We had a another great weekend, centered around the Sea Otter Classic at Laguna
Seca raceway, near Monterey, California. The fun started last Thursday when
Chris Reeder arrived at 6:30am after an epic drive from Idaho. An hour later, he
was on his custom-made Coker accompanying us all on unicycle to Beau’s school.
That afternoon, Beau and I went with him to Santa Cruz and met Bruce Bundy for a
session of trials at the Jetty and Frederick St Park (both locations were used
last year filming for Universe). It was Chris’s first trip to the ocean, and he
liked it alot, but was heard so say something about the riding being harder than
it looked on video. His latest ergonomic seat handle is really an improvement
over the Miyata handle.
Beau got out of school early Friday afternoon, and the 3 of us headed over to UC
Santa Cruz for the trails “Numbers” and “Lock 'Em Up” - basically the Saturday
afternoon ride from MUni weekend '99. It was Beau’s first time on these trails,
and he loved it. Afterwards, we played on campus on stairs, stumps, ramps etc
for quite a while. Chris showed me that I was running way too much pressure in
my tire. Thanks Chris! Beau was having so much fun he didn’t want to leave, and
kept asking to go back during the next two days. He went from being able to hop
up a curb to hopping up 8 stairs, and increased his drops too.
Saturday morning, John Foss arrived and we headed back to UCSC for a ride in
Wilder Ranch. We ended up doing what was the Sunday afternoon ride at MUni
weekend '99 - including “Mailboxes”. But it took much longer, due to an insane
amount of riding in the river. David Poznanter came along and his enthusiasm
completely infected Chris. The rest of us watched as they rode through and
jumped into the river about 100 times each. Watching two unicycles floating
slowly downstream in a calm section was so funny - a 3" Gazz and an air seat
provide a lot of flotation! We played on Mailboxes for a while, and I finally
managed to ride the one section I had never made before. Chris spent his time on
the harder side, spurred on by David’s “And then Kris hopped from here to
here…and then he…” etc. We headed back for lunch at the brewery followed by
a soak in Bruce’s hottub, although he was in Hawaii by then.
Sunday morning we started in De Laveaga Park in Santa Cruz, with Geoff Faraghan
and Rob Bowman joining in. We did a fun ride, but due to lots of rain the night
before, a couple of the rock sections were very slippery. After lunch, we drove
down to Laguna Seca arriving just before the Pro Speed Trials competition. This
is two nearly identical courses, ridden by two riders simultaneously, in a
double-elimination tournament. Nearly the whole cast of the video Evolve, except
Kris Holm, was present, and riding really well. Jeff Lenosky did a demonstration
run first that was amazing - the course looked too easy for him. But as the
competition went on, there were lots of wipeouts, and the most exciting were in
the water pool at the end - with a narrow board tilted at 45 degrees you have to
ride across. After watching for a while, we went over and played on the
dual-slalom course, and we had it all to ourselves. We returned to the Trials
courses after the competition and had free rein to play. Chris managed a 5+’
drop and the rest of us did smaller ones. There were ramps, spools of different
heights, a teeter toter plus the whole speed trials course - fantastic fun.
John and I took lots of photos over the weekend. I’m sure he’ll have his up soon
and 67 of mine are up at http://www.movaris.com/nathan/photos.html I have one
great video clip of Beau from Friday to put up tonight.
Read more about Sea Otter at http://www.seaotterclassic.com and I hope to see
you there next year!
—Nathan