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I want to attend your Oregon date but you picked the same weekend as the Oregon Enduro race in Bend.

I agree with Richard. Huge praise to Bell for their new Bell Built program. I live in Bend, OR with easy access to hundred's of miles of amazing trail thanks to COTA (Central Oregon Trail Alliance). If I travel a little north I've got access to hundreds of miles of amazing Enduro oriented trail thanks to North West Trail Alliance. NWTA Alliance has been heavily supported by local bikes shops like Fat Tire Farm to help develop the Mt. Bike Scene (improve their sales & support services). http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2013/11/sandy_ridge_mountain_biking_tr.html I wish more bike companies would focus on supporting local bike shops to develop local mt. bike economies. This can be as simple as helping with the organization of trail events through swag & product discounts for volunteers or provide trail experts and economists that can help support local shops & trail groups work with local government for land use approvals. I heard a sad story the other day - I went back to my college town of Bozeman, MT expecting to hear about an amazing Mt. Bike scene only to hear from a shop owner that it SUCKS. I was told there are multiple groups fighting over what to do with no central organization - hence the local shop owner told me his mid-high end Mt. bike sales have been flat for years. Wouldn't it be great if a company sent in some trail experts to help organize these towns to get an organized trail group up and running - after 5 years they just might have 30+ miles of local trail to attract new mt. bike buyers.

What I am is a bike industry business owner. Having built a business I can tell Devon and his staff have put a lot of time and effort into this event & from a product standpoint it's cool. I want Enduro to keep growing because I love the all the things described above. I think OES and other event organizers have a lot to learn from OES mistakes. My main point of the post above was this: For me the most important thing is not having some stupid expensive & complicated timing system that can measure my results down to a fraction of a second. I'm happy with a simple timing system that is maybe 96-98% accurate like GPS. The product I want to spend my $100-200 on is a cool event, meet cool people, have fun, and HAVE A SMOOTH race.

I live in Bend, but have never officially met him. I also do not know any of his staff... To be honest I was really pissed off on Sunday. I've been to three OES events and all three have had issues. For this event I talked two friends who are new to Enduro racing to fly in from out of town, neither one of them will ever come back for one of these events. I just love the idea of Enduro & I do think they put on a great event. I just want the events to succeed because they are cool - but I'm not going back this year - maybe next year. I'll spend my money on Mt. Bike Oregon or something else.

I have emailed OES about many of the issue discussed above and they took the time during all this to send me a thank you letter and response – they are working hard. For me Enduro is more about the experience than the competition. Don’t get me wrong, I race 15-20 times a year & love competition. After a few decades of racing I've realized that I’m not pro and my livelily hood does not depend on my race results. I go to races for the experience (spectacle of the event), to challenge myself, and for social connections. For me Enduro is a social event where I can ride trails with a large number of like minded people, mingle side by side with Pro’s I’ve maybe only seen on Pinkbike, see some cool vendor tents, get some swag, meet a few new friends & drink a few beers. I love getting my race results and analyzing the crap out of them with my friends for days… but that’s not really why I showed up to race. I think OES does an amazing job of engineering a racing experience. They do mini-events all weekend like movies, kids races, cool venue design, best food truck in town, best coffee cart in town, amazing website & marketing, cool tee-shirt & hat design I want sport around town, amazing video’s to share with my friends, professional quality post race pictures… lets face it, they have the overall experience of an event dialed. As for timing, it sounds like most Enduro organizers have focused too much on a complex timing system. Out of the 263 riders that showed up only 40 are Pro. I think the 223 other riders could live with slightly less accurate timing methods to have a smooth experience.