Making room...

Gateway BMW GS Challenge May, 2011 Update.

I'll keep this short and sweet...  I just wanted to share a couple of video's and some photos from the event.

I strapped my GoPro onto Bob Honz the Ringleader of this event when he took his R1200GSA around the Challenge time trial course.  Typical of Honz he finished in a very spectacular fashion.  See for your self.


I also put the GoPro on Adam, one of the guys from Gateway BMW while he rode his G650 XChallenge.  He was quite pumped at the end of his run.


Marilyn Roberts took a hard drive full of photos at the event including a couple of me you can see them all HERE.  Including this one of me in the mud-pit.

Me in the Mud-pit.  Photo by: Marilyn Roberts

That's it for now.
See you on the road.
GAW

Gateway BMW GS Challenge May, 2011

I have had a busy weekend getting my bike dirty and then giving it a swamp water shower.



It was great fun, even thought it rained more or less non-stop for the whole event. 

Sorry but I used up all the batterys on Saturday so I can't show you the really wicked trails we rode on Sunday.

Taking a break Sunday, before the tough stuff.

Big thanks to Gateway BMW and all the guys who worked so hard to put this event on, it was a blast.  Also I should thank the instructors from RawHyde Adventures, Del, Mark and Jeff, three laid back California guys who can make those big bikes dance.


See you on the road.
GAW

The Score is even, 1 and 1.

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'm Back!

It's been a long eight weeks, but I was finally given my release early last week.  So I set to planning my weekend travels.  I decided to visit my father and of course there would be pizza.  Saturday I was up early, but didn't leave until after 10 A.M. due to a craigslist appointment (that way I had money for pizza and gas).  I took what would normally take about 2 hours and extended it to over 6.

The first stop of the day was an old church, there are no markers or signs about it.  I think that makes me wonder even more about it's history.  The first 100 miles were spent mostly on gravel and I found about 12 low water bridges.  I didn't get my feet wet until the last one just after leaving Frankenstein.  Yes I went to Frankenstein, MO and no I didn't take a photo. There was not a single sign to be found in the whole place.  After a good visit and good pizza I had a twenty minute ride in the rain heading toward the lightning.

Sunday morning I had breakfast with my father at The Brick in Moberly, my favorite breakfast joint.  My plans for the day were to eat at Taco Johns in Pittsfield, IL and sleep in my own bed a the end of the day.

As I approached my first gas stop of the day I decided to add two more destinations.  The first was the Haunted tunnel (so I'm told),  it passes under the BNSF railroad less than a mile from the Des Moines River.  The second was Sorrento's Pizza in Fort Madison, IA.  The tunnel passed through, but no ghost were seen, just some graffiti.  When I arrived in Fort Madison I found Sorrento's Pizza closed.  It had been over 10 years since I last had pizza there, and for some reason I knew they would be closed, but it didn't stop me from trying.  Finding no pizza in the Fort I crossed the river into Illinois and headed south towards Pittsfield and some Taco Johns.  My day ended around 9:30 P.M. when I arrived home.  My behind knew I had put a few miles on the clock, but I was still surprised by just how many.

2 Days.
3 States.
20 Hours on the road.
630 Miles traveled.

Not a bad start.



See you on the road.
GAW.

P.S.  To those of you that recently attended the International Moto Blogger's Convention in Bend, I have been following along with all of your blog's and have lived vicariously through your eye's, I thank you for that.  I would have loved to have been there, but in the end it just wasn't meant to be this time around, next time...  I won't even start on those terrible roads in Oregon.

Is it toast yet?

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...

See you on the road.
GAW

A ride in the woods Part 2 the prequel and other stuff.

I was feeling better this weekend so I ended up doing some work around the house that I had put off  during the week so I didn't spend much time working on fun stuff.  I did finish putting together this video I shot the week before my small get off.  I was riding alone on a more difficult trail than the one that took me down.  I hesitate to state where this trail is, I rode it on my way to lunch and on my way home.  I didn't see any "No Trespassing" or "Private Property" signs on my way to lunch and there were no gates blocking the road, I'm just not sure if it is a public road or not.  It was an enjoyable ride and I'm glad I found it.

This video is the first video I edited with Adobe Premier Elements 8.  It works very nicely and I believe it will let me get out comes closer to my "Vision's".  Now I just need to get better bringing the time down.  I did have one problem,  I wanted to record a short narration track of about 20-30 seconds, but it crashed the program at about 10 seconds into the recording.  I finally recorded the track in another program and just imported the clip into PE.  I have some family video that I need to put together and then I will start work (pre-production & filming) on an epic moto docudrama that has recently been banging around in my head and also do a Redux on a short riding video I did last year.  When I get home today I will have a box from Filmtools.com waiting for me, that will really give me the itch...

Connections,  I enjoy looking at maps on Google Analytics and the Feedjit list (lower right side of blog) to see where the people who read my blog come from and how they got here.  Last week I saw a hit from Salisbury, MO which is truly just a hop, skip and a jump from where I grew up (maybe 20 miles?).  When I was a kid Salisbury was home to the only motocross track I knew of and the Kawasaki dealer( a friend rode Kawasaki's, I rode Yamaha's).  I believe the track is long gone, but I think the Kawasaki dealer (Doug's Cycle Shop) is still there.  What really interested me was that the hit came via Wet Coast Scootin.  Just makes me wonder about the path they took getting here?  So Mr or Mrs Salisbury, if you visit again I'm from Higbee thanks for stopping by.

Enough for today, back to work.

See you on the road.
GAW

It's all in the Landing!

The video pretty much says it all. I performed a similar stunt about almost 25 or 30 years ago, with nearly the exact same results.

It looks like I will have some time to hone my video editing skills, and treasure hunting skills on eBay.

I'll update in a day or two, between typing one handed and the vicodin it's time to call it a night...

See you on the road.
GAW

A ride in the woods, May 24th, 2010

For the last few weeks is has rained more or less 24/7, at least it seams that way.  If the sun did shine I was either at work from sun-up to sun-down or I had family obligations.  That is until yesterday, I had a brief window of opportunity from 10am to 3:30pm.  What follows is short snippet of my journey.



The rain had stopped, the Sun was shining and I had the day off from work and family affairs. I went for 150 mile lunch ride via a couple of creeks. Give me a few days and I will post a longer version with a few more highlights.

See you on the road.
GAW


Note:  Sorry, YouTube just doesn't have a embedded size that fits my layout, so the video is best viewed on YouTube, the mgt