I attended the 2010 Falling Leaf Rally this weekend and partook in the GS/gravel road ride. After Lunch in Bixby, MO 5 of us decided to take in a few more gravel roads instead of taking tarmac back to the rally grounds.
I must say the part I like the best is my feet pointing toward the sky. It would seem I have a thing for low water bridges, this is twice in as many months. No harm done that a few zip ties couldn't fix.
Not much to talk about lately, my family returned from and extended stay abroad recently and they have kept me busy. Until today that is. Today was my day off, the little one had school and my better half had plans. I was off to ride the Creeks of Warren County with my Trusty GoPro HD Hero. It was a Great day of riding, I put about 200 miles on the clock mostly on gravel and I shot 16 GB of HD footage half a 60 fps. Well I filled up the 16 GB card but I only thought it was HD footage. Turns out I shot 1200 5mp images 2 seconds apart and I found the main weakness of the GoPro HD Hero, it's archaic menu system. Even though I studied the user guide the night before my ride I some how messed up when trying to change from 720p @ 30fps to 720p @ 60fps. So until I can sort through all the images (should make an interesting time-lapse) I leave you with a teaser of 3 consecutive images shot at 2 second intervals, enjoy. I guess I found the second flaw in the GoPro HD Hero, it's numbering system! I have 5 sets of images all with the same number!
GAW.
It's called SLIME... and it's slippy, very slippy.
I had my check up for my clavicle fracture yesterday and was given 6 more weeks for it to heal completely. If I'm really lucky it may be good in about 4 weeks, but I was told not to hold my breath. The Doc says that a clavicle typically takes about 9 weeks to heal, which puts it out to Aug 2nd for me. I guess the problem is that with a clavicle there is no way to completely immobilize it, and I can attest to that, it moves around quite a bite and can be very uncomfortable because of that movement. There is the option for a plate bolted up surgically, but because my break didn't really fit the need for surgery I'm sure my Insurance would have passed on the bill to me. So either way I would not be making a summer road trip, as it is the time just isn't there, and if I had had surgery I would probably have such a large medical bill that not only would I not be able to afford a road trip, I would probably only be able to eat stale bread and water for the next 5 years...
So for the rest of the summer I shall try to stay out of trouble and save my pennies for an even greater roadtrip in 2011.
See you on the road.
GAW
Getting some time behind the wheel of PEL-8 (Adobe Premier Elements 8), I just need to be out riding collecting raw data, but that will have to wait for now... I shot the video and photos this morning and had it edited by lunch, but when I used PEL to upload directly to YouTube only the first 18 seconds of footage would get uploaded. So I spent several hours trying to get it to work, so that I could save a step and a few minutes. In the end I had to do it the old fashion way of first creating an MPEG and then uploading it to YouTube. Next time I will just go straight to the old fashion way.
The video pretty much follows my vision. I have very complex mental visions of how I want things to look, but when I try to output those visions to bytes I seem to be all thumbs. I'm pleased how it came out, but I need to work on in-out timing and transition of the still images.
As I said in the video I'm getting bored around the house (I have run out of constructive things to do) so I decided later in the day to go for a walk and take my camera's below are a couple of images that would appear unrelated to motorcycles, but are they?
The first couple of images are what I will call poor man HDR images, one infrared (Canon G7) and one regular. I used 5 images that were shoot 2 stops apart and were merged in PSE using Photomerge-Exposure.
The last image is a single exposure made with the Lumix ZS3 in sunset mode.
So what makes these photos moto related? Well after taking the photos I took a tumble down the river bank. Probably because I was protecting my left arm, the rest of me feels kind of beat-up. I guess I will try to be content with being bored around the house for a couple of more weeks, lest I pull another stunt...
I look a bit something like the photo above, just add 30 years. Way back in the summer of 1982 I was riding Yamaha 125 and crashed it for almost no reason breaking my Left collar bone. By today's standard I would have already had surgery to repair it, but back then they just put a brace on and said good luck.
My recent fracture isn't all that bad so in the brace I am. I get check up in about 3 weeks, so I suspect they will want me in the brace for about 6 weeks total. The one good thank about the brace is that I can get both hands on the keyboard, doing this kind a thing one handed gets old quickly. Back in 1982, a couple of weeks after that photo was taken I was riding my cousins Honda 70 three wheeler. It had an automatic transmission, only a hand brake on the right side, so not having use of my left hand didn't slow me down at all. Today I no longer have access to that little Honda nor a place to ride it, so it may take me a little longer to get back on the road. I have a recumbent bicycle and I have been a little lazy about riding it lately, so I may have to get it ready so that in a couple of weeks when I get some pain-free motion in the left arm again I will have two wheels ready.
I will also have some time to go through the video I have already taken with the GoPro HD video camera. I wasn't happy with a lot of the footage due to the camera shaking and the clattering noise coming from the camera shaking in it's housing. I also shot some footage with the camera upside down only to find out my software wouldn't let me rotate the image, so I purchased a copy Adobe Premiere Elements. I need to work at becoming proficient with it. I will return to some footage I shot about a year ago and see if Premiere Elements will let me get a final edit closer to my original vision. I must still learn that basic lesson of saving your work, I had a just over ten minute video almost ready for publication, I went through each clip trimming the time slightly on each to get the total time under the 10 minute limit. As soon as I got the time down I tried to record a short narration clip and the program crashed, off course I had not saved my work, so I'm back to the 10+ minute video, not the end of the world but none the less frustrating.
Hell is probably freezing over as I write this as I found and purchased a used Lumix ZS3( it's not a Canon??), it's all Bobskoot's fault. Maybe I will shoot some HD train videos while I'm healing.
At the least look for some videos in the near future.
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