Super Hunky:

My Dinner With Super Hunky

Rick Sieman's Monkey Butt: Two Views

"Holley and the Harley"

(excerpted from Monkey Butt)

My Dinner With Super Hunky

by Brian Halton

It's no secret to CityBike readers that I became smitten with off-road riding over 8 years ago. That love affair literally changed my life. I stopped smoking because of it. I'm in better physical condition because of it, too.

I'll never forget the day I rode back into the pit area at the Pacifica Motorcycle Club's land on a Honda XR250 test bike. Pacifica native Jim Trout had led me around the club course one chilly winter morning, taking me up and down the hills he knew so well, yet that I had never seen. When he led me back twenty minutes later, I was short of breath and soaking wet with perspiration. Dean Sweet walked towards me grinning his famous grin and asked, "Well, Brian, what do you think?"

"I think this is the center of motorcycling that's what I think!" I remember screaming. "It's so violent! I love it!"

From that point on, I was hooked. I began studying how to get better at dirt bike riding. Now, after all those years, I'm not half bad, but the lessons didn't come easy. You want to be a good dirt bike rider, you gotta really try...

Of all the publications that I ferociously devoured in those early years, Rick Seiman's Dirt Bike became my favorite. It had humor. It liked to pick fights. It gave real-world evaluations and stuck to them. It gave tech tips on how to ride through techinical stuff and what you should have in your fanny pack. It was clearly committed to defending our sport against the hysterical rhetoric of the Greens.

People have often asked me what quality CityBike has that a lot of other publications lack, why CityBike survived being repeatedly imitated these last few years. I always answer that question the same way: "We ride a lot. As long as you stay involved, as long as you ride, you will always be in touch with your reader..."

DirtBike magazine under the editorship of Rick "Super Hunky" Seiman had that same quality. "The Hunkster" was out there with you, raging, falling down, breaking things, breaking bones, drinking beer at night and telling tall tales around a campfire.

When I read in Cycle News that he had been shitcanned from his job at Dirt Bike for things he'd written about Publisher Roland Hinz, I had to talk to the man myself.

What better idea than to hook up with Rick Seiman on my way back from our Baja ride last May. Rick and his wife, Arlene, live just over the Mexican border near Rosarita Beach. Their lovely home on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean was the setting for this interview.

"Super Hunky," as he is known in dirt bike circles, is a compact figure. Thin-waisted with big biceps and forearms, he greeted me with a firm handshake. Years of competiton weight lifting shows in his build, and I passsed by an array of barbells on my way into his living room. I'd guess he'd be about 5 feet 8 inches tall, with a barrel chest and that famous handlebar moustache. Rick told me that he plans to continue to build off-road trucks and compete in four-wheeled racing in Baja. An incredible rig was in progress in the garage. Fittingly, he planned to suspend the Baja off-road racer with motorcycle shock absorbers front and rear.

Rick Sieman set to enjoy a "meal" of desert tortoise. The tortoise took on enormous symbolic significance when environmental groups managed to stop the Barstow-to-Vegas desert race to "save" the animal from the wanton killings that were supposedly taking place each time the race was run. No deaths by dirt bike were ever documented, but the race remains banned. The desert tortoise, meanwhile, continues to decline in population thanks to raven predation and loss of habitat to development. Photo courtesy of Rick Sieman.

Halton: What made Dirt Bike such a success?

"Don't listen to the gloom and doom eco-Nazis. They're just pissed because they see you having fun, and they're such mean spirited jerks that they want to put a stop to your joy..."

Sieman: To me, for a good book (industry word for magazine) to be a success, it has to be one that sells like wildfire, one that people love dearly. Now, perhaps Dirt Bike's graphics weren't modern. Perhaps the writing style was a little loose. All I know is that we wrote for people who liked what we wrote and like the way we said it. We wrote for riders who ride...

I was Mr. Know It All, Rondo Talbot. I would attend these Dirt Bike editorial meetings every week or two and the topic would be thrown out, "Well, what should we do with the magazine?"

I would pontificate about what I thought we should do and was then politely ignored. It's a most uncomfortable position to truly know what your readers want, proffer that advice and be totally ignored.

You've got to understand that I was out there riding virtually every weekend. Riding dirtbikes, racing dirtbikes.

The funny thing is that all I wanted to do was ride. My tastes are as common as pig's tracks. All I wanted to do when I got home from work was go out and sneak in a couple of hours or riding before darkness. I didn't care where, I didn't care what kind of bike. I wanted to go out and thrash around, break a sweat and have a ball. So I realized that if I like this and everybody around me likes this, then that's what were going to do. We're going to give 'em what they like!

Look at the success of Howard Stern! Why does Howard Stern succeed? He's crude. He's lecherous, sure. But Howard Stern knows what people really have on their minds. He understands the needs of the basic grunt.

I understand the needs of the basic dirtbiker. They want to get the hell away from the monotony of their normal life. They want to blow the cobwebs off. Every jump in their mind is thirty feet longer than it was, five feet higher and they want to have these dreams and thoughts carry them through the next workweek. Understand that basic premise and you will understand how a magazine should be.

I was looking at a recent issue of Motocross Journal, which I refer to as Motocross Urinal. I'm sorry. I really don't care that Jeremy McGrath has a problem with his nipple ring irritating him when he's riding. I don't care what food he eats. I don't care what sounds he plays in his luxurious van as he heads down the highway. I could give a rat's ass. That doesn't mean anything to me as a normal, real-world dirt biker.

I'd rather hear what a 53-year-old fireman does to keep his old XR 500 going and where he goes riding. I'd rather hear his opinions. I'd rather spend five hours with that guy drinking a case of beer than one minute reading about the celebrity off road set .

You know what Hell means to me? For me, Hell is not a burning pit full of molten lava. For me, Hell is being forced to work on the staff of People Magazine, turning out bubble-headed, inane puffery!

Halton: You've been a vocal proponents of our right to ride on public land for quite some time, even going to federal court to defend that right. Did the two-stroke ban surprise you?

Sieman: Not at all. In fact, this is only the first step in tightening the screws toward the complete elimination of not only new two-stroke bikes, but all two-stroke bikes, no matter what the year.

You see, one of the agendas written in the 1972 platform of the Sierra Club is... "the elimination of all forms of motorized recreational vehicle activity of any sort on public lands."

I know for a fact that within three years, the Green Sticker plan will have an inclusionary rider added to take the cutoff year back to all motorcycles made after 1990. The tactics are clear, but our so-called industry leaders apparently can't see writing on the wall. Unless something is done, within a decade only emissions-legal four-strokes will be legal for use on public lands, and you can bet your ass that even these will be limited severely.

Doubt it? Take a look at what the outboard motor industry is facing. The cost of a typical small boat motor will increase $1,000 to $3,000 by next year.Snowmobiles are a target. Weedwhackers, lawn mowers, snowblowers... you name it. They're all firmly fixed in the gun sights and the trigger finger is tightening.

Halton: Is that why you moved to Mexico?

Sieman: It's sad to say this, but I moved to Baja to have some freedom. The United States has turned into a virtual nightmare of overregulation. Freedom as we used to know it has virtually disappeared.

Right now, in the small community where I live, I can open up my garage, fire up my KDX200, and go riding out in the hills, with absolutely no hassle. No helicopters are hovering in the sky to write me a ticket. No eco-police are closing land and putting up fences.

Only one rule exists here: Common sense. Don't bother anyone, and they don't bother you. If I'm riding off road and see some cattle or horses, I ease off the throttle and carefully ride around and don't disturb them.

In Mexico, they have a law that makes sense: all roads, paved or dirt, must be open for public use. If I come to a gated fence, I'm expected to close it after I pass through it. This means that you could hop on your dual-purpose bike, and quite literally explore the entire Baja peninsula with no problems, as long as you use your head.

When being accused of "destroying the environment" by riding my bike off-road, I must respond with a hearty, "Bullshit!" Think about this for a moment: In the great southwest, the wind blows hard many times during any given year. And when the wind blows, literally millions of tons of sand and dirt are tossed into the air and moved around in a random pattern. Dunes are destroyed and new dunes are created. Sand washes change shape. The character of the landscape alters dramatically almost overnight.

What person in their right mind would say that my bike passing over that same terrain will effect any measurable change? Don't listen to the gloom and doom eco-Nazis. They're just pissed because they see you having fun, and they're such stiff-backed, tight-assed, black-hearted mean spirited jerks that they want to put a stop to your joy. It might sound simplistic, but it all boils down to that.

Life is short. Enjoy it.

Ride! And ride free.

(Continued)

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