Sea Otter Classic--First 24 hours

I arrived in Monterey yesterday without any mishaps. I was hoping to go preride the Sea Otter cross country and/or short track course, but since it has been raining the entire last week, there is deep, nasty mud everywhere. This whole rain thing is kind of funny, because since I have been here (yesterday and today), it has been nothing but nice weather. The mud is drying up pretty quickly (from what I can tell), and I did ride the first few miles of the XC yesterday, and plan to do the whole course today.
The XC course is going to be completely different for me (dispite doing this race the past five years), because they are running it backwards this year, and are incorperating a lot of new trails. From what I have seen of the course, it looks like it will favor my five inch travel bike more than the courses of past, as there are a lot of very fast, somewhat technical decents at the start. It should be fun.
I'm about to be kicked off my computer here at the Monterey public library. I'll try to post each day to let you know how the racing is going, depending on if I can find computer access, of course. I'll be adding pictures when I get back to Colorado.