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Oct 12, 2014

A Story About A Dirty Rag

Hey, Maurice, Tyler, thanks for accepting my invitation.  Don't know if I'm gonna have much to offer you here, but your names popped up in my contacts and I thought, what the heck.

So for these two "subscribers", let me tell you all just a little bit about myself that you don't know [BIKE CONTENT ALERT]

I first rode a mountain bike, a yellow Ross, at Schwinn Bicycle Center, in New Castle, PA.  I was a BMX kid, about 16, when I first started working there, and they had me put together new bikes.  Didn't do any repairs, not even fixing flats.  That was Brian Park's job.

Due to the influence of the guys in the shop, I decided to buy a bike, but would it be a road bike, or a mountain bike?  There was a group of guys that did road rides from the shop all the time, and with the influence of the stacks of Bicycle Guide the guys gave me, along with the fact that Bob and Brian considered MTB just a fun pastime for when they weren't training (which should sound very familiar to anyone who's seen the movie Klunkerz), I bought a road bike.  A Schwinn Traveller.  Steel and lugged.  And I did ride with the group and did my first century.  Remember hitting 55 MPH tucking down a hill.  But in retrospect, I made the wrong decision.  Should've bought the Moab earlier. So I traded in my GT BMX bike for a Schwinn Moab in sparkly british racing green.  Loved it.  Loved everything about it.  But it wasn't until I'd moved to New England, that I really started riding it.

That was also when I discovered a magazine called Dirt Rag.  Printed in Pittsburgh, the city where I was born.  I wasn't sorry I'd left PA, but DR gave me a little dose of home every issue.  A bike magazine like I'd always loved, but instead of talking about California like every other magazine in the world (MBA in particular, and BMX Plus before it, and BMX Action, and Freestylin', ad nauseum) they wrote about places I knew or was at least familiar with.

So I've always had a special place in my heart for DR.  Even got published in it once.

Gotta go if I'm gonna fit a ride in.  Some Surly content next time, promise. Posted by Rob Kristoff at 1:34 PM