The Sea Otter Does It Again
The mud is barely dry on the bikes but already racers and spectators alike are looking forward to next year's Sea Otter Classic (April 12-15, 2007). The acknowledged kick-off to the road and MTB racing seasons in the United States and the self-avowed largest bicycle festival in the United States, this year's Sea Otter once again lived up to its billing as "A Celebration of Cycling."
The weather was sketchy, alternating between partly cloudy and pleasant to drearily drizzly, but there was almost nothing that could dampen the collective spirit of cycling that prevailed across the sprawling grounds of the Laguna Seca racetrack and the surrounding Fort Ord trail network this past weekend.
Treated to pleasant conditions on Thursday that helped dry out some of the mountain bike trails and the makeshift hillside parking lots, a small knot of diehard industry geeks and cycling freaks cruised the festival village checking out the latest in cycling innovations and chatting with old friends. The Otter is truly an industry rendezvous, with gear vendors and manufacturers coming from around the country to enthusiastically get the word out about their products. It's also a chance for smaller local businesses like Dirty Dog (customized disc brake rotors) Fringe, and Nor-Cal (uber-hip apparel) to get the word out to the entire cycling community about their products.
All the vendors were very knowledgeable about their products (as opposed to when you actually go into a shop and start asking questions), and they were more than willing to discuss them in great detail. As we eavesdropped around the village, we heard a babble of discussions about gearing preferences, composite materials, manufacturing processes, business models, and performance specs. And oh yeah, the Otter village was also like Halloween for marketers. Vendors were giving away nearly unlimited amounts of stickers, posters, and other branded trinkets (known as "schwag"). Everybody was walking around with big plastic bags filled to the brim with stickers just waiting to be plastered on unsuspecting street signs from here to San Diego.
One thing that is cool about the Otter is that it is a festival of bikes and bikers. Thousands of cyclists and bike lovers of all kinds crowded the venue, ranging from scraggly haired 13-year old freeriders to buffed-out and tattooed downhillers clad in their body armor to spindly roadie gazelles in their team kits to mud-spattered cross-country riders to recreational cyclists with stars in their eyes. Estimates are that 70 percent of the attendees were under the age of 30, with a core demographic of 25 to 28 year olds. Despite the large crowds and the fact that most people ride their bikes around the race village and through tight rows of vendor tents, there were no collisions or incidents involving bikers and walkers. This weekend is all about cycling, and EVERYBODY there gets that. If you have ever felt persecuted as cyclist, this event makes you feel like a person again.
Mother Nature contributed her part to the success of the 'fest on Saturday by kicking down just enough sun to dry out the off-road courses and get everybody into a festival frame of mind. This was great news for riders participating in the non-competitive mountain bike tours and for festival-goers looking to cruise the venue without needing to hose themselves off before heading home. The good weather also helped to bring out the crowd numbers event organizers were hoping for.
In the festival village, the gleeful shouts of kids in jumpee tents mixed with the announcers' call of the ongoing races and the general babble of thousands of cycling voices, including vendors hawking wares like performance clothing, bike tours, shiny bicycle components, GPS systems, nutrition supplements, new cars, and, of course, rows and rows of the hottest, most tricked-out bikes on the market -- Turner, Maverick, Merlin, Titus, Litespeed, Commencal, Chumba, and SoulCraft -- many of them available for extended test rides on the Sea Otter race courses.
There was plenty for people to do and see. Trials rider Ryan Leech held three daily exhibitions in which he wowed the crowd with truly incredible and virtually unbelievable stunts and feats of balance and precision with his bike. You really have to see what Leech can do on a bike to believe it. For example, the guy can bunny hop up onto a three-foot tall box. Not impressed? He can also jump up to a platform about the size of small plate, balance on his back wheel, then jump up to another small platform, land on his front wheel, and balance there indefinitely. And that's the more pedestrian of his moves! Similarly, over by the GT/Mongoose factory tent, stunt riders on BMX bikes were shredding a massive half-pipe to cranking tunes, and in the Mountain Bike Ride Zone, kids of all ages played on jumps and learned riding tricks from the pros. Ladders, rails, teeter-totters, and berms challenged the more experienced riders.
In addition to gear vendors, a wide array of food vendors were there selling $3 Cokes, Chinese food, kettle corn, pizza, and the like. Of course, Laguna Seca was the site of countless Dead Shows and this is NoCal after all, so in addition to standard "event" fare there were also various "alternative" foods for purchase like veggie tofu burritos enriched with organic bovine cholesterol and seasoned with a splash of oil of oregano. Them's good eatin'.
The village also provided the rank-and-file cyclist or spectator a great chance to rub shoulders with the pros. On Saturday, many pro mountain bikers were hanging out in vendor tents, cheerfully signing autographs and rapping with anybody interested in talking it up. Saturday is a real low-key day for the mountain bike riders, and even kings among men like Geoff Kabush were totally receptive to talking shop with lay cyclists and spectators. This is what Spring Training baseball used to be like 25 years ago before all the fences and exclusive access areas separated the fans from the players.
There was also some kick-ass racing going on, featuring most of the world's elite mountain bike racers. One of the reasons that the Otter is so popular is that there is some kind of official racing every day. Heading out to the Sea Otter is almost like taking a date to a baseball game: there are lots of things to occupy yourself with in the village, but if the conversation lags, there's always a race going on somewhere in the background to occupy that awkward silence.
Festival organizers did a great job of making the festival work for the spectators as well as the athletes. Spectators stayed connected with the racing by through play-by-play commentary and other information on 91.7 FM, a station dedicated to the Sea Otter for the weekend. Traffic was generally light on most days -- except for Friday afternoon, when rain created a mass exodus that clogged the exits like the back end of a Denny's Scram Slam in a Motel 6 low-flow toilet -- and parking was ample and convenient.