Harry Johnson
Active member
PART 1- Wednesday and Thursday:
Not a huge trip for us since we live about 15 minutes away from the race track, but we still pack up the motorhome, grab a campsite and stay out at the Sea Otter Classic for 4 days every year.
Why do we pay too much for camping and spend 4 days at a bike event that doesn't even have really big mountains(Ft. Ord doesn't have a lot of vert) to ride down? Pre kids my wife and I used to travel around racing downhill back in the day. During that time we met some awesome race friends, worked with some really cool companies in the bike industry, and generally had a really good time.
my love for tundra's originally came from how many people and bikes we could fit in my old gen 1 for shuttles... and that roll down back window was down more often than up.
Sea Otter is like a class reunion for all our dirt bag mountain bike friends, and so we go, try to get some racing in, see all the homies, and teach our kids how to be dirtbags as well.
This year was pretty special for me because my 6 year old told me he wanted to race DH. If he's in, I figured I better show him the ropes in a proper way, so Wednesday night, we did a track walk while the course was still closed.
Sea otter isn't known for their gnar gnar DH track. It's a 2 minute air dh type run that requires you to be a pumpertainous pedal masher to be fast. My riding style is more "monster truck with a 22re motor installed", so I had no delusions of grandeur , but I did have my sights set on having a good time.
Thrusday morning the fun started at the Kids Zone. Since we've had children, we pretty much spend 70% of our Sea Otter time here. They have bike demos for kids, a plastic pump track of doom that breaks little kids off if they don't know how to go around a berm, and a pretty fun dirt pump track. There's also a grassy area setup to corral the little ones with some toys and shade.
My 6 year old got some "Dad Time" with me Thursday morning so he could take off of school and practice DH while my wife was teaching a class and my youngest was still at pre-school.
After that, we had some time before DH practice officially kicked off for the "youth" classes, so we went hunting for free stuff. First on the list was getting our bikes cleaned up at the muc-off booth
It turns out Shimano had paid to have some barristas come in and make coffee for anyone who needed it. 6 year olds definitely DON'T need caffine, but they DO need fancy hot chocolates, even if it's shaping up to be a hot day at Laguna Seca.
Just before practice, we met up with my wife, youngest, and some other local little buddies to cruise around with. The dudes from Hyper Bikes were putting on a pretty good show:
Being the largest dad in the group, I became the designated bike stand any time the kids needed to put their bikes down:
Post-schwagging, we got on course for some practice laps. Not a lot of pictures, because to be honest, I was nervous as heck that my kid's first DH practice was a good experience. I even screwed up the gopro angle I strapped to my helmet because I was more focused on getting him dialed in to ride. We had a solid crew of little buddies all racing for their first time and their associated moms and dads.
Post kid practice, I handed my son off to my wife and it was my turn. I haven't seriously raced anything in probably 10 years, so shaking the cobwebs off was going to be.. interesting. Luckily Thursday's practice was combination of Expert(not sure how I am still in this class) and Pro, so it's not like there was any stress of rolling down a race course for the first time in 10 years with a bunch of really fast dudes. Gee Atherton's redbull helmet bobbing in line 4 guys in front of me definitely didn't make me question what I was doing or anything. Turns out all my butterflies were for nothing. There was enough people on course for that one hour Thursday practice that we all pretty much rode down in a congo line sitting on our seat the whole time. I'm not sure where the traffic jam started, but it was pretty much the whole course.
After that, it was back to camp for a fire, and some stacyc shenanigans
Not a huge trip for us since we live about 15 minutes away from the race track, but we still pack up the motorhome, grab a campsite and stay out at the Sea Otter Classic for 4 days every year.
Why do we pay too much for camping and spend 4 days at a bike event that doesn't even have really big mountains(Ft. Ord doesn't have a lot of vert) to ride down? Pre kids my wife and I used to travel around racing downhill back in the day. During that time we met some awesome race friends, worked with some really cool companies in the bike industry, and generally had a really good time.
my love for tundra's originally came from how many people and bikes we could fit in my old gen 1 for shuttles... and that roll down back window was down more often than up.
Sea Otter is like a class reunion for all our dirt bag mountain bike friends, and so we go, try to get some racing in, see all the homies, and teach our kids how to be dirtbags as well.
This year was pretty special for me because my 6 year old told me he wanted to race DH. If he's in, I figured I better show him the ropes in a proper way, so Wednesday night, we did a track walk while the course was still closed.
Sea otter isn't known for their gnar gnar DH track. It's a 2 minute air dh type run that requires you to be a pumpertainous pedal masher to be fast. My riding style is more "monster truck with a 22re motor installed", so I had no delusions of grandeur , but I did have my sights set on having a good time.
Thrusday morning the fun started at the Kids Zone. Since we've had children, we pretty much spend 70% of our Sea Otter time here. They have bike demos for kids, a plastic pump track of doom that breaks little kids off if they don't know how to go around a berm, and a pretty fun dirt pump track. There's also a grassy area setup to corral the little ones with some toys and shade.
My 6 year old got some "Dad Time" with me Thursday morning so he could take off of school and practice DH while my wife was teaching a class and my youngest was still at pre-school.
After that, we had some time before DH practice officially kicked off for the "youth" classes, so we went hunting for free stuff. First on the list was getting our bikes cleaned up at the muc-off booth
It turns out Shimano had paid to have some barristas come in and make coffee for anyone who needed it. 6 year olds definitely DON'T need caffine, but they DO need fancy hot chocolates, even if it's shaping up to be a hot day at Laguna Seca.
Just before practice, we met up with my wife, youngest, and some other local little buddies to cruise around with. The dudes from Hyper Bikes were putting on a pretty good show:
Being the largest dad in the group, I became the designated bike stand any time the kids needed to put their bikes down:
Post-schwagging, we got on course for some practice laps. Not a lot of pictures, because to be honest, I was nervous as heck that my kid's first DH practice was a good experience. I even screwed up the gopro angle I strapped to my helmet because I was more focused on getting him dialed in to ride. We had a solid crew of little buddies all racing for their first time and their associated moms and dads.
Post kid practice, I handed my son off to my wife and it was my turn. I haven't seriously raced anything in probably 10 years, so shaking the cobwebs off was going to be.. interesting. Luckily Thursday's practice was combination of Expert(not sure how I am still in this class) and Pro, so it's not like there was any stress of rolling down a race course for the first time in 10 years with a bunch of really fast dudes. Gee Atherton's redbull helmet bobbing in line 4 guys in front of me definitely didn't make me question what I was doing or anything. Turns out all my butterflies were for nothing. There was enough people on course for that one hour Thursday practice that we all pretty much rode down in a congo line sitting on our seat the whole time. I'm not sure where the traffic jam started, but it was pretty much the whole course.
After that, it was back to camp for a fire, and some stacyc shenanigans
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