April 17, 2007
Sea Otter Classic
On Saturday Timber and I woke up early and got ourselves to the Sea Otter Classic to do our volunteering. As it turned out the $30 was not cash but the wristband (which they never checked) to get us into all the events at the Sea Otter Classic. Our volunteer work consisted of working the cross country race course in two different spots to make sure the racers did not make wrong turns. Overall the trail was poorly marked and there were several spots where people were not sure where to go. That's where we came in. And I'm happy to report that we didn't lose any racers. :-) There were some really cool racers. There were tandem, full suspension mountain bikes which are totally awesome and there were single speed mountain bikes which are crazy. Toward the end of our shift it started to rain and even though we brought rain gear we started to get really wet. We had signed up for a 2.5 hour shift but it got to the 4 hour mark, was raining cats and dogs, no racers had come by in 30 minutes, and we both had to use the bathroom really badly when we decided to ditch our post, find a restroom, and get back to the main area. So that's what we did. Sorry. After we got back to the main area we checked out some of the booths and then got out of dodge since it will still raining quite a bit. We did manage to score some $20 bike jerseys from Voler at one of the booths. Other than that the event was fun but somewhat uneventful. I'm considering racing in the cross country beginners mountain bike race next year. The only thing that concerns me is that some of the last racers to go by had a look in their eyes that said "I just got my ass kicked by this course", so I'd like to check out the trails before I sign up.