Each year, the Sea Otter Classic seems to be more and more of a showcase for manufacturers to show off new products and prototypes.  Here are just a few of the exhibitors:

• Azonic, Bellwether, Bianchi, BMC, Cane Creek, Cannondale, Cervelo, Crank Brothers, Edge Composites, Ellsworth, Felt, Fox Racing Shox, Giant, GT, Haro, Ibis, Intense, Iron Horse, LaPierre, Look, Marin Bikes, Mavic, Reynolds, Ritchey, Shimano, Specialized, SRAM and more… See the complete list here

Here’s what’s new:

• The 29′er movement in the mountain bike world seems to be going at full steam. Everyone seems to have one already for sale or in development. Some of the manufacturers rolling them out include Pivot.
• Ellsworth, Foes, Yeti and Intense all were showing bikes with huge amounts of travel.  
• More and more manufacturers, both road and MTB, are starting to adopt the BB30 bottom bracket standard. Cannondale, Kona, Titus, Jamis and Caribou all had bikes on display and FSA had seven cranksets that work with the format. If you are not familiar with the system, BB30 basically uses a narrower, but larger diameter bottom bracket shell that moves the bearings back into the shell. It is lighter, stiffer, reduces pedal stance and is said to help bearing life.

• As expected (oh, why didn’t I wait??), SRAM has trickled down a lot of features from the Red line to the Force and Rival groups. The levers will all now have the same shape, and will get the adjustable reach for the shift and brake levers. They also receive the “zero loss” internals, big ring trim and dual cable routing of Red. SRAM also expanded their Tri/TT offerings with new aluminum brake and shift levers for TT bars. Oh, last, but not least, they will be introducing a road wheel line this fall.

• Wait, that was just the road side. On the MTB front, SRAM has a revamped Reba fork from RockShox, improvements to Avid’s disc brake line, and new cranks from Truvativ.

• Ooh. One more. SRAM also has a new flat bar road group that uses Double Tap technology.