Editor's note: John Burns, a former associate editor at Cycle, takes this opportunity to respond to Soup's story, published yesterday, on the publication.

Fine, I'll bite. It's always fun to gaze back thru rose colored granny glasses at the girl who got away, but when she reappears 15 years later, well...

When I got hired in late '88 by Phil Schilling, things had already turned the corner. I reported to work in Westlake Village, which meant you could actually go to the Rock Store for lunch and be back in an hour. Lore has it that those guys mostly just rode other peoples' bikes for fun and put out the magazine as a sideline. My first ride, Phil and me rode FZR400s to lunch and he suggested it was a good idea to put a little engine like that in neutral at the red lights. As I look back upon it, it is by the grace of God a kid from flatland Missouri learned to ride those curvy-ass roads without dying. I did have my share of crashes.

It takes me back to see the Danny Coe byline on 'Soup, I learned a lot from that guy. Phil always said Dan coulda been Ed Lawson, I always thought he coulda been either Ed or that guy from ZZZZBest Carpet Cleaning. Also at that time you had Ken Vreeke, who is now the brain behind the excellent Dunlop advertising and Honda parts advtg. I think Ken is the most underrated motojournalist of that time, Hickman Haul-Ass Club and a bunch of Ken's stories were just really some of the best stuff out there. Photography by Rich Cox. This is a guy who could ride a Gold Wing with his left hand while shooting with his right. You had your Thad Wolff, you had your whatshisname (Mark Homchick) who (ran) Kawasaki advtg. now? You had my buddy Tim Carrithers. You also had Paul Halesworth and his wife in the art department and the main deal is that these were just all genuinely nice humans in a low-pressure work environment located in not quite the sticks, but close. We were cut off from the publishers and who knows who?

So I'm there for what, six months? When the whole shake-up occurs. Phil Schilling is out. Strangely enough, I am in, but we are all moving to Newport Beach down in the OC. What do I know? Sure why not? I am still kid in candy store...

So this is '89, and the new Editor is Steve Anderson. Steve is a great human and all that (and currently running the Buell race team), but he came directly from Cycle World, I think his title was Technical Editor. Newport Beach is what, 80 miles from the old digs though, and before the internet it was not so easy to just shoot stories and pictures back and forth through the ether, so Vreeke is gradually phased out, as are Coe and Rich Cox.

Other guys on staff included Tyrone van Hooydonk, who was hired shortly after myself and whose credits included being the Editor of his college paper as i recall, and who is now with the Motorcycle Safety Foundation or is it Discover Today's Motorcycling? And Steve hired the veteran Charles Everitt, who had been at Cycle Guide, I believe, and if you love his work you can still see it at Motorcyclist. Aong with Tim Carrithers. Also Charles' buddy Jim Miller, who is golfing in Arizona I imagine.

The point is that by '91, Cycle mag. as you like to remember it, with Cook and Phil and Gordon Jennings, had already ceased to exist years earlier; the Cycle mag that David Pecker put a fork into was really but a shadow reflected on the cave wall. The old office on Lindero Cyn where you could "test" at lunch had been replaced by an office with an ocean view, where the nearest place to air out a motorcycle was at least an hour away (and the urban sprawl has only gotten worse).

At the same time, full props to Steve for bringing guys like Gordon Jennings back into the mix what a guy that guy was... if only I'd had the maturity then to know who was addressing me. And I never met Cook Neilson, but he appears in Cycle World now and then doesn't he?

OK here's the point then, ok the next point: That golden era of Cyce mag. you like to remember was just that, a golden era created by a few special talented people who moved onto other things. When Cook left, he hung up his spurs. If he had kept on at Cycle, do you think the level of enthusiasm that won the Daytona Superbike race could be carried on 30-some years later? What made Cycle cool, when it was cool, was that a few special people who were interested in a whole range of cool things, including motorcycles, dropped in for a few years, produced great art of the moto kind, and moved on to the next thing.

So I agree, feel free to mourn the Cycle mag of legend, but the Cycle mag that got axed was er, well, I am not a business person. I see the circ numbers from '82. Have you got the ones from '91? And let's not forget there's this thing now called the Internet... Hell's Bells man, remember the mag would come in the mail and it would be the First Time you clapped eyes upon the new ZX-10 or CBR600 Hurricane or whatever. Times have changed...

Okay, rant off.

(John Burns now freelances for Yamaha's advertsing agency and a variety of other clients)