Sea Otter 2016: Random Finds

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!

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.

VeloToze

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?

 

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.

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).

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?

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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