"Amish" Editor and co-founder of Outcast Cycles Magazine. Known by many as "AmishCrackDealer", he doesn't pull punches and says whatever he feels like needs to be said (if only to calm the voices in his own head).

"Nate" The other co-founder and editor for Outcast Cycles Magazine. The technical guru of the dynamic duo, he and Amish are long-time riding partners and friends. Nate also handles the sales aspect of the magazine and is generally the more user-friendly of the crew.

"Custom" doesn’t have to mean "expensive" By Nate Prior to going to BikeWeek this past February, I was able to arrange a deal to pick up some custom hard cases for my Suzuki Bandit. The hard cases have proven to be incredibly useful when traveling, providing a water resistant place to load up without worrying about anything coming loose along the way. After getting the cases home I went ahead and gave them the truck bed liner treatment on the exterior for durability and a better overall look with my bike. The interior of the cases consist of the plywood they were made out of with a thick coat of epoxy. They work well but still require me to put any clothing items I want to pack away in some kind of bag. Typically, a grocery store plastic bag fit the bill, but doesn’t look too nice. Also those bags have a tendency to tear after repeated use. I searched around the Internet to find a source for custom bag liners with little success. The few places I found that would do custom work wanted way more money than I was willing to part with for simple bag liners. Then I stumbled on to a post over at Adventure Rider Forum. A member there was offering custom made products for motorcyclists. His thread showed items ranging from paperwork pouches to tool rolls and tent stake pouches. His prices for these items were almost unbelievable. To top it all off, he mentioned that he would be happy to accommodate custom orders. Not being one to pass up a good deal, I sent Brady Sturm (aka "corrado113" at ADVRider) a private message to discuss my needs. After a few quick messages and measurements of my side cases we had struck a deal so good, that admittedly left me with little in the way of expectations. The best deal I found prior to talking with Brady, would’ve cost me $75 per side bag. Brady’s price was only $30 per bag. Since I saved so much money on the case liners, I was able to order a tent stake pouch and a custom tent pole pouch. My total price including shipping was still less than one of the other guy’s bags. Brady and I discussed the details of the order on a Sunday evening. I had the order in my grubby paws the following Thursday. You really couldn’t ask for a much faster turn around time on a custom order. At first glance the bags look very similar to something I would buy in a store. They are made from 500 denier Coated Cordura Nylon with heavy duty polyester thread. Brady also has a 1000 denier Cordura available. I chose the 500 denier to allow easier compression of the bags when they aren’t fully loaded in the hard side cases. The bags came with nice carrying loops and a zipper across the top of the bag. All seams appear to be very straight and clean. No loose or out of place threads are anywhere to be found. The tent stake and pole pouches are made of the heavier 1000 denier Cordura with Velcro hold downs on the end flap. Quality is again, very good and came in made exactly to the specs I gave Brady. I’ll be giving the bags a good field test in a few weeks on a trip traveling from Mississippi up through Ohio and back down the east coast. They’ll be getting good use, and given the full torture test. For the quality, turn around time, and price these bags are hard to beat. Brady can be contacted at bradysturm@earthlink.net tell him Nate from Outcast Cycles Magazine sent you.
"If I Controlled Hyosung US..."   By "Amish" After reading some customer concerns on the forums, and saying my opinions about what should be done, I thought this issue’s Smackdown might be a good place to let loose on my ideas in hopes that someone out there might be listening. The products themselves, the Hyosung brand motorcycles, are fine as far as I am concerned. They compete well within their target market and I have no real issues with the bikes. My focus is on the company itself - establishing its name and its presence in the US market. Aside from a Bachelors degree in Marketing, English, and Art, I successfully co-own several businesses and therefore I think I know it all. Lets see some basic advertising. I’m not talking about the wasted space in national big name magazines - I’m talking grass roots stuff. Start from scratch and put the efforts where they will make the most impact. First thing is an open house event. Announce an open house at the US Headquarters facility in Atlanta, Georgia. Make it on a Saturday as the HQ is located in an industrial park area and the weekends will generally be less invasive to other businesses’ operations. Get with some local hotels and get a group discount rate available for those wanting to attend the event. Paste the promotional code on your website and the owner-forums on the internet (there are 7 active forums dealing with Hyosung in the US). At the open house, have several models of the bikes available for inspection by the people. I would have some local vendors for food and accessories like leathers and saddlebags, etc. I would make a brief announcement to the crowd, introducing myself as the Hyosung US president and thank everyone for attending (even if there are only 3 people there). Take a few minutes and outline what things I have instore for the company and what services I am going to provide. I would outline what shows we will be attending and maybe introduce the regional sales reps to the crowd so owners can put a person with a name and have that "contact" that they all want. Really put on a Hyosung show! Hand out free Hyosung key fobs or something. After that open house, its time to make things happen. I’d work with a local screen-printer to brand and design Hyosung apparel. Everyone wants a cool shirt with their brand on it. Avoiding the "skull and dagger" crowd of t-shirts, offer bright blue shirts with the Hyosung logo in white and the Hyosung name on the back or on the sleeves. Sell them on the website and at shows. Make sure dealers have some for events and for customers. Stickers, decals, key fobs, shirts, hats, gloves, jackets, helmets... get the logo on everything and everywhere! I’d explore working with some MSF classes to replace their worn out 1980 Hondas with some Hyosung 125 cruisers and sportbikes. People learning to ride - this can be their first contact with a motorcycle brand. The bikes are strong enough and capable enough to handle the training classes and user-friendly enough to satisfy the new riders. Racing teams are another avenue. There are already several out there using Hyosung brand bikes on the track. Work with them - decal their bikes up, even their trailers! Advertise that the company supports its race enthusiasts and street riders. Toot your own horn - these are things that other companies arent doing! Have a regional sales rep do a coast to coast ride on a Hyosung. Have a company graphic’d truck follow them and hand out goodies. Broadcast it on the website. Show the durability of these bikes! I’ve used mine personally for an Iron Butt ride - I know they can handle it. Advertise that as the US president, I own my own GT650 or GV650. Not company paid - I bought it. Lastly, I’d support the owner-network. Trade website links with forums, aftermarket companies, and dealerships. (Would help to advertise heavily in Outcast Cycles Magazine too!). Develop a parts and accessories catalog, even explore what the customizers are doing and put the design team to work developing Hyosung branded parts like seat cowls, saddlebags, windshields, and exhaust systems. Make the ownership of a Hyosung brand bike fun. Make it seem less like a business and more like fun. If the people who work there aren’t projecting an honest fun atmosphere, then send them off to work elsewhere. Everyone should have a good contact with someone from Hyosung US. I promise these small things could generate huge things for Hyosung.
Surviving the Summer By Nate Motorcyclists put a lot of time and effort into maintaining their motorcycles. Everything is adjusted, lubricated, torque to spec, and double checked on almost religious basis. Are we doing enough? With all the focus put on the machine, we sometimes forget to maintain the most complicated machine we have; our bodies. Here we are in the early days of summer and temps in my neck of the woods have been in the upper 90s during the day and the mid to upper 80’s at night. With temps approaching 100F it doesn’t take long before the heat index (what the temperature feels like) is north of 110F. That’s pretty farking hot. Without proper preparation, you can quickly begin to experience signs of Heat Exhaustion or even Heat Stroke. Symptoms vary by the person but commonly include excessive sweating followed by unexplained stop of sweating, headaches, dizziness, nausea, and even confusion that seems almost like the person is drunk. Without correction this can lead to convulsions, and even unconsciousness. Whenever you spend any amount of time in these kinds of high temperatures you have to make sure you maintain your body properly for it. Ideally you’ll be in peak physical condition with no more than 8% body fat, and a good BMI, all while maintaining a sub 6 minute mile run time. Reality is, in my case, I’m not exactly the picture of health and fitness. Knowing that to be the case, I must make sure to take extra precautions. Many moons ago I found myself in San Antonio TX, on the 2nd of January. You wouldn’t think heat would be an issue in January, even in TX. Due to the level of activities I was engaging in, as well as all the hostile people in big hats, the 80 temperature rapidly became an issue. This is where I learned one of the most important steps to maintain your body for the heat; proper hydration. We carried around our waists a 1 liter canteen at all times. We were constantly badgered about finishing at least ¾ of a canteen every hour. Failure to do so would result in extra PT. In hindsight that seems somewhat counterproductive. The lesson made it into my head though. The volume of water your body needs on a hot day is really hard to fathom. Drinking a liter of water every hour, usually allows you to hear the water "slosh" in your stomach. Even though hearing the sloshing is odd, I’ve yet to have any heat related issues. Drinking alcohol or caffeinated drinks won’t help. That big gulp of soda sounds like a good idea but will actually accelerate your dehydration. The only way to go here is water. Sports drinks come in a distant second but will help if you’re on the verge of dehydration. The sun works hard to put you into heat exhaustion so you need to work hard to minimize the sun’s effects. The only way to do this is to cover up exposed skin. It sounds odd, but wearing full mesh gear in the summer will keep you significantly cooler than going the t-shirt and jeans route. Think about it this way. Our body has a pretty good system of keeping itself cool; sweating. When you’re riding along with a lot of your skin exposed to the sun and wind, your body has to work double time just to produce enough sweat to start to cool you down. The sun’s rays are evaporating the sweat as it comes out. The wind is also pulling it away from your skin where it needs to do its work. With good mesh gear on you still get the cooling effect from sweating. The sun can’t evaporate your sweat as quickly. The amount of air coming through the jacket is just enough to allow the sweat to sit on the surface of your skin and transfer heat. It’s constantly cycling new sweat that gets heated and then replace with more new sweat. We just have to accept that getting sweaty is a part of riding in the summer. Take lots of breaks on the hot days. The only way you’ll be able to get that ¾-1 liter of water per hour is by making some extra stops here and there. It’s a good idea to plan the hottest days as leisurely ride days. Trying to log a 1000 mile day in 100+F temps is just a bad idea all around. Last and certainly not least is to know your own limitations. Not everyone is cut out for logging 500 miles through the Sahara desert at 110F. It’s tough sometimes to recognize our limitations, particularly when we’re riding with friends. Everyone has their own tolerance levels; rarely in life will you find a riding buddy with identical limitations. Knowing your limits as well as you’re riding partner’s limitations will help you identify when things are going south. Better to park the bike and hang out inside the air conditioning for a few hours than to pass out on the bike while riding. Keep the shiny side up.
"The legality of business"   By "Amish" I started this magazine a little over 7 months ago, with the help of my business partners, Nate and Sandy. I think one of the big reasons Outcast Cycles Magazine is so different from the thousands of other rags is because we started Outcast because we wanted to. Meaning, it wasn’t about making money or getting free swag or living the rockstar lifestyle. It was about writing and living motorcycles. Sure, we stumbled a little with the collection of material for the magazine, missed a few spelling errors, etc. But it was because of the help of our readers we have evolved into what the magazine is today. We not only rely on our forum supporters and counterparts, but we also rely on our readers to submit interesting and enjoyable stories and features. I think we are probably more accessable than most magazines as far as contacting us and meeting us at events or on forums. We are all still as real as we have always been. We hold down day jobs and dream about finding the golden pass to be able to do this magazine as a fulltime gig. With hard work, it should happen eventually, and if it doesn’t, it won’t stop us from still putting out a good product. Again, we do this because we love it. All of this is said, because I have to do some "laying down of the law" after some recent phone calls we received from a few parts suppliers. We were contacted to verify some information that was given to the parts supplier. Without calling names or publicly embarassing anyone, the story appears to be that an individual contacted the parts supplier to obtain free parts with the implied promise of thanking them as "sponsors" in the pages of Outcast. After clarifying the situation with the parts suppliers, we knew we had to prevent something like this from happening in the future. However much these next statements may offend some people, I think most of us can understand and accept them. No one has the right to promise, imply, or demand space in the magazine. While it may seem cool to try and get free things in exchange for writing about them, it puts our magazine in jeapordy and out on the limb to those who are promised, supplying parts, or just plain duped. We do not support such actions and will not be party to such things. If you want to do a story for Outcast Cycles, I can not tell you how much it is appreciated. We love stories from our readers and product reviews from customers. But to represent yourself as an Outcast writer or staff member (without authorization from us), demeans the magzine, the community, all of us. It hurts the few suppliers and businesses who work with our community, and puts us all in a bad spotlight. If you want to conduct a story or interview with a manufacturer or company, specifically and soley for Outcast Cycles - thats great. But first you need to contact us, get approval from us, and we can even call ahead to help setup or verify the interview and photos. This is how things are done in the magazine business. No promises for advertising space can be made, and no compensation can be demanded by either party. These things can only be handled by Nate, Sandy, or myself. On a personal note, we have put a lot of effort, time, and expense into this magazine. I was beside myself when I learned that someone was using our hard work to scam a business. Make no bones about it, it was a scam job and I know exactly who did it. To make promises or pressure a company while "implying" employment with Outcast Cycles is flat out dirty pool and makes our efforts twice as hard when something like this happens. Now, to all of those who have played by the rules, submitted stories and features, even suggestions and ideas, YOU are the reason we put this magazine together. I can not begin to thank all of you enough, I wish I knew how. I hope this "clarification" doesn’t hinder you from submitting articles to us. And to the companies and businesses who need to verify any future articles, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Thank you everyone.