lucas Oil Pro Motocross and five Monster Energy Supercross Championships. At 27, he purposefully raced a partial season in both series and walked away with 150 combined career wins. In motorsports, he’s among legends – John Force (151 NHRA wins), Richard Petty (200 NASCAR wins) and Tucker Hibbert (138 Snocross wins). When chapter one of your life results in unmatchable achievement before the age of 30, how do you cope with the fact that you’ll never be that good at anything else?
“I’m constantly thinking of, what can I do next? I’ve always wanted to be successful in something that wasn’t expected of me, something other than motorcycle racing,” he says. “Time is running out. It probably won’t happen, but I still think about that sometimes. What could it be, you know? Maybe it’s speaking. I don’t know.”
Before a position opened in the NBC Sports television booth for the 2019 season, Carmichael had plans to try motivational speaking. He hired Arthur Joseph, a communication strategist and the founder of Vocal Awareness. Joseph works with actors, singers, politicians and broadcasters to teach them the concept of empowerment through voice. Together, they developed a 30-minute-long motivational speech that Carmichael wanted to test out. He thought he might begin by putting himself in front of a familiar or comfortable audience, such as the employees of a sponsor.
Although the speech draws on his experience of becoming a hall-of-fame-bound athlete in a niche sport, the message isn’t about riding dirt bikes. It’s about sacrifice, structure, accountability and not giving up.
“There’s no reason that you can’t be better,” he says when asked what he’d tell an audience of workers who might just feel like cogs in a machine. “Push yourself every single day to be the best person that you can possibly be. It’s only going to help yourself. People take notice. Somebody from a Fortune 500 company might be in the store that you’re working in that day and might see how you’re pedaling and working it and might see your attitude.”
He has no idea if he’ll be any good at it. But, then again, when his parents bought him a blue Yamaha Tri-Zinger and then a Honda Z50 in the mid-1980s, they didn’t know if he’d ride them at all. Carmichael didn’t know if he’d be a good race car driver or race team owner, either. Neither of those career chapters lasted as long as he wanted, but he doesn’t consider them failures; it was just time to turn the page.
After hanging up with Comcast, he wanders the kitchen, wondering what he should eat. Then he takes his kids to school and drives 30 minutes to the farm to spin a few laps on his supercross track. Before he pulls his Suzuki off its stand, he hands over his phone, “Answer it if it rings. It might be Comcast.” Two other riders are training with his mother, and he keeps his eye on them. Between short motos, he gives advice to the two young men.
“Open up your corners more,” he tells one rider who lost momentum squaring up the turns. To the other he asks for more energy on the ground. “Race between the jumps.” He shuts it down after about only 15 laps; he’s coming off a tropical vacation and just wants to ease back into riding before heading to New Zealand. On the ride back to Tallahassee, he talks about how his desire to hang it out on a supercross track has disappeared. Riding is still fun, he still scoots, but as his children grow and his businesses require much of his attention, his willingness to push wanes. Then, in an abrupt conversation change, he asks if reading more would help his vocabulary and, ultimately, benefit him in his analyst role on television.
“Indubitably,” I tell him. I also tell him to try crossword puzzles, but he laughs at me and responds with his trademark retort: “Dude!”
“I beat myself up quite a bit,” he says of his struggle to improve his speech, knowledge and book smarts. NBC and Feld Entertainment (supercross promoters) have helped to connect the entire TV talent team with speech and broadcast coaches. “I feel like I’m making excuses for myself, but sometimes I don’t know that I can do everything that [broadcast coach] is asking. There’s an element in there that I want to be myself, too. I have my own Ricky-isms, if you will, that, yeah, people are going to make fun of, but at the same time, that’s me.”
I ask him what his favorite “Ricky-ism” is.
“’Preparate’ is my favorite. I haven’t used it since that one time [circa 2013]. My vocabulary isn’t great. My diction needs to be better.”
Diction (the choice and use of words and phrases) is a hell of a term for someone who claims not to have a vocabulary, but it’s at least an indication that he’s paying attention to his coaches’ lessons. Carmichael claims he’s “not a big thinker,” meaning he doesn’t study, doesn’t ruminate, doesn’t tax his mind or dwell on problems or negativity. At the same time, he knows he can be better; he wants to be better, and he has to balance that desire with other important responsibilities.
He’s a single parent of twins and an entrepreneur. He runs a multi-dimensional personal brand and business that requires direct involvement and dozens of appearances a year. Being on call for his sponsors has been challenging since the divorce from his wife. He fiercely protects his time with his children but says the clients and sponsors he keeps are very gracious and understanding. “If somebody is going to require me to be gone while I have the kids, I just won’t do it. I just say fire me. That’s how important my time with my kids are. But when [sponsors] do get me and I do go do these appearances…they get all of my time. I’m there for them. I’m not trying to get out early.”
Chapter 4 was supposed to be motivational speaking, but a new opportunity popped up that, coincidentally, involved a lot of talking. In the fall of 2018, he was in the middle of his usual busy schedule that included the Suzuki riding camp on his farm in mid-November and a supercross race in Torino, Italy, in mid-December. In between, JH Leale, president of Ricky Carmichael Racing, the “parent” company of everything Carmichael does, exchanged text messages with Feld Entertainment Motor Sports to finalize Carmichael’s involvement in television for 2019. Since his retirement at the end of 2007, Carmichael appeared as a guest analyst in the TV booth alongside his friend, former teammate, and 1997 AMA Supercross Champion Jeff Emig about 5-9 events per season.
Schedule conflicts caused delays with the face-to-face meetings. At the same time, the expected announcement of NBC Sports as Feld’s new programming partner for 2019 and beyond didn’t publicly happen until Friday, December 14, 2018, just 22 days before the start of the season. Carmichael went to Italy that weekend, and a meeting with Feld and NBC got set for Tuesday, December 18. He didn’t know Emig had been cut from the TV team, which, according to Emig, happened around his birthday (December 1).
On the airplane home from Europe, Carmichael turned to Leale and asked, “What’s going to happen?” Lots of ideas and options had been floated around, but Carmichael hadn’t considered a solo run in the booth. At end of the 2018 season, he told Feld he didn’t want that. He enjoyed the three-man team and was definitely not returning to the sideline reporter position that he did occasionally for a couple of seasons. “I didn’t like it,” he says of being on the track and reporting in front of the camera. “It wasn’t me. I just can’t do it. My pace of talking, my pace of thinking just isn’t fast enough for that position.”
After the 2018 season ended, Carmichael remembers an informal conversation about the future of his role in supercross television, and he remained adamant about keeping the three-man format. But when he met with Feld and NBC in December, they asked him to be Ralph Sheheen’s full-time partner. It wasn’t a choice between Carmichael and Emig. If Carmichael declined, a completely new face and voice would get the position. “The way they made it sound to me, Jeff wasn’t an option.”
Carmichael felt sick about it and called Emig to let him know what had been presented. He wanted to make sure it didn’t seem like he was stealing a position that his friend had held for 12 years. Emig had already had a few weeks to absorb the gravity of the news. “I processed it quickly and found myself with a choice of how to handle it,” Emig says. “Obviously, yes, it’s just a job, but it was also my career that I valued very highly and took a lot of responsibility with.” He gave Carmichael his blessing.
He said Carmichael called him after the first race of 2019 and talked about how much different it felt to be solo versus a guest analyst and how long the 3 hours felt. “In a three-man booth, you have time to sit back and not add anything at times,” Emig says. “With the two-man, suddenly there’s a lot of heavy lifting. It takes time to grow in the position.”
In mid-February, the two launched Real Talk 447, a podcast where they discuss the previous week’s race, stories from their own racing careers, and hilariously go out of their way to roast each other.
On the first Saturday of 2019, Carmichael made his debut on NBC Sports. During the on-camera open, he stuck to safe comments when Sheheen asked him who looked good in practice. He appeared stiff and sounded a little nervous.
“I had never been in that position, so I was learning each week,” he says. “I was nervous. One thing that always, before our opening on-cameras…My adrenaline would get going, more than it would for a pro race. Just my thoughts were going a hundred miles a minute. ‘Don’t mess this up’ [he’d tell himself]. My thoughts, what I was going to say.”
During the racing action, he fell into “play-by-play” mode, which happens when an analyst tells what’s happening on the screen instead of why it’s happening. It’s common in new analysts, and Carmichael swears that, despite having spent a decade next to Sheheen and Emig in a part-time, third-wheel role that nobody taught him the differences in the positions.
“No one ever corrected me if I was trying to call the race, like trying to do Ralph’s job. It got a lot easier for me to improve once I knew my job. But no one ever said anything. They probably just assumed I knew the difference, but I really didn’t.” Emig called this completely plausible, that the third chair has different expectations. “I just encouraged Ricky to be Ricky,” Emig says. “And that was plenty to fill the broadcast. We give him a lot of crap for making up words that don’t exist in Webster’s Dictionary, but it’s also part of being genuine and real. His knowledge of racing and the bikes is second to none. So how does he get across to the viewer? Just be himself.”
The lightbulb moment came the day after the opening round of the 2019 season while watching an NFL playoff game with Al Michaels and former wide receiver Chris Collinsworth in the booth. The full purpose of the analyst position sunk in, and he went to work on his own prep. He improved, but the negativity rolled in. Some comments were so lewd I won’t reprint them. But the majority called for the return of Jeff Emig. This is funny because, when Emig became the regular analyst in 2007, the typical comment made at that time was “bring back David Bailey”.
“It doesn’t bother me that they’re bashing me,” Carmichael said. “What bothers me is how they are so negative, just in general. I was taught if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Carmichael sees the comments, especially those left in his Instagram feed or @ him on Twitter, but he doesn’t engage in exchanges. If he responds at all, it’s a thumbs up or “that was intelligent.” He welcomes constructive criticism and helpful suggestions.
“When I see these people being negative, I wonder if they are parents themselves. That’s what bothers me more than anything.”
For 2020, Carmichael expects to be better in his role for the simple reason that he knows what to expect, and he’s had more lead time to prepare for the 54 hours of live television through the season. The comparison might not be parallel, but in his racing career, Carmichael’s average 1999 supercross finish was 11.6 in the 12 rounds he raced. He came in underprepared and regrets moving to the premier class so soon. In 2000, his average finish dropped to 5.75, and he completed the entire season. In 2001, he nearly batted 1.000; his average finish was 1.18.
In preparation for his sophomore season in the booth, he stayed sharp on current events in the sport, watched more video, studied more. He also devoted himself to learning more about the riders and not relying strictly on his own knowledge of race strategy. He hasn’t, however, developed the awkward habit of delivering monologues to himself in front of the bathroom mirror. “I felt better already when I was at the Monster Energy Cup [October 2019] on my standup,” he says. “I didn’t get the adrenaline like I normally do, so that means I’m becoming more comfortable.”
A few weeks before the 2019 Monster Energy Cup, Feld held a summit in Tampa with their talent coach present. On race day, producer Chris Bond said he could tell Carmichael had practiced. “He was more concise in his analysis [at MEC], gave points viewers could look for, stated headlines and backed them up with facts or points,” Bond says. “He’s all in. From the moment he committed to being in the booth for every race, he has done everything he can to be better. It’s probably the same thing that drove him to compete at such a high level. And he has no ego about it.” Emig noticed how much more comfortable Carmichael got in the position as the 2019 season progressed. He wouldn’t comment on what he thought Carmichael could do better. He laughed and said no amount of money could persuade him to ever sit down and watch or listen to the shows from his own first season as an analyst.
The digital criticism over Carmichael’s performance might be loud, but in real life his brand is strong. He still can’t move swiftly when he navigates hallways and lobbies on race weekends, and he gives as much of himself as he can to everyone he encounters. At a race in Minneapolis, Carmichael and other members of the TV crew went to dinner. They exited an elevator and found the lobby filled with race fans. Bond vividly remembers one particular man standing with his son. “He’s so nervous to talk to Ricky that he’s shaking,” Bond says. “He’s doing that thing where he’s just going on and on.” Instead of moving on as quickly as he could, Bond said Carmichael engaged the man in a brief conversation about what a great father he was, bringing his kid out to the races, and then he posed for pictures.
“He’s that way with everyone,” Bond says. “But the thing that stands out is how people are around him. He means a lot to them.”
In New Jersey, the race where Forkner’s season ended, Carmichael had fewer than two hours after rehearsal to research, eat, dress and make other preparations before going on live television. Walking through the belly of MetLife Stadium, he ran into a group of a few hundred people waiting to be escorted onto the racetrack for a VIP tour. Eyes widened, heads turned, and cameras floated up to eye level. One woman grabbed him and fumbled with a plastic file box filled with 8x10 photographs. “This is you and me in Atlanta” she said, handing him a marker. He signed the print and moved to the next person who wanted a photo with him. And another, and another. He obliged every request while simultaneously moving to his next meeting.
While the fans have enjoyed Carmichael’s more visible and accessible role, the riders he talks about every Saturday night have shifted their view of him. He’s not only “Ricky Carmichael: former champion, hall of fame member, legend” – he’s now also a reporter digging for information to use as an analyst. He quickly discovered that riders aren’t willing to share much. They’re also not obligated to. But none of this surprises him. He once was that rider.
In a meeting at MetLife, the TV crew discussed what they learned during track walk. Someone said to Carmichael, “Marvin [Musquin] gave off a twitch like he didn’t want to be around you.”
“A lot of people gave me a lot of crap during track walk today,” Carmichael says. “They weren’t being overly friendly.” Track walk is a roughly 30-minute period afforded the riders and teams to see the course for the first time. Media is discouraged from interviewing the athletes, but the TV crew is allowed to use this time for informal info gathering. In the tunnel before the walk, a privateer heckled Carmichael about getting a call wrong the week prior. Carmichael turned to him and said, “You should worry more about qualifying for the main event.”
In the meeting, Carmichael said he couldn’t get Cooper Webb to say much of anything. In the race that night, Webb rode conservatively, lacked his usual fire, but riders kept falling in front of him. He took a win that surprised even him, and he revealed on the podium that he had battled flu symptoms all day. It explained why nobody could get him to talk earlier in the day. For a storyteller, it’s frustrating not to have the information that could help paint a full picture, but unlike other sports, motocross teams and athletes are not required to share injury or illness information. Carmichael feels challenged to talk to the riders more in pre-race and try to find out this info, but he said it’s not that simple. Doing that puts the riders in a position to lie. He knows this because he’s been on that side.
“I wasn’t going to say much about it if I was struggling that night, or how my bike was handling,” he says. “I didn’t want anyone knowing what I’m feeling, how I’m feeling, or where I need to be better, or where I’m really good. That’s just how it is in our sport.”
Back at home, Carmichael has some leftover soup, and we talk more at the kitchen table. If I wasn’t around, he’d be in his office answering messages or handling business matters. Before picking up his kids, we go on a bicycle ride of mixed surfaces: paved, singletrack and gravel. He doesn’t even let an unprepared visitor keep him from getting in his ride. He lost 20 pounds in 2019, and he wants to maintain his habit. New routines are hard to form at this stage in his life. Carmichael turned 40 on November 27. As he stares down the next chapter in his life, he cares deeply about doing the best he can. He’s also aware that he’ll likely never be the absolute best like he was at riding a dirt bike, including being an analyst on TV. Even the G.O.A.T. isn’t immune to the difficulties and challenges of winning in life.
“Sometimes I look at myself today, and I’m like, ‘Man, that’s so disappointing,’” he says. “Whether it’s my lack of dieting or my lack of drive in certain things and follow-through in certain things, because I wasn’t like that when I was racing.” For example: If he doesn’t have a full 90 minutes to exercise or ride his bike, he won’t do it at all. Long, insufferable training and riding sessions were hardwired into his DNA since childhood, and he doesn’t know how to turn that off and squeeze in something simpler.
This chapter in Carmichael’s life came unexpectedly. He knew that the TV gig was now or never. He had already made his mark as an athlete and a team owner. He puts his name on things he believes in. He didn’t take the TV position because he needed a job; he took it because he thought he could make a difference and give back.
“I love this sport; I love [my TV gig], and I love going to the races. It’s fun for me. I got the best seat in the house. I love helping people. I really do. They might not always hear what I want to say, and not agree with what I say, but I’m just doing it because I think I’m helping them.”
There’s a knock at the door. It’s a field representative from the home automation company that connects all the systems in the house. Before Carmichael continues his preparation for the next season, he goes back to fixing the Internet.
Mind Haze
Let Your Mind Wander
A film by Sebastien Zanella in association with Firestone Walker
While the modern world has buried every instinct deep within itself, contemporary man has built himself up on walls of science and academic thought, belittling poetry as well as the wilderness.
Despite this course, the caresses of the shore, the fog, the wind, the horizon and the shadows continue to hold the mystery of life for those who have the courage to listen.
Where waves crash
in the shadow of giants.
The mind wanders
by nature's silence.
An ancient wilderness
rooted by the sea.
Its rhythm is simple.
Just be.
[you are] Essential
A Message to Our Community
Words by Ben Giese, Dale Spangler & the META team
Photo by @pedromkk
During times of uncertainty, often, we’re faced with difficult decisions. Currently, our way of life is being challenged, and as a result, two categories have emerged as crucial differentiators when making decisions: is it essential or non-essential? How one chooses to categorize each will understandably be a personal decision; however, we can say with certainty that during these trying times, you are essential. You, we—all of us—play a crucial role in the health of the motorcycle industry. We’re all part of the circle of life that makes this passion of ours thrive and enables thousands of enthusiasts to experience the joys of riding.
There is no doubt these are uncertain times and never has there been a more crucial moment for us to come together as a community. We’ve already seen the industry and the world as a whole begin to adjust to a new normal. Dealers are changing the way they operate, brands are adapting, and the media is doing its part to keep our community informed and in good spirits by providing inspirational content that reminds us all why we’re passionate about riding.
On the surface, COVID-19 is an unwelcome and disruptive crisis for people and businesses across the globe. There’s no doubt that this is a terrible tragedy for those who have lost their lives to this virus, but maybe there’s a silver lining here too. Honestly, we’ve found a lot of positivity from the situation. During times of tragedy people have an incredible way of coming together. We’ve seen riders at the epicenter of the crisis in New York City delivering masks to the medical staff that needs them most. We’ve teamed up with Biker Down Foundation here in Denver to deliver meals to people in need for an initiative called #2Wheels4Meals. We will also be delivering hand sanitizer via motorcycle to the local medical staff that need it. We’ve got friends making and distributing DIY masks for the Colorado Mask Project to help slow the spread of the virus. We’ve lowered our print subscription cost to just $10 in hopes of providing people with some enjoyment, entertainment and normalcy during these times. And we’ve seen several brands in the motorcycle industry and beyond spreading inspiring messages of hope and positivity. It’s refreshing.
We get so comfortable in our daily routines that the little things that create beauty in our lives are often taken for granted, and you don’t realize how important those little things are until they are gone. When this all ends, AND IT WILL, we will have a greater appreciation for those little things. Maybe through this we can become a little less divided and realize that we are all just humans floating on this rock together. We’ll hug one and other. We’ll tell our friends and family that we love them. We’ll gather and embrace and tell stories and eat and drink and celebrate. Events and gatherings will sell out. Restaurants will have long waits. We’ll put down our phones and go outside. We’ll be inspired to travel and seek adventure. People will love their jobs and kids will be excited to go back to school. People will buy bikes and gear and we’ll go riding with our friends again. That day is coming and it’s going to be a damn good day.
For now, we are using this time to adjust, adapt, rebuild, change and grow. We’ll be spending time in the garage, wrenching on our bikes and dreaming of the next adventure. We’ve taken this time to stop and rest and nurture ourselves. To think and dream and evaluate our lives and our business. We may never have an opportunity like this again where we’re forced to stop and look inward and gain some perspective on our priorities. We’ll continue producing this magazine and delivering inspiring content to our community because we need that inspiration now more than ever. To all of our readers, partners, subscribers, followers and supporters – we are in this fight together, and we are ALL essential. Now is not the time to step back. It’s the time to move forward. By sticking together, we can make this experience a positive one and come out the other side stronger.