As my finger triggers the mouse-click that will send this post hurtling through cyberspace, I’m minutes away from locking my front door behind me and embarking on the annual Interbike ritual. I’m not alone. The entire Dirt Rag staff, not to mention everybody and their cousin in the bike industry, are making like buzzards heading to Hinckley.

Except we’re heading to Las Vegas—the place where it’s tough to know where the bullshit ends and the truth begins.

Which reminds me of a little essay that I wrote in 2000 for the Dirtier Daily—the Dirt Rag ‘zine that we hand-made every night after the show, poolside at the now-extinct Vagabond Motel (a fine establishment that was home to few fleas that enjoyed some mighty prime real estate on The Strip). After furious editorial activity involving many beers, followed by a late-night trip to Kinkos—viola, a stack of the Dirtier Daily was hot off the press and ready for surreptitious distribution, next morning on the show floor. It goes without saying that the Dirtier Daily days were long before Dirt Rag had a blog. So, in keeping with the spirit of those old-school days, I’m not going to re-type my old essay—check it out below in the scan from my archive copy of the Dirtier Daily.

The Dirtier Daily

Ah, those were heady days. One of my favorite Dirt Rag Interbike “gimmicks” of all time took place in 2000, when we all dressed up in yellow Devo-esque hazmat suits for the traditional Dirt Rag booth party that goes down the afternoon of opening day of the show. With free booze and snacks, the booth party is a veritable who’s who of cycling’s underbelly. A few legit celebrities are bound to pop by too. Gotta keep it real, don’tchaknow.

But I digress. My point, if I have one, is that we’ve left those hand-folded ‘zine days in the desert dust, and now we’re rocking the 24-hour news cycle with a kick-ass web site. So keep your eyes on the Dirt Rag home page this week for daily reports from Interbike’s Dirt Demo and trade show. And since we can keep it real with the best of them, look for some reports from the after-hours action as well. We’ll be blogging our fingers off, posting plenty of pics and, if all goes well, rocking some video too. I’m not sure where sleep fits into that equation.

By the way, our offices will be closed September 22nd through 26th while we burn in hell. We’ll get back to all those phone calls when we return to the office on the 29th.

hazmat