Like all good things, my "factory ride" with Dirt Rider came to an end. Fourteen years later in 1996, when Mr. Petersen sold his 50-year-old publishing company to an investment group, I saw the writing on the wall (or maybe it was the skid marks in the dirt) and knew that the editorial life as I knew it was coming to an end. Not to mention that the financial departure package they offered to senior employees who were ready to leave made a good down payment on the Porsche I drove to my new job at EarthLink Network the following Monday as I rode off into the sunset in pursuit of the dot-com dream.
Today, at 60 years of age, I spend my time pursuing the love of my creative life, photography, in the fine-art market. I have a pair of licensing agreements with fine art publishers, one of them for my old moto photos from the heyday of American motocross with Rick Weedn's VintageArte.com and the other with his mother Flavia's company. The Flavia Company (www.flaviaco.com) is where my non-moto work is marketed and licensed.
Micky Dymond
Keeping me company are my wife Amy Diamond and our dogs, Sam, a 7-year-old Bouvier des Flandres, and Scout, a 12-week-old female Yellow Labrador Retriever puppy.
My websites, www.digitalphotography.tv and www.charliemorey.com, display my current work and my e-mail contact info is available at both. (Hint: It's either one.) Drop me a line!
1986
This was a big year for motocross. The AMA instituted the production rule, so factory stars needed to race a bike that started as what the average guy could buy. It was also the year for rear disc brakes to appear on Kawasakis and some Euro brands. But the big bomb for the year-again from Honda-was cartridge forks on the CR250R and CR500R. Between the cartridge fork, furthering ergonomic engineering and figuring out how to give disc brakes feel, Honda had the competition playing catch-up for several years. She wasn't working for DR yet, but this was also the year we taught managing editor Terry Masaoka to ride.
Damon Bradshaw |  | 
Willy Simons |
My Time At Dirt Rider
By Mark Kariya
I didn't always have long hair. When Charlie Morey asked me in the summer of '82 to join him in starting up a new magazine he planned to call Dirt Rider, I still ran a conservative 'do. Maybe that's why Charlie hired me.
No matter. Even though it was a bit of a gamble to leave Cycle News, Charlie seemed to have a good plan, and at the time CN was often considered the training ground for aspiring motojournalists before they went to staff a magazine somewhere (of which there were only a couple, really).
So I signed on and watched proudly as the magazine was born. Those early years weren't easy by any means. Our competitor had a huge headstart, but we offered something that was presented in quite a different way, a way that we felt readers would flock to when they were shelling out about $3500 or so for a good 250cc two-stroke.
Two of our biggest hurdles in those first years were things that we in editorial had no control over. It was kind of frustrating listening to the excuses people made, but we continued to churn out the best magazine we could, figuring that one of these years, we'd get over the hump.
It was a lot of work, but it was quite gratifying to put together all the pieces for each new issue. We worked a lot of late nights there in our little building on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollyweird. (That in itself was kind of strange because it was a world away from the tracks and trails where we preferred to be.)
When Tom Webb came on board, things got really lively. Whereas Charlie tended to be pretty mellow and conservative, "Wolfman" was much wilder-and funnier. Still, when it came down to putting a good issue together, he was all business, and the magazine continued to flourish with him at the helm.