FORMER MBA EDITOR MIKE WIRTH HAS LOST HIS HOME TO A CALIFORNIA WILDFIRE
Mike lost his house to a California wildfire this week
We’ve been talking with Mike Wirth the last few days. He and his wife Nicole lost their house to the wildfire that destroyed much of Altadena, California. Mike and Nicole had to evacuate their home at night as the flames were moving towards their neighborhood, and they moved in with Nicole’s parents temporarily.
After talking with Mike yesterday (Thursday, 1/9/25), we happened to find this photo of Mike in our files.
It’s one that we shot on the day our staff first met Mike, on a road trip the MBA staff took to cover the Crested Butte Fat Tire Festival in Colorado in 2010.
During our drive back to California from the festival, the MBA staff stopped at Hartmann Rocks in Gunnison, Colorado, where we met Mike for the first time. He was running the demo fleet for Titus at the time, driving a van full of Titus bikes around the country and maintaining all of them so riders could try them out at a number of popular riding areas in the Western U.S. During a break in his schedule, Mike did some riding for us, and MBA’s John Ker shot some photos of Mike displaying his riding skills.
Mike was an amazing rider and an amazingly savvy mechanic as well. He had recently graduated from college with a close-to-perfect 3.9 grade point average, but since mountain bikes were his main love, he decided to take the demo job at Titus from Chris Cocalis, who was running Titus back then, before launching Pivot Cycles.
When a new assistant editor position opened up at MBA, we offered Mike the job, and he moved to California to take it. Mike ended up becoming the editor of MBA for several years, then left a few years ago to pursue other interests. Mike ended up starting his own mobile bike repair business, Gooseworks, which is the service provider to the Space X Corporation for their employee bicycle share program.
Mike isn’t sure where he’s going to live next. He still owns the land where his house burned down this week, but it might take months or even years to build a new house on the property.
Mike and Nicole have a GoFundMe site to help them get back on their feet again, since they lost almost everything they owned in the fire that burned down their house.
Here’s the link to the site:
