Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Winter Riding Tips: "Top Dead Center" by Kevin Cameron


This is the book that made my winter, January 2008.

In retrospect, Kevin Cameron's adult motorcycling life, at least the glimpses recounted in "Top Dead Center," is the life I would have liked to have fallen into. I just had no idea that such a life was there to fall into. I grew up in Michigan, bought a used Moto Guzzi 125 in high school and when it wasn't snowing, rode around with a pal who owned a Honda 305 Scrambler. We daydreamed about racing motorcycles. That there were actually amateur roadracers on real roadrace circuits in these United States was as unimaginable to us in the late '60s as was getting a date with Joan Baez.


The book jacket describes "Top Dead Center" as a collection of Kevin Cameron's columns and feature writing beginning with a 1973 article he contributed to Cycle Magazine. His writings as technical editor for Cycle became the column "TDC", and continued when Cycle was absorbed (... or "was disappeared") in 1991 by then sister publication Cycle World. "Top Dead Center" the book is much more than a collection of Cameron's articles and columns. It's a core sample through 30 years of motorcycle technology exposing an ecosystem in which racing is the drive that surfaces what biologists call "evolutionary fitness."

Cameron's account of this ecosystem is personal and anecdotal - but he has been in the places, lived alsongside the people, tested the technology and ridden the machines that qualify his observations as candid and authentic, if not comprehensive. This is an entertaining and insightful read. About everything from what racers eat, to what they think and do when they crash.

What is a "day-in-the-life" of young privateers challenging multiple factory racing teams? Describe Erv Kanemoto in the day before his teams won 7 world championships. What gumption does it take for a New Zealand glass artist and his small team to think they can push the edge of motorcycle engine and chassis technology out by almost 20 years (John Britten)? How does one man and his economic vision transform a post-war American market from a tiny, nearly homogeneous two-wheel culture to a diverse competitive global marketplace where more than one-million new motorcycles are purchased every year (Soichiro Honda). What's it like "Being Ben Bostrom" and just how smart is Kenny Roberts Sr?

It's all in there. Inside Kevin Cameron. In his head, in his heart, in his hide. 30 years in the telling. We are all lucky he'll put this much between two covers for less than the cost of an oil-change.

In closing, a bit of serendipity. I was Googling for more Kevin Cameron bio, when this turned up. I don't know whether it is more remarkable that it was prescient of Dean Adams (founder and head mole at http:www.superbikeplanet.com) to ask this question, or that he interviewed Kevin Cameron at the 1994 USGP and published this interview, in what we used to call a webzine, in 1994. Here with Dean Adams' gracious permission:
"Q. Do you see a time when you might publish a book of TDCs?

A. I think it would be an interesting thing to do. I’d like to run it up the pole once to see what response I was given. It’s probably better to self-publish something like that and I just don’t have the money nor can I see myself fumbling off to the post office each morning with twenty-eight little packages or loading my computer memory with address or cutting my tongue with uncountable stamps. But if I could turn everything over to a publisher - sure. Nice thing about books is they stay written whereas magazine articles have to be written every month."

copyright 1997 by Hardscrabble Media

For the complete interview: "The AMASuperbike.com Interview: Kevin Cameron"

No comments: