Well on the way to becoming more of a Laguna Seca icon than the poor sucker who has to run around in a musty, sweat soaked weasel costume all weekend at the Sea Otter Classic, The Machinist is seen here doing his best dual impersonation of both Elvis Presley and Robert DeNiro.

We should know better. Really. But every spring, like Lemmings, we return to Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey to get destroyed by the elements and our own excesses. And every year, we limp home broken in some way or another. This year was no different. But at least we had some fun along the way. Maybe too much fun, if you are to believe the spin that the people who dress as rent-a-cops at the campground there tend to put on things. Sure, the Sea Otter is a “celebration of cycling,” but it is also a gigantic gong-show, hosting bicycle competition in ALL its forms on a huge scale, feeding tens of thousands of people through its maw, but somehow managing to leave everyone feeling a bit wrecked from the process. There’s a heinous mess of roadracing featuring wind and hills in all their fury, there’s a barren nightmare of a cross country course that defines the meaning of “I was feeling good until the second lap” (unless you are a pro, then you get to think about how much fun that bumpy grassy 5km slice of hell felt for five laps. ugh…), there’s a dual slalom course that time forgot, and there’s a downhill racecourse that really only seems to run downhill when you tilt your head and look at it sideways.

Not that we got to see any of it. Because we were in the belly of the beast, showing off bikes, running out of sunscreen, talking ourselves hoarse, and damaging our livers. A dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it. So, we didn’t see much aside from this:

Swobo, the genesis for the latest, and possibly greatest, of an ongoing series of StupidBikes

Complete with "army of doucheness" custom playing cards

And extra special features...

The Double Douche should probably show up on the swobo blog, but the bummer life avoidance is a couple weeks slow to get reinstated. Keep an eye peeled over there, though. Something is in the works, we are told. Anyway, we also saw this:

That'd be the javelin thin haunch of one Chris Distefano, anti-marketing marketeer for Chris King, being even more Rapha than Rapha, and showcasing his ongoing talent for scoring the most ironic race numbers in the sport of cycling. Spark it up, duuuude!

And this:

Legend. If you don't know, you just don't know. None other than the last of the V-8 interceptors, the inimitable Doctor Deltron, in the flesh, replete with stars'n'bars Rock Lobster stem, Doctor Deltron custom head badge, and the steely eyed resolve that can only come from a firm belief in the restorative powers of tie-dye shirts and huffing Toluene.

Aside from that, we didn’t really see much. We did hear that the guy who drives our demo van beat both Greg Minnaar and Joshua Antonio Torres Bryceland in the downhill. Minnaar had a mechanical for an excuse, Josh didn’t. We doubt he can wrench on bikes near as well as Ariel can, either. Not sure if there is much else to say about that.

Reading back into this, my words come across as a bit out of touch and jaded. Maybe so. We had just concluded pushing three new bikes out into the world, and instead of heading to Monterey for some sunny decompression, I spent the Friday morning of Sea Otter running over my dog:

"I dunno about you, man, maybe it's the meds, but this carpet looks really, ummm, really, awesome. You dig?"

That can really start the weekend off right, boy howdy. $836 in x-rays later, it was revealed that Zee is apparently made out of steel, since the only damage sustained from trying to jump out of a moving truck, hanging himself briefly before slipping his collar and getting run over by said still-moving truck, was some gravel rash on his right foot and a newfound appreciation for 5300 pound vehicles.

Ehhh, enough about the personal dramas. We’re professionals here, and the shitshow must go on. Merely a blip on the radar. Good thing that there were truly professional employees on hand to steward our scattered minds through the carnage:

Yeah, this guy...