Sea Otter 2019: The New Components, The Crazy Bikes And The Quirky

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As it’s going to take forever to bring you individual stories of the thousands of new products launched at this year’s Sea Otter Classic, here’s a bucket of curated new bits and pieces in no particular order for your reading enjoyment.

ODI Grips

Pioneers of the original mushroom grips, as well as the lock-on, ODI has been making grips for decades and continues to innovate. Apparently the oily rainbow metal finish is big in BMX (and we’re just getting it in mountain biking with the SRAM AXS Eagle groupset) so ODI has come out with a Vans waffle shoe print grip, with rainbow collars.

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Who doesn’t love a rainbow?
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Rainbow in the sunshine

ODI has also joined the likes of Peaty’s by making rubber valve covers, to keep your valves clean, but mostly to make them look pretty. These are teeny tiny ODI Mushroom grips.

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Giant hands? Or teeny grips

And just in case that hasn’t set off Brant Richards’ fear of big things that are small, how about these beer can holders in the shape of giant ODI grips?

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Really big grips?

Wolftooth

Wolftooth seems to come out with new products every week, so we forced them to stop inventing and show us a few new things, including the ‘Morse Cage’ which uses Wolftooth’s variable position bottle cage mounting pattern with King Cage’s world-renown titanium bottle cages. (No really, try them, they’re the best cages you’ll ever use…)

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Wolf Tooth Morse Cage allows loads of adjustment on your bottle bosses.
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It’s a simple thing, but the pump bag helps keep your mounted mini pump stay clean and grit-free
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And there’s a roll-top seat bag to keep things dry
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Finally, there’s limited-edition purple. It seems that purple never goes away.

Vee Tires Zig Zag

And how is this for a four-inch slick? When fat biking isn’t fun enough, stick these on and go try to get a knee down on the road.

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Nope, we have no idea…

Surly TV Tray

This Surly rack bolts on to Surly’s range of racks to offer a wide, flat platform to let you strap huge loads, boxes or beer cases on to your bike. The alloy tray will fit Surly’s Porter bags too. It should cost around $65

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It’s coincidentally the same size as a large case of beer. Hmm…

Praxis

It’s taken a while for the Praxis Girder rank to come out, as the company has been busy with making a lot of road stuff, but the Girder finally is shipping. Offering a lightweight, carbon cranks and forged chainring (Praxis is the only company other than Shimano to forge its chainrings), it should be out in time for that summer build.

Identiti new colours

The British designed brand, Identiti is offering additional colours for 2019. The Dr Jekyl will come in this lime, or new white, while the AKA will come in either blue or black – all in addition to the current range of colours.

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A lime Dr Jekyl recalls the first Identiti models from the nineties.
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It should be easy to get some riding clothes to match, right?

Shredder bikes

With the interest in performance kids’ bikes, it was good to see Shredder’s bike range, including teeny full suspension bikes, and good looking hardtails/jump bikes

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Does your kid deserve a Shredder?
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How about this one?
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Yeti Cycles wins the award for most individual beer coozie
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Giro is really pushing the boat out with its reflective-printed shoes.

Rock Lobster

Paul Sadoff was at the show with his personal bike, fresh from winning an award at the North American Hand Build Show (NAHBS)
It seems that Paul’s steel and aluminium bikes are still the ones to have for the Santa Cruz area’s top cyclocross racers, judging by the number we saw around. And Paul himself is no slouch on a bike either.

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Paul with probably the best bike colour we saw all weekend.

Hiplock
Ben from Hiplock was showing the company’s latest product, the Hiplok Spin, a combination lock version of the well-regarded Hiplock system. The lock’s chain sits around your waist in a Cordura sleeve, allowing you to whip it off and lock your bike up (without actually locking a lock around your waist, courier style).

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Hiplock Spin
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Hiplock also makes small combination lock versions for cafe stops.
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One hundredth of the booths at the Sea Otter this year

And that’s it for this brief roundup, there’ll be more to come as we continue to sift through all of the photos.

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Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 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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Comments (3)

    Ison do do the ODI valve caps, in candy jars of 100, for £100. Says that it comes in Schrader or Presta, but only shows presta. Out of stock.

    Yep, ISON is the distributor of ODI in the UK. As they were a new product at the Sea Otter, I expect that they’re on order and should turn up soon.

    Rock Lobster.
    I recall (circa 20 years ago) Rock Lobster branded hardtails were available through / from Merlin Cycles (ie the guys in Leyland, Lancashire who did, and still do do, mail order).

    What’s the ‘SP’on that ? Is it the same bike Co ? Or was there a licencing deal on the brand name, or something else ??

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