Mountain Bike Action Magazine celebrated its 40th year of publication with the July 2026 issue. They decided to interview a number of former editors and for some reason, I made the cut. Go figure? I am honored to be included for sure.
They couldn’t squeeze my entire interview into the allotted space and I’m glad. The stuff they cut allowed them to run a number of flattering photos. And you know what they say about a photo being worth a thousand words.
Here is the entire, uncut interview:
When were you the editor of MBA? I was Editor from the March 2001 issue until the October 2014 issue. Man, that seems so long ago.
What are you up to these days? I’ve been an expert witness in a few judicial proceedings, I have a website, Jimmy Mac On Two Wheels, and I lead a weekly Easy-Flow Stretching class. Mostly though, I’m retired.
Do you still ride? For sure. Certainly not as much as when I was Editor. You know how demanding the magazine is, Ron. MBA tests so many bikes and products that it is necessary to ride nearly every day to keep your head above water. Now, I can pick and choose when and where I ride. If it is cold or super hot, I can take the day off. I still love riding at night. Always have.
If you could go back in time to a single day as MBA’s editor, what day would it be and why? Man, that is such a tough one. There were so many great days. Okay, it would be when Cog Wild, a tour company out of Bend, Oregon, introduced me to the riding around Kings Castle, Oregon. It is magical riding. I visited there last month. It is still awesome. Coming in close would be the day Cannondale hired Rim Tours to take a bunch of us to Gooseberry Mesa. That opened my eyes to an entirely new riding experience plus I got to ride with Tinker Juarez. I think I may have aged out of riding the Goose. It is unforgiving. Please Ron, one more? The first day riding Ray’s Indoor Bike Park in Cleveland, Ohio. Ride for hours indoors while it is snowing outside, stop and eat pizza and go ride some more. Plus, Ray Petro is such a righteous dude.
If you could push a button and make one thing in the bike industry go away forever, what would it be? Easy. Mountain bike influencers! I tried my best to be objective and fair in race reports, product reviews and bike tests. And Ron, I can see from reading MBA that you take that responsibility seriously too. We both have years of experience in mountain biking. Now, somebody who looks good on camera can get paid by a company to say great things about a bike or product. Then next month, another company pays them more and they love that product. Influencers produce infomercials and people believe it is objective, impartial reporting.
What was the worst bike or product you ever tested? Another easy one, Ron. That would have to be the ST3 ESR 3500. If I am remembering correctly, the bike was designed in Glen Burnie, Maryland, by a race car guy. The ESR 3500 was made in China, and we are talking 2001 China, not 2026 China. The bike was a generic, dual-suspension trailbike that could probably be purchased from ten different Chinese suppliers at the time. If it sold for $400, I still would have pointed riders towards a nice aluminum hardtail instead. But the ESR 3500 sold for $2250 in 2001 dollars. I doubt the company ever compared their bike to what Specialized or Trek or Giant was selling for $2250. They were so clueless to what they were up against. I don’t believe they made it past 2001.
Who was your favorite person to interview? Brian Lopes. And I have lots of reasons. The guy is a straight shooter. He is honest to a fault. No sugar coating. He can be brutally honest. He is always fun. Plus, he is an amazing rider. On the technical side, Greg Herbold could fill a book with technical hacks and tricks to make any bike better. I learned so much every time I interviewed Greg. Can I add one more? Please? Kyle Strait. I was never a fan of Slopestyle riding. It was more of a thrill show than a form of mountain biking. After interviewing Kyle, I had a lot more respect for what those riders were doing. Kyle impressed me with his maturity and how he approached the high-risk sport of Slopestyle.
Did you ever make an editorial decision that you regret? Of course. I’m not going to mention names because it still bugs me to this day. An industry guy started a new bike brand. I don’t know if it was his money or if he had backers but he sent us a trailbike to test. It had some interesting conceptual features, but it was not ready for production. It just didn’t work. I spoke to the company’s main designer and his quote, that I remember to this day, was “Nothing you say about that bike is going to surprise me.” The designer knew there were problems. My mistake? I ran the bike test and we creamed the bike. I believe the test really hurt the young company. Now, I would not have rewritten the test to soften the criticism. The bike deserved it. What I wish I had done is pull the test completely and tell them to send us another one once the bugs were worked out.
Do you remember an event or situation that impacted you deeply? Paul Morningstar owned Morningstar Tooling Products. He made specialty tools that I use to this day. He was a real mad scientist and fun to speak with. His business was just below Lake Isabella, California. Lake Isabella has great riding so the plan was to drive up, visit Paul and do some riding. Days before my visit, Paul died in an explosion. It turns out he suffered from paranoia and had set booby traps on his property. One of them got him. Thinking about this still freaks me out.
What is today’s generation missing out on that we had back then? Man, the dirt! COVID unleashed legions of new trail users. On top of record numbers of hikers, equestrians, trail runners and mountain bikers, you have a new user group, eMTBs, and they cover more ground than ever before. Add in a bit of climate change for good measure. It is all a perfect storm to stress any trail network past its limit. All my local trails have lost their flow. Rocks protrude where there was once loam. There are no more “technical sections” because the whole trail is technical now. You can still find great trails (like Kings Castle) but they are fewer and farther between.
How do you feel about eMTBs? That’s a loaded question for me. I am totally against allowing motorized recreation on multi-user, natural-surface trails. They are too fast to be compatible with other trail users and if you actually read the often-cited study that claims eMTBs do no more harm to trails than acoustic bikes, you’ll find the study doesn’t say that at all. But it is a nice talking point for the manufacturers to quote and hope you never read the study. Okay, I got all that off my chest. What do I ride today? A Pivot Shuttle LT eMTB that got me riding again after some heart issues. You can call me a hypocrite but I’m being pragmatic. The eMTB genie is never going back in the bottle. I lost the battle to keep trails acoustic. I only wish new eMTB riders knew more about trail etiquette. We’ll all figure a way to play together, I hope.
What is the craziest thing you’ve seen or done on a mountain bike? I can’t say I’ve done anything crazy. I never liked falling and, knock on wood, I’ve never been seriously injured on a mountain bike. I was never too proud to get off and hike over something that scared me. What pops into my head as crazy fun is the time my wife and I rode our bikes to the edge of the Sedona Wilderness, hid the bikes in a Ponderosa pine, locked them together with a cable and then hiked to a natural arch. Most of my rides blend into each other, but that one is still vivid in my memory.
You’ve traveled to a lot of exotic ride destinations. What was your favorite? The stock answer is “the trial I’m riding on right now.” Fair enough but not all trails are equally fun to ride. I’ll say again, the Kings Castle area in Oregon. I rode in Japan and it was the worst. I rode in Switzerland, and I’m sure the country has some great trails, but I didn’t get to ride them. Scotland? Too wet. You hear the grass is always greener in some far-away place, but America offers the best and most diverse riding on earth.
Back then, as the editor, did you think MBA would last as long as it has? Absolutely. Since Ron Koch has taken over at the helm, I feel stronger about that. I just wish I could reach out to all the people suckered by “influencers” and tell them to stop watching clueless videos and read the magazine written by people who have decades of experience riding and evaluating bikes and products.
