I have already commented here that CMM is the only foreign -from a spanish point of view- that I buy every month. Actually, import magazines are rather expensive so what I do is to buy them in set every four or five months, at half the cover price, from a guy in UK. I love that magazines, because it cover mostly japanese bikes, have tons of tech articles with good pictures, and the MIRA files articles are also quite interesting. They are such a good technical database that I scan the articles and keep them in the computer because I don't have more space to store magazines.
If you have a feeling of deja-vu with a bike magazines, what would you feel with a running magazine? or a pregnant woman magazine? Those magazines exhausted the subjects to deal with decades ago, but roll on over and over to please new readers. At least they can cover tests of new gear or new technologies, but in a classic bike magazine there is no such thing.
I work as a freelance bike journalist too. Obviously, when you have to write about something you didn't know first hand, you have to rely on books and magazines of the era, and you need to cross-check some of them to make sure the figures are right. Having a journalist that indeed lived during the time and had first-hand experience is an invaluable asset. Alan Cathcart works for the same magazine I have worked for. Never met him, but somebody like him, who has travelled the world to test bikes, who have met the big fish of the business, and has been doing so for the last years, can write about bikes much better and more than I could have in my lifetime where my first source of income is not bike-related.
Raul
