community

By Melonee Hurt Steve Kasacek’s handiwork stretches from the woods of Maine to the remote hills of Arkansas. Most days his workspace is five miles deep in the woods somewhere. His home address consists of a storage unit and a mailbox. He has been known to sleep in his car or next to it, regularly ...

How catering to mountain bikers is helping small towns Editor’s Note: This feature first appeared in issue 205 of our print edition of Dirt Rag Magazine. Like what you see? Subscribe today to catch issue 212, in production now and soon to set sail. Photos from this web edition taken by Brett Rothmeyer in Copper ...

Editor’s Note: This feature first appeared in issue 210 of our print edition of Dirt Rag Magazine. Like what you see? Subscribe today to catch issue 212, in production now and soon to set sail. By Carolyne Whelan, illustrations by Stephen Haynes Anissa Lamare may be the only female downhill mountain biker in India. She ...

In issue #210 of Dirt Rag Magazine, we spoke with people of varying backgrounds about their experiences learning to mountain bike, build community among riders and use bikes as a tool of self-discovery and self-reliance. Bikes and wilderness both have proven positive effects on our psyche, from destressing after a hard day at work to ...

By Melonee Hurt The newly-opened Tannery Knobs mountain bike park in Johnson City, Tennessee, is small at just shy of four miles of trails on 40 acres of land. But what it lacks in size, it more than makes up for in impact for this burgeoning mountain town. Although Johnson City has always been surrounded ...

A beautiful story about the power of two wheels and a community built through bicycling. After a devastating breakup, Rafael finds solitude and restoration on the open road, pedaling his way to emotional health from Mexico City to northern Colorado. With just $500 to his name, he spearheads a revolution to help the underprivileged members of ...

Lots of cities have recycle-a-bicycle program, from Bikes Not Bombs in Boston to Free Ride in Pittsburgh, from Chainbreaker Collective in Santa Fe to Bike Works in Seattle. These are places you can go to learn about bikes and bike maintenance, and to work towards owning your own bike through volunteer hours and work put ...

by David Tucker It’s late afternoon and the air has a bite to it. The heat of summer is gone, replaced by the angular and indirect sunlight of fall. Four grade-schoolers huddle together while their mate sits on his bike, poised above a miniature tabletop, waiting anxiously to drop in. “Can I send it?” he ...

If you mountain bike, you likely ride outside (unless you are extra special). While East of the Mississippi, public lands aren’t quite as common, they’re much more a part of the riding experience for our Western readers. The difference between public lands and state or county lands may sound confusing, because it is. We talked ...

By Bryan Chambala   In 2017, there was no bike shop in Millinocket, Maine, but there was a librarian with a Karate Monkey frame in his garage and a bunch of parts that didn’t fit. “I had a garage full of road bikes that I had assembled over the years, but I was having a ...

The first bike shop job I ever had was at a place called Rob N Charlie’s in Santa Fe, New Mexico. One of my wrenching mentors there gave me good advice when I began working on an expensive bike for the first time: “Consider the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm.” That advice stuck with ...

By Emma Walker If you’re coming from the Front Range, Del Norte is on the way to big-name destinations—Wolf Creek, Pagosa Springs, Durango—but blink, and you might miss it. It was hard to believe, as I circled my truck around the block to pull in at the historic Windsor Hotel, that this was the place ...

Since Halloween, I have been fundraising for AIDS/LifeCycle to earn my spot riding with roughly 2,200 other cyclists and 500 volunteers from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The ride brings awareness to the streets of California and our internet communities; the funds bring needed financial support to organizations who provide education, community, and medical access ...