From fantasy to reality

Topbike magazine was launched in March 1999, as a bi-monthly addition to Topcar. I was an avid reader from the beginning. The only other serious magazine at the time was Bike SA. I preferred topbike for its high quality photos and writing.

As an obsessive consumer of bike magazines, the Bike (UK) magazine has become my absolute favourite over time. The writing was sharp, witty and humorous, and influenced the way I wrote.

When I started freelancing biking articles about 3 years ago with cartoday.com, I immediately knew I wanted to be a bike journo fulltime. But potential was nil. Bike magazines are run by a skeleton crew; mostly a few editors with material supplied by freelancers.

I was hoping cartoday.com’s printed counterpart, Car magazine, would get into publishing reports on bikes like they did in the 80’s.

No chance, I was told.

I also wrote to Bike UK but never heard from them.

I had no hope to ever do this fulltime.

So I settled in with freelancing, accepting my lot. I did it for the fun after all, not the fame.

Yeah right.

As it happened, media24 negotiated an agreement with car magazine uk, and bike magazine uk, to publish some of their content. So there it was – my two favourite magazines in one. I was ecstatic.

For a long time I was really dreaming, wishing and cursing to get my name into topbike magazine. I was published on the internet mainly, and desperately wanted to break into print. Well, any bike magazine would do, but topbike would be the cherry in the cake.

So I was harassing Ian Els (editor for topbike) with emails and ph calls to do a story. he suddenly had to move to Cape Town from Johannesburg, after media24 bought out topbike and Topcar. I was now able to bang on his door, stalk him and take him hostage. Eventually he gave in and I did a story for topbike. And he was very happy with my produce.

To cut a long story short, they’ve been looking for a 3rd writer for a while, and fitted the bill. He offered me the opportunity and I accepted on the spot.

I have moved to joburg. I haven’t missed cape town yet, but probably will in due course.

All I can think off now is all the bikes I will ride, scenery I will see, and telling our readers about it.

I am about to start living my dream. And someone’s going to pay me for it.

They say one of the secrets of life is to get paid for what you would do for free.

Does life get any better?

Check out:

http://www.bikemagazine.co.uk

http://www.topbike.co.za/