I have tons of great memories from my 14 and a half years at DR. There were lots of entertaining road trips, cool trail rides, eight Baja 1000s I got to race in (finishing every one), the hundreds of different events and the thousands of dirt riding enthusiasts I met-from the famous racers to the everyday riders.
Oh, the long-but-starting-to-thin hair? I guess TW didn't want to be the only guy on staff with long hair, so I distinctly remember him saying one day, "Kato [my Webb-dubbed nickname], if you grow your hair, I'll give you a raise."
As I recall, the raise wasn't all that much-maybe it was hidden in the standard yearly salary increase-but I ran with it and continued to do so (saving money on those expensive trips to the barber, you know).
While I may be a longhaired, older guy now, I'm still conservative, believe it or not. And I still get a kick out of riding, writing and photographing the different aspects of this sport and look forward to being a part of Dirt Rider for the next 25 years.
1987
After experiencing no staff changes at DR since 1983, Tom Webb came on board from competing Dirt Bike Magazine. Bob Carpenter, the test editor at DR since almost the first issue, took the helm of SuperMotocross. SMX was an all-moto spin-off from DR. During 1987 Honda scored its first 250 MX World title, thanks to Eric Geboers, and three U.S. outdoor titles, courtesy of Micky Dymond and Rick Johnson. Honda, already sporting a huge advantage because of the Showa fork, made things worse for the competition by improving the suspension front and rear, dialing in the handling and fine-tuning the engines of all the CR models. What should have been a perfect year for Honda was spoiled when David Bailey was paralyzed in a practice crash at a CMC race. Former Honda star Danny Chandler had already suffered a similar but more severe injury, but Magoo had always been a little wild and had taken what looked like unnecessary risks. But when Bailey, a true technician and super-smooth rider known as a thinking man who rarely took risks' was injured, it affected every rider in the sport. We all looked at our passion with more open eyes.
Willy Simons | 
Ricky Johnson | 
Goat Breker |
As we look back, it's easy to see that the liquid-cooled Husky 510 released in 1987 was a huge step toward successful production four-stroke motocrossers. The performance was amazing, and with water-cooling the reliability reached a reasonably happy place. But Kevin Hines' national enduro championship for KTM after 12 straight years of Husky champions signaled that the Husqvarna off-road dynasty was weakening.
A Wolf At The Door
By Tom Webb
Gawd, I feel like I'm writing my obituary here. While the actual dates are rather fuzzy at this moment, Charlie Morey, Dirt Rider's editor, was the guy who actually got me in the door. At the time, the Dirt Rider offices were located in a little trailer that sat on stilts right on Sunset Boulevard. The actual Petersen headquarters were in a palatial high-rise next door, but they housed the big books like Motor Trend, Guns and Ammo and Teen, and we were only allowed in for big planning meetings. In those days I was a bit wild, looked like Manson and remember my first big meeting with Pete (Mr. Petersen) and he asked me point blank, "Do I actually pay you to work here?"
Those days were in fact berserk. I was surrounded with a great staff of Karel Kramer, Mark Kariya and Kay Lingle, Charlie was our editorial director and Dick Lague was the publisher of all the motorcycle books. I was passionate about off-road racing and was very lucky to have the budget, the tools and the freedom to make Dirt Rider an extension of this obsession. In 1987, Dirt Rider was on the small side of the sales world and unfortunately I was in planning meetings bimonthly where I sold my soul to keep the book afloat. Petersen Publishing was into promoting the "brand" and the editorial marriage with an incredible sales staff and a sparkling circulation manager gave our book a huge boost and momentum.