Article by Chris Callen

I was thinking the other day about elementary school. Funny place to start an editorial in a motorcycle magazine, I know, but bear with me. Do you remember when they picked teams?

Every one of us has that memory. Two captains standing out in the middle of the playground. One kid after another getting called over. The athletes went first. The popular kids. The ones everybody knew. Then the line got shorter. Eventually there were only a handful of us left. The kid who spent more time drawing than throwing a football. The dropout before anyone knew he’d become one. The greaser. The longhair. The kid with a denim jacket covered in patches. The one who couldn’t seem to fit inside whatever box everyone else had decided was normal. Maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe it was.

For a lot of us, that’s where this whole thing started. Long before the motorcycles, the tattoos. Long before the beards, the gray hair, the shops, the magazines, the races, and the rallies. We learned what it felt like to be on the outside looking in. The funny thing is, years later, you realize there were a lot more of us than there ever were of them. We just hadn’t found each other yet. Motorcycles changed that.

Somewhere along the road, all of us, the misfits, the mechanics, the artists, the welders, the veterans, the musicians, the dreamers, the people who never really fit anywhere else started gathering around the same campfires. We found our tribe. That’s really what Cycle Source has been about since the very first issue.

It was never about chrome or horsepower. It was never even about Harley-Davidson. It was about giving the people who never quite belonged anywhere else a place where they belonged completely.

Looking back over the last couple of months, that thought has been on my mind more than ever. Heather and I just wrapped up our America 250: Two Wheels, One Nation ride. Nearly two weeks on the road, crossing this incredible country from landmark to landmark, celebrating 250 years of America the only way that made sense to us, from the seat of a motorcycle.

We stood at Ellis Island thinking about the millions who came here hoping for something better. We visited the Liberty Bell, the Washington Monument, the Gateway Arch, the Harley-Davidson Museum, Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, the Golden Gate Bridge, and finally rolled all the way to the Santa Monica Pier.

Thousands of miles. Countless conversations. Hundreds of little roadside moments that never make it into the history books. What struck me wasn’t how different America is. It was how similar the people are. Walk into enough gas stations, diners, little-town motorcycle shops, roadside museums, or campgrounds, and you start to realize something. Motorcycle people speak the same language. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, California, South Dakota, or somewhere in between. Someone always walks over.

“What year is that?” “Where you headed?” or “Mind if I take a look?”

Thirty minutes later you’ve made another friend. That trip reminded me that motorcycles have always done something politics, social media, and television seem incapable of doing. They introduce strangers.

That feeling carried right into everything we’ve been doing here at Cycle Source. Our YouTube channel crossed 10,000 subscribers. Maybe that’s just another number to the internet, but for us it represents thousands of people who chose to spend a little time with our stories. We didn’t chase trends to get there. We simply kept pointing the camera at real motorcycles and the people who build them. The magazine continues telling stories about garage builders who still remind us why this culture exists in the first place. ShopTalk rolls on every Sunday night, connecting people who may never meet face-to-face but somehow feel like old friends every week.

Now we’re getting ready to descend on Sturgis with five Cycle Source events that we’ve spent months planning. From our 20th Annual Custom Bike Show to the S&S Burnout Drags, Vintage Day, the Run To The Line Number 20, the Mini Bike TT and Biker Olympics, every one of them exists for one reason. To bring people together. And as soon as we catch our breath from Sturgis, we’ll head to Salisbury for what may be the most meaningful SmokeOut we’ve ever produced. Twenty-seven years. Think about that. For twenty-seven years The SmokeOut has been a reunion for people who never needed an invitation to belong.

This year we’ll welcome old friends, introduce new builders through Randall Noldge’s incredible Legends Invitational, raise money again through the Tankful Art Auction, watch races, hear great music, and spend another weekend proving that motorcycles are still one of the greatest equalizers ever invented. Nobody asks what you do for a living around a campfire or what neighborhood you grew up in. Nobody wants to know how many followers you have. They want to know what you’re riding. Where you’ve been. And where you’re headed next. Maybe that’s why this life has lasted so long. It’s never been about the motorcycles. They’re simply the reason we found one another.

Now, looking back today, maybe being the last kid picked wasn’t such a bad thing after all. Maybe being the outsider prepared us to recognize each other years later. Maybe all those people who didn’t quite fit in eventually built the greatest community any of us could have imagined. If that’s true, then Cycle Source has never been a magazine. It’s been a meeting place.

Whether you found us through the printed pages back in 1997, discovered us on YouTube last week, tune into ShopTalk every Sunday night, ride with us in Sturgis, or call The SmokeOut your annual family reunion, you’re part of the same story.

So, this invitation is as simple today as it was twenty-nine years ago. Come one… Come all. There’s always room around the fire.