As I struggled to put together a coherent column (version six now), the subject was staring me in the face the entire time. I only had to look at the issue you're now holding in your hands. This April '06 issue is a particularly important milestone in the evolution of ATV Rider. Those steps come in random intervals and are rarely smooth and painless. When I took the helm last year, one of my goals was to make this the best damn ATV magazine on the newsstand. A pretty lofty ideal, yes, but if you don't shoot for the top, where do you aim? It's a pretty challenging neighborhood in the ATV section, but competition is good. Without it, complacency breeds rampantly and things slide into a deep rut. Needless to say, an opportunity popped up that allowed us to enact some ideas we had on the drawing board as we expanded the magazine-yes, it's fatter in a good way.
Beyond adding more paper, the staff and I took a hard look at the content and presentation to see what was missing. We want ATV Rider to be an exciting and informative read that reflects all of our enthusiasm, including you the reader. With that in mind, we overhauled the magazine's appearance and added some new material. One is a long-overdue where-to-ride section, Trailhead. We plan to feature one spot per issue, and our goal is to encompass the entire globe with a focus on North America, of course. This is an excellent opportunity for you to influence our edit. If you have a ride spot that you want to share with the rest of the ATV community, send an e-mail to atvrider@primedia.com or post something on our message board on our web site www.atvrideronline.com with all the details. (Check out the first one on page 34 to see what kind of information we want.) To sweeten the deal, I'm pretty sure we could dip into our swag pile and send a little something your way if we choose your spot to visit. But, wait, there's more...
For pure eye candy and because several of us image-loving types have longed to put it in the magazine, we also added a photo section called Gallery that, hopefully, gives you the uncontrollable urge to ride. It allows us to show off the artsy side of ATV riding. I think it's a good idea to open it up to our readers as well. So providing it's an awesome, high-resolution image, send us your visual masterpiece. As with any unsolicited piece, there are no guarantees it'll run and we won't pay you for it, but an image in a national magazine that is viewed by thousands is a good portfolio padder for those aspiring or accomplished lensmasters out there. We'll choose images based on artistic merit as well as content. The more unique your vision is, the better chance it has of impressing us.
Those are our big plans. Of course, we will continue to refine and adjust the content and character of both the magazine and web site to stay current and be a valuable commodity. To paraphrase someone famous, When you stop changing and improving, you're dead.-Bryan Nylander