Sea Otter Classic - Day 1

First day for the 2010 Sea Otter Classic was pretty uneventful. Out the do' at 5AM, flight out of DIA at 8:30 to San Jose.

Tim had my packed up bike on Monday, and was already half way there, in Las Vegas.

On my trip to Denver, it dawned on me at about Morrison that I was running a half-hour behind schedule. I thought about it for a moment, and realized I gave myself two hours to get to DIA. Which is normal -from Avon.  I left straight from my house, which normally takes an hour and a half.  Whoops.

I thought no big deal.  As long as I got to the airport and parked with an hour to spare, which was doable, I was still good.  Then cruising through Denver, I get to the I-25/I-70 interchange.  Traffic stopped.  Nervous.

Thankfully, traffic started releasing as soon as I had to come to a complete stop, so on my way I went.  What transpired next was amazing - I somehow made it from the interchange to DIA, parked, checked a bag, and through security in 33 minutes.  7:15am at I-25, 7:48am when I put my watch back on after security on the 'A' Concourse.  I don't know if I'll ever hit that kind of efficiency in an airport again.

Had the pleasure of sitting next to the Director of Marketing for Native Eyewear on the fligh out here. Pretty sweet, solid glasses and goggles. Killer 'lifestyle' glasses, and all their more athletics-oriented glasses gome standard with interchangeable lenses, polarized optics, venting, cam-action temple hinges, and mechanism to prevent lenses from coming toward your eyes (they can only be popped outward).  Nice.  Chatted about the possibility of sponsorship - we'll see. I'm going to test out a pair on Saturday this weekend, after the race.  Who knows; maybe something will come out of it.

Got to San Jose (picture of the SJ Airport, right) around 10:20am local, and nearly 11:15 by the time I got my rental car.  Ford Focus.  Without cruise control (WTF?).  This is the most beat-up rental car I've ever seen.  Scratched to the holy living bejeezus.  There isn't a body panel on this car that didn't have massive amounts of paint blemishes.  Whatever - still drives just fine, and at least the interior was clean.  50 mile drive to Salinas, where the hotel is at.

Radio around SJ sucks.  SUCKS.  A couple of decent jazz stations, if you could get them to come in clearly.  Wasn't crap for other stations...a couple of Hispanic programming, a country station, and a couple of Top 40-type stations.  And you could only get them for 10 miles at a time, before they faded out and were replaced by some other waste of brain function.

I notice the car has an AUX IN port, and luckily, I brought my cable to plug my iPhone in.  Unluckily, though, I was down to about 25% battery on the phone, so I nixed the idea of listening to it, and rolled the windows down, turned the radio off, and enjoyed the scenery.  Picture of Hwy 101, left.  Notice how green everything is?  Reminded me of The Shire in Lord Of The Rings.  Seriously.

Get to the hotel at 12:30 or so, and find out check-in wasn't until 3pm.  What's a bored guy on vacation to do?  Hopped back in the car, and drove on to Laguna Seca Raceway to pick up my registration packet and whatnot.

Clusterfuck when I got there.  No one could tell you where to park except the guy manning the parking lot.  Apparently, the staffers don't need to know general and important information such as "Where do I park?"  Not signed at all.  Couldn't find the guy manning the parking lot (obviously, I would have found the parking lot at that point, too).  Drove around for nearly 30 minutes trying to find the damn thing.  Found it, checked in, done.  Pretty low-key scene on Wednesday...not too many people there.  A couple of roadies spinning, a couple of gravity dudes.  Most of the staffers were still getting things set up.  So that was good - no crowds, no stress, just hangin out.  Pretty cool vantage point from the registration building - Laguna Seca Raceway has always been one of my favorite race courses ever.  It's a true test of how solid of a driver you are.  Picture of the Start/Finish Line, at the Mazda Bridge, right.

Honestly, if someone said to me, "You can trade in your MTB race registration for a one-day clinic at Skip Barber Driving School and race these Miatas around the circuit," I'd probably do it.

Nope.  I'd definitely do it.

BTW - the swag bag sucked.  A spare tube, a water bottle, and a couple of trial samples of CytoMax, Clif Bar, and Chamois Butter.  But it came in a pretty cool Specialized 'grocery bag'.  Still, have you seen the swag bag that Teva Mountain Games does?!?

Anyways, thought at this point I'd grab some lunch.  It was nearly 2:30, and I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast.  Plowed through the couple of granola bars I had in my backpack.  Very indecisive about what to eat, so I eventually made my way to the PCH and hit up a McDonalds for a quick bite.  Thankfully, I found a table with an outlet next to it, cuz the iPhone was on its last couple of breaths.

Charged it for 20 minutes, then I was on my way back to Salinas to kick the legs up for the rest of the day.  On the way back, I noticed "SAT" on the radio. Pushed it - Sirius came on.  DAMMIT!  Why didn't I see that before?  Backspin, Boneyard or Faction would have been sooooooooo much better than the lack of music I had on the way down here!

Tim and his wife Danielle came rolling in around 8:30pm.  Got a good nap in that afternoon, helped them unpack, and went out to grab a bite to eat for dinner.  Called it a day after that.