In 1989 the postman brought me the first issue of a new magazine called Dirt Rag. It was not much different from a dozen or so inexpensively printed local mountain bike newsletters that had come my way, with one major exception. Dirt Rag lasted over thirty years.
This week the Internet brought me the news of its final issue.
Dirt Rag lasted about 23 years longer than my own seminal MTB magazine, the Fat Tire Flyer. Dirt Rag was the spiritual successor to the Flyer, irreverent and not as concerned with the equipment as with the people and the experience of mountain biking.
I had the pleasure and honor of representing Dirt Rag at a few trade shows and seeing my own work published in its pages. Publisher Maurice Tierney and I became good friends over the past three decades. I hope his ride into the sunset is as satisfying as his ride out of the dawn of the modern age of mountain biking.