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Wrenchin' in the USA: The Chris Davidson diary 2006

Leaving his post from a 'Shimano MTB guy' to a SRAM/RockShox/Avid/TruVativ fella will form the basis of wrencher Chris Davidson's new gig, where he has been contracted to work for Ford Cycling in 2006.

However, some things stay the same. One of those will be his informative diary contributions on Cyclingnews, where you'll often receive the inside scoop on all things tech.

Sea Otter Classic - California, USA, April 6-9, 2006

Mud bogging

The otter came by
Photo ©: Chris Davidson
(Click for larger image)

The sun rose on day two and the rain gave us a reprive until mid afternoon. However, the quagmire that is the ground here at Sea Otter started to congeal and the mud actually started to take a greater hold on the riders and bikes. The time trial was super short, about a six minute effort, as most of the track was a swamp. Downhill sections had to be traversed on foot, because there was little controlling the bike on these sections.

There were lots of crashes, with the wheels spinning and sideways sliding on the course. One of our riders, Melanie Meyers, crashed and hit her knee pretty seriously. This was a big blow, as Mel had gone so well in the SuperXC the day before, her first pro race. She has such a great excitement about her first pro season that she really wants to continue to race, but the best course of action may be not to race. A hard situation to be in for a neo-pro. She continues to impress me every day.

After washing two bikes again today and taking nearly four hours, I am beginning to wonder what the promotors are thinking about the racing. The courses are in really bad shape. The daily mudbaths are really not great for the riders, the bikes or the ground that we are constantly dredging. There was talk today about why they haven't sought alternative courses or added more road sections. In an environmental sense, this county park that Laguna Seca sits in is going to take years to recover from what we are doing to it over four days.

The bikes all needed new brake pads and cables; sometimes I had to rewash bikes twice to finally get things clean enough to start working on them. The mud here is a fine silt with a lot of small rocks in it. It's really abrasive on bikes. Things are aging fast in these conditions.

Clean and ready
Photo ©: Chris Davidson
(Click for larger image)

Of interest today were some new parts from SRAM. I am sure that there will be better pictures available online of all the new goodies, but they have plenty of new brake and crank parts in the works. I got to install a set of new carbon cranks on Kelli Emmett’s bike today - custom 172.5mm ones.

The namesake otter came by the Ford tent to straighten me out of the official animal of this event. I was definitely wrong about the beaver and donkey references. The otter did not go too hard on me - he was actually pleasant despite my initial ‘official animal’ confusion.

Short track tomorrow on the same course as the TT today. That mud is just sitting there getting ready for us.

Till then,

Chris Davidson

Photography

For a thumbnail gallery of these images, click here

Images by Chris Davidson

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