VOL. 50 ISSUE 19 MAY 14, 2013
P73
BY LARRY LAWRENCE
IO MAN
PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF CHRISTOPHER BUCHANAN/INSIGNIA FILMS
M MOTORCYCLE JOURNALIST TO
NATIONAL RADIO PERSONALITY
I
f you're a fan of National Public Radio
(NPR) you probably have heard of Peter
Sagal, the host of the network's popular
weekly show "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!"
"Wait Wait" is a quiz program where guests
test their knowledge against some of the
best and brightest in the news and entertainment world while figuring out what's
real news and what's made up.
Now here's a quiz for you: Real or
fake? One of Sagal's jobs before he became a famous radio host was being a
writer at the country's largest motorcycle
magazine.
If you guessed the story was real you
are indeed a Sagal expert (okay, sure,
this wouldn't have been much of an article if it were fake). It would have been
easy to miss Sagal's moto-journalism career. It lasted just one summer.
In 1985 he was a student at Harvard
University and decided to send letters out
to nearly all the motorcycle magazines of
the day inquiring about a paid internship.
It was Cycle magazine that answered his
letter and during the summer of '85 Sagal suddenly found himself in Westlake
Village, California, working with what is
now considered a legendary staff at the
defunct publication.
A lot has happened in Sagal's life in the
nearly 30 years since he wrote for Cycle,
but he says his memories of that time
are still vivid and he learned that being
a motorcycle journalist, while sounding
like the dream job, wasn't always what it's
cracked up to be. Well "crack up" might
not be the best choice of words. It turns
out that's exactly what Sagal did a few
times on Cycle's test bikes.
