Kevin Cameron and Writing By Accident

[Hugh Janus]

Technical Editor Kevin Cameron shares his wealth of motorcycle knowledge, experiences, insights, history, and much more. (Cycle World/)

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 one in the office wanted the tech column, “TDC,” so it just wasn’t getting written. As planned, it was deadly dull: “Maximizing the Life of Your Battery” or “Prepping Your Bike for Winter Storage.” Useful, maybe, but dull as simonizing Dad’s car.

I had begun to write ­occasionally for Cycle when editor Cook Neilson asked me to write about my 1972 project to go AMA roadracing with an English rider on my homebuilt Kawasaki H2R 750 triple. Response to the article was positive, and the relationship stuttered along.

In 1978, Neilson surprised us all by giving two weeks’ notice, but I had carried on as one of ­Schilling’s stringers. I was therefore delighted when he phoned to offer me the tech column on a monthly basis. Regular income, modest though it was, made a welcome supplement to what I was scratching up from porting two-stroke cylinders and fabricating exhaust pipes.

Writing “TDC,” which was ­limited to a page of 1,000 words, was a powerful education in getting the most out of a fixed format. Writing short is always more difficult than rambling on. I wanted to clearly explain to readers the technical and ­other things related to motorcycling that fascinated me. Doing it in 1,000 words required combing out unneeded adjectives, ­eliminating weak qualifiers like “I think…,” and generally getting solidly behind every word. On this ­basis, “TDC” evolved into a monthly ­letter to like-minded readers, mostly about the cool tech stuff that ­really ­interested me. Subjects could range from the process of the breakup and evaporation of fuel droplets in an engine’s intake tract, to how the Phillips screws that held so many Japanese engines together were an invention of the devil.

Every one of us is full of stories and experiences that could be told. Writing them down is another matter. The best reasons not to are the questions, “What if somebody reads it? What if my writing is full of mistakes, lacks grace, and is a bore? Everyone will have written proof that I’m a weenie!”

Another reason never to put ­fingertips to keyboard is ­memory of the school experience. Too often, written assignments became humil­iation, leading to an unspoken deter­mination never to repeat such ignominy. This is a shame because I know so many ­people who are full of fascinating spoken stories and understandings, but have never written anything down. When they pass out of this life, they will take it all with them, denying such stories to us all.

Enthusiasm for my subjects got me past the negatives. I liked word pictures of how natural phenomena occur, but I had not been one of the gifted ones who could survey a daunting 20-foot-long equation on a university classroom blackboard and ­cockily say, “We see by inspection…”

RELATED: Motorcycles And Motorcycle Racing In A College Town In 1966

I could do the labs and get ­accurate results, but those ­20-footers weren’t my future. I wanted to be at the racetrack, and I managed to get there, spending the roughly 20 years after 1964 building and tuning racebikes. I led a dual existence—a day job that gave me access to machine tools, and a nightlife building racebikes in a basement for weekend action. Friday nights in season, friends and I would leave in vans full of prepared bikes, tools, and parts for long drives to tracks in the Eastern US and Canada. We’d arrive in time for sign-up, practice Saturday, race Sunday, and return. It was a kind of madness, made possible by youthful energy, 32-cent gasoline, and a willingness to put our money into cylinders, pistons, and tires rather than advisable, ­responsible mutual funds or mortgage payments. We put it into living as we chose to live. During those long drives, we shed our work-a-day selves to become racer-hopefuls.

I now think of motorcycling as my Christmas tree, and the orna­ments that adorn it are all the things I’ve had to try to under­stand along the way—about rubber ­technology, about metal alloys, about gasoline, and about aerodynamics. After some fascinating 1976 conversations with the late Gary Nixon, I also became curious about the details of how riders do what they do.

I was the little boy whose dad, as a train trip to the grandparents was about to get underway, carried me up to the huge frightening locomotive. It shimmered in its heat and shot out jets of steam. I was terrified, but I so wanted to be there, to take it all in, to make sense of such power. What was it? I collected roadside treasures—bolts and other parts fallen from cars—because they seemed to contain hints for me.

Technical writing is humbling ­because, two paragraphs into a subject, I may find I don’t really know what I’m talking about. Then it’s time to pull out and properly review books or papers with mouth-filling titles like “Deflagration of Monodisperse Sprays.” Or to phone those who do know and are willing to take the time to explain. Only once I could make clear spoken sense of the subject could I return to the keyboard. I owe a great deal to ­people like Harley’s Dick O’Brien, “Mr. ­Superbike” Rob Muzzy, and Miche­lin’s Francois Decima, who were willing to tell me real stuff. Because the tech writer’s job is to make the complex understandable, I had first to explain it clearly to myself in words—if possible, in terms of phenomena we have all experienced.

Kevin Cameron in his shop assembling a Yamaha TD1-B 250. (Gordon Cameron/)

During the present tedious epidemic, I returned to my shop after too long an absence and began the assembly of a Yamaha TD1-B 250 two-stroke roadracer like the one I’d ridden several times in 1967. Because it had been apart for more than 50 years, there were parts missing and cleaning to do. I had to make some things, requiring revived fabricating skills—the lathe, the milling machine, the welding torch. Walking away from the keyboard and returning to the racebike was not unlike the transformations that had taken place during those eight-hour van trips to the races, from ordinary working stiff to someone sharply focused on a special activity that had nothing to do with becoming department chairman, making money, or impress­ing anyone but the stopwatch. That special activity is ours alone.

“TDC” has been and will ­continue to be a distillation of those experiences, and the preparation and study that make them possible. I hope you will join me as the printing press yields to a digital future.

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