Almost every interaction with other cyclists or meeting with brand representatives at this year’s Sea Otter Classic began with the question, “What is the best thing you’ve seen?” It’s a question often asked of me at bike events; I surely posed some version of the inquiry many times to people I encountered over my three days walking Sea Otter’s expansive exposition area.
Sea Otter is the biggest cycling event in the United States. Held each April at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, California, it features professional and amateur mountain bike, road, and gravel racing along with a fondo, group rides, and parties. Sea Otter also has a huge consumer expo where hundreds of brands of all sizes show off their gear and demo bikes.
Since Sea Otter draws such a large and diverse audience of riders and journalists, many exhibitors use the event to show off new or upcoming products. However, this year at Sea Otter, fewer companies had new product introductions or sneak peeks than in previous years.
As a cycling journalist, I attend events like Sea Otter, in part, to see new bikes and gear. Then, tell you about some of them and why they might be interesting. However, this year was the first time (in my roughly two dozen years attending the event) that I didn’t see any products that fully captivated me. And some other journalists and cyclists I chatted with at the event echoed that sentiment.
Josh Ogle’s 3D-printed titanium full suspension mountain bike was certainly sweet. And I drooled over the 1 of 70 Colnago Steelnovo bikes I saw at an invite-only Colnago-Ferrari dinner party. Helmet Flair’s stick-on accessories certainly had lots of kids (and more than a couple of adults) stoked. Yet no single product really stood out.
After two straight down years, several folks at bike brands I talked to in late winter and early spring seemed optimistic about an uptick in cycling participation and business for the spring and summer of 2025. Brands seemed excited for Sea Otter, and a few hinted at having new products at the expo.
Then, word of new U.S. import tariffs dropped on April 2. The proposed duty rates shook many cycling brands, and any optimism about increased sales promptly evaporated. Although the extremely high rates were temporarily paused days before Sea Otter kicked off, the uncertainty seemingly caused more than a few brands to pause or scale back new product introduction plans.
For the first two days of the event, I felt slightly defeated as I walked the rows of vendor tents in the expo area: Was I missing something big? Perhaps the tariffs were why I didn’t see cool stuff this year? Am I bad at my job?
Around midday on Saturday, I unexpectedly found the answer when I bumped into two former colleagues from my years at GT Bicycles. As we were catching up, another ex-coworker arrived and asked us, “So, what is the best thing you’ve seen at Otter?” I replied by telling them about the Steelnovo, and another person mentioned Praxis’ gearbox.
Then Patrick Kaye dropped some words of wisdom. “The best thing I saw was all of my friends.” PK is probably the most spontaneously insightful person I’ve ever worked with, which he often delivers via humor and puns. Although we ribbed him about the answer sounding like a corny 1980s movie cliché, Kaye spoke the truth. And I’ve ruminated on his response since returning from the event.
Bicycles and cycling gear are cool and interesting. Bike racing—the competition and athleticism (and often its drama)—can be fun to talk about and inspirational. The places that we ride can be majestic, beautiful, and memorable. But the friends we make and the people we meet through cycling are the things that matter most and make an impression on our lives.
So, in retrospect, yes, I saw many “best things” at Sea Otter. I hugged my best friend from college and congratulated another friend for launching a PR business. I saw an industry veteran who is kicking cancer’s ass and cried with an accquaintance whose trans child might flee the country. I watched a friend radiate as she told me about her new girlfriend, and I shared memories with two parents of bringing our kids to their first punk shows.
Surely, there were a lot of cool new products at the expo; after all, Dan Chabanov and Trevor Raab snapped photos of lots of them. But after a cold and dark winter, connecting with my cycling friends and community was the most important part of Sea Otter, and they were what I needed to see the most.
As Deputy Editor, Tara Seplavy leads Bicycling’s product test team; after having previously led product development and sourcing for multiple bike brands, run World Championship winning mountain bike teams, wrenched at renowned bicycle shops in Brooklyn, raced everything from criteriums to downhill, and ridden bikes on six different continents (landing herself in hospital emergency rooms in four countries and counting). Based in Easton, Pennsylvania, Tara spends tons of time on the road and trail testing products. A familiar face at cyclocross races, crits, and bike parks in the Mid Atlantic and New England, on weekends she can often be found racing for the New York City-based CRCA/KruisCX team. When not riding a bike, or talking about them, Tara listens to a lot of ska, punk, and emo music, and consumes too much social media.
