First stab at YouTube videos: footage from the helmetcam… audio converted in MediaCoder… then chopped to bits in Sony Vegas video editor to make each clip fit under YouTubes 10-minute limit:
Part 1 -- Trip to the Lookout and back, and some time at the Sand Hill
Part 2 -- Trip to the Falls and back
My batteries ran out just after lunch… hopefully by the time I go out again my second battery will have arrived in the mail!
I spent yesterday out at the Ganny again, at an event organized by my friend BJ. He had recently finished rebuilding his ATC (i.e. three-wheeler, aka “trike”) and organized a ride for other ATC owners (and whoever else wanted to come, bikes and quads too!).
I showed up around 10am, and many people were already there: machines of all shapes and sizes:
Just before we were ready to roll out, a dirtbike rider pulled up and asked if somebody could help pull one of his friends out of the forest. Apparently the bike couldn’t move under its own power. So we delayed the main start of the ride while one of the quads in our group went to find the broken bike… while the rest of us went to a local lookout and back. There were already a few other people at the lookout when we arrived, so parking became an issue. But we still wanted to get a picture of the ATC riders and their machines.
BJs ride wanted to roll down the hill, so arranging the machines became a question of: “How many ATC riders does it take to push a trike backwards up a hill?”…
…while others supervised (and laughed at the pushers 
)…
…until finally we got 5 in a row. BJ (the organizer) is out front in his white jersey (and left foot strategically placed to keep his ATC from rolling)… though even after taking 4 pictures I couldn’t get everyone looking in the right direction
From there we looped back to the start point to wait for the rescue team on the quad to come back…
…and a few minutes later they rolled in, bike in tow:
From there we headed out again and looped through the trails to some dirt hillclimbs… on to the local “Sand Hill”…
…and finally on the “The Falls” (that I forgot to take pictures of this time: though you can see some of the parking issues we ran into)
And finally back to the parking lot for lunch. It seemed everyone brought some food for themselves… but it didn’t take long before Ross and Shannon’s BBQ became the local hotspot (for hot dogs!).
There was also time for some ad-hoc maintenance: such as when White Rat alternated between trying to fix his ride…
…and trying to burn it to the ground
We also some more horses come through. We had seen horses a few times that day: but all we had to do was pull to the side of the trails with engines off and let them pass. Ganaraska is a multi-use forest: so we always went out of our way to be “the good guys” and put a friendly face on the sport. And the horse riders were without exception welcoming, chatty, and appreciative that we gave their horses the respect they deserved.
Also, over lunch we eventually saw some members we lost along the way pull in. Although we had the “when you get to a corner, wait for the guy behind you” system in place… it sounds like we crossed paths (literally) with another group of riders at some point… and part of group ended up following them instead. I know I’ve accidentally done that before… when you’re riding with a new group of people it’s hard to recognize if others are in “your group” or not.
I had a blast, and in the end we didn’t have any major breakdowns or other problems. I did take some video with my camera and helmetcam… but I don’t know how to edit or post it yet… some may eventually make it to YouTube. Special thanks to BJ (aka “Xhumeka”) for organizing the event: here he is again on his new ride:
P.S: someone let him know that somebody welded a piece of scrap metal to the back of his ATC when he wasn’t looking
EDIT: !!! There’s many more pictures and video clips available in the main thread about this ride on 3wheelerworldforums.com !!!
I received a Wii Fit for Christmas… and although my sister and I started off using it regularly…. it kind of got pushed off to the side of the living room and forgotten.
A few weeks ago, EA Sports released a new game called “Active”. So as part of trying it out… I booted up the Fit again this morning. And… well… its been awhile…
…but on the up side, todays use brought it up to 10 hours of activity. I guess it had been sitting around 9.5 hours for the last 4 months
Not long after I bought my SV, I also bought a bracket that allowed me to mount my DV cam to the gas tank. I only ended up using it once… because DV cams at the time were still pretty big to be bending over one riding a motorcycle… it took space normally reserved for my tank bag… and it was only high enough to be peeking out through the mini windshield on the bike. Good to protect the camera from wind blast… but you know how clear plastic can get enough fine scratches on it that it appears hazy? Yeah, that’s what I had… so the video I did record was less than stellar.
Fast forward a couple years, and I friend I met through the ODSC site, BJ, owned a GoPro HERO Wide helmet cam… and I wanted one! It took good video and was compact enough you didn’t notice it on your helmet. So after seeing the raw and YouTube versions of his footage, I went online to get one myself.
“But…” I thought, “before I commit… I should look around and see what else is out there”. Maybe I could wait for a new version of something just a bit shinier?
I found the ContourHD. A little bit larger than the GoPro, but could take a bit more detailed video and accepted larger SD cards. It came with a standard sticky mount and one designed for the strap of your goggles, like you use on a dirtbike. Here it is on my crusty old helmet:
At the highest detail (1280×720, 30fps, 135 degree FoV) it consumes a gig of storage every 30 minutes, and at the lowest res (848×480, 60fps, 90 degree FoV) it can store 60 minutes of video in the same space. Since it only comes with a 2GB card out-of-the box (1 hour of HD footage) I bought a 16GB card to go with it. Theoretically that should allow about 8 hours of HD… more than enough for a days ride…. but my second battery hasn’t shipped yet. So I have storage for 8 hours… but with the standard single battery I only have the juice to record 2 hours.
All the goodies are behind one door on the back: microSD slot, battery, USB port, and HD/SD switch. It’s fairly easy to use: a button on the back to turn it on (15 minutes of inactivity and it turns off)… big slider on top (easy to use with gloves): push it forwards and it beeps once to indicate the start of a new recording… slide it backwards and it beeps twice to say it has stopped.
And… something I’ve never seen before: for a couple seconds on initial startup or for about 10 seconds if you hold down the power button for 3 seconds… two tiny laser lights to indicate where the camera is pointing, and if it’s level (the lens can be rotated through 90 degrees in case the mount point is crooked). Here you can see the 2 red dots on the wall, and on the camera:
I don’t have any real footage yet, but as a sample of what I get off my 3rd floor balcony on a sunny day: (note: playing these links in my browser seems to make the video jerkier than if I play them in a standalone player like VLC):
I can’t wait to use it for real this weekend!
Between a skin rash and a bum knee… I hadn’t been out on either bike for a few weeks. Today I made the rounds of Ganaraska again, and the day started like any other…
Falling over on some slick trails (it had rained constantly the day before)… bit too much gas turning to go up a short hill had the back end come around and point me into the bush: tossing me off..
Stopped at the Forest Center to buy a new map. But there were lots of buildings… not sure which one was open (if any) on a Sunday… and didn’t feel like walking all over the place with motocross boots… so left empty handed…
Had lunch at the chip truck again. This is becoming a habit when I go alone: $5 for lunch is easier than carrying food with me, as my CamelBak is pretty much full with water, first aid kit, and extra gloves/batteries…
Then came the “interesting” part. After lunch I was starting to get tired, so I decided to only go out for another hour, on some trails I had never been down before. There’s residential land surrounding Ganaraska, but there are trails/roads that loop around the forbidden sections, and I wanted to poke around the edge of some of the closed off sections.
So off I went… nice trails that didn’t look used as much as those in the core of the park… with more small trees/logs crossing them, since they weren’t as well maintained. I came across one trail that was starting to grow in, and at one point it had a couple small 2″ logs across the trail that grass had start to grow around. When I came to them, I should have realized they were part of a barrier….but I was moving along at a good pace and I had gone over lots of small fallen logs…
…so I rolled right over them… and kept riding. No big deal.
About 10 seconds farther down the trail, it had really started to grow in, and 1-foot tall grass and weeds had grown over the tracks. Figuring I had wandered onto private property I turned around and drove back the way I came.
So, now I’m coming back to the pile of logs, and it dawns on me that it’s not just some fallen trees… somebody had put the logs there. But it was easy enough crossing them the first time… so I snuck up on them then gave it a bit of gas so I could roll up and over them…
…and as I crossed them I felt a sharp pull downwards on my boot, then before I can realize was was happening I was yanked down to the right, and thrown to the ground with the bike on top of me. What the hell?
Laying there my right leg pinned under the bike… I realized I was OK, I didn’t even twist my knee… and my foot didn’t hurt at all. But I couldn’t free myself. Since I was already on the ground anyways, I peeked under the bike, and could see what happened. On my way back over my right boot had looped through a section of barbed wire, and as I moved forward over it, it pulled my boot down into the peg, then continued to drag the rest of the bike over. So I still had a loop of barbed wire across the front of my ankle, keeping me from getting my foot out.
After some wiggling around, I got my foot most of the way out, and managed to push the bike back upright. Then I left it on the sidestand for a second to figure out what I did wrong.
The overgrown grass around the logs had hidden the flattened remains of an old barbed-wire fence. It looks like someone pushed the fence to the ground, then threw some log over it to keep it from popping back up again. The other parts of the fence were still hidden in the grass, but now that I had dragged a good chunk of it out into the open it was easy enough to see.
Two sections had also wrapped around my back tire… so if my foot hadn’t dragged me over I would have come to an abrupt stop shortly anyways…
In some ways I was lucky: that wire could have wrapped into my chain and sprockets, and the way that it was stuck between the knobs in the rear tire it also could have given me a flat. I was VERY luck to be wearing good boots: the barbed wire wrapped across my ankle hard enough to drag me and a moving 300lb dirtbike to the ground, but my foot was fine. It also protected my ankle from the weight of the bike as I had to wiggle around under it to free myself.
I bought some good boots: Gaerne SG-10’s, when I decided to ride off-road… and they’re worth every penny. They had already protected me from stumps, rocks, and other small crashes… but they really saved my ass today. Some people ride around with street shoes, even regular runners… can you imagine how much worse this could have been?
If you’re going to ride a dirtbike, buy good boots!
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