Sea Otter 2016: Random Finds

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It’s been a while since we got back from the Sea Otter, but there are still stories to tell. Here’s a gathering of some of the interesting nuggets that didn’t make our daily reports, presented in no particular order for your viewing pleasure.

Yeti ASR-C

This Yeti ASR-C with matching RockShox RS-1 fork wins our ‘Most sorted-looking bike’ award. I mean, just look at it!

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Can you say ‘Oooh!’?
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With some ENVE M50s, it’s not cheap, but it is gorgeous

Otis Guy’s pickup.

We just like Otis Guy’s mid-50s Dodge pickup truck. That’s all. It was emblazoned with a fellow mountain bike pioneer’s logo – Joe Breeze.
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VeloToze

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Mmm… rubbery!

The VeloToze folks brought you the stretchy-rubber shoe cover. Now they’re bringing you a rubbery, aero, wind and waterproof helmet cover. Because you can never look too much like you’re wearing a golfball on your head, OK?

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Feel the go-faster dimples!

 

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Most unique business card was from Dawn Patrol’s – Seth Beidens, taped to a bottle of home-brew.

Box Components

Every year, Box Components is a step closer to actually producing its innovative shifter. This year it had a working, spinning demo. Push the thumb lever away for easier gears, push the lever towards the stem with your thumb tip for harder gears. It worked very well on the stand.
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The Box One rear mech. Neat
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Those are 11 sprockets, OK?

Omata

After much fuss on its launch, we got to see and handle one of the new Omata crowd-funded, analogue speedos. And we made an important discovery. It’s not pronounced ‘omata’ like ‘omérta’ – the peloton’s code of silence as we’d first thought, but ‘omata’ as in ‘speedometer’ – so speed-omata – geddit? With that cleared up, and finding it to be bigger than first imagined, it did impress with its legible analogue dial (and clever GPS electronics out back).

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The metric version has 30kph at 12 o’clock. That’s a stiff average to maintain!

Maxxis jumbo rubber

Maxxis was showing off several new tyres – including these simply enormous 29 x 3in Minion and High Roller 2 tyres. Time to upgrade the Stache or Krampus then?

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You’ll hear them coming with these on

Park TS-4

Park Tool’s TS-4 truing stand will work with regular and fat bike wheels, allowing truing of the wheel with the tyre on – even if it’s a giant 5in fat bike tyre. It’s out this summer.

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No, that is not a motocross tyre
Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 22 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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