Helena. I'd made assumptions about Helena. I'm suspicious of any mountain town that doesn't have its own ski area. How exciting could it be? A couple of my fit testers from work kept mentioning the trails in Helena and how awesome they are. I didn't expect that the trails are bona fide ride from town single-track. You could theoretically introduce some unconstitutional legislation or squander tax payer money with some foolish branding iron veto sideshow in the morning and then ride straight up into a patchwork of city land, BLM, and Forest Service in the afternoon.
Municipalities around the Mountain West listen up: Helena is your public recreation archetype. The quality is incredibly high and the access is as good as it gets. I stopped in Big Sky Cyclery for some good, friendly advice. I know the dance well - ask about the trails and where to eat, then buy a tube or a map. I'll tell you, skip the map (unless you're a mapophile) and spend the eight bucks on tacos or something. There's been a lot of trail construction since it was published, and it's tough to get lost. Head out of downtown a few blocks on Davis or East Main and you'll see trails. Start riding up. Generally ride in a clockwise direction. Even with the map I kept dumping out a little farther up or down the road than I expected. A few of the intersection are marked. The system has three sections: Mount Ascension City Park, Rodney Ridge, and Mount Helena City Park, each divided by a major drainage and road. Ascension and Rodney are fairly uncrowded (even on a beautiful, warm Saturday), and Mount Helena has a few more hikers and dogs. There is plenty of room to spread out. I only saw about a dozen riders and 5 or 6 hikers. Almost every group of riders stopped to say hello and chat. I met a lot of very friendly folks from Helena and a couple groups of riders who made the trek from Bozeman (and who were nearly speechless on one of the descents). Thanks to all for the advice, conversation, and company.
The trails are mostly single track and run through timber and meadows. There are great 360 degree views. Good, stiff climbs no matter where you go. I was off my bike a bit but nothing obnoxious. I rode for 3.5 hours without doing much retracing of trails. The Entertainment Trail was a spectacular descent. There is a lot of ground to cover. I imagine that if you lived there and rode 3-4 days a week you might be itching for some variety toward the end of the season, but at times I lost sense of time and geography. It was just ridiculously good riding.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
Go Pro
Happy Spring everyone. I hope that your neck of the woods has a bit more sunshine than Bozemanistan. We have rain. Lots of it; but everything is starting to green up as a result.
For some reason I never fixed up my blog settings to display comments. Not sure why. I do see them and it's crazy sometimes to know that people actually read this stuff; and there are some of you from other continents that read this. Weird. Cool that the Google leads you to this very small corner of the internet. The biggest source of comments was the very brief mention of a Yeti Bigtop. That bike has a rabid following. I wish I would have written a more comprehensive review of it. The other request that I get is for information on the video on the site and what I use to get it (anonymous responder from today, I hope you come back to read this). I bought a GoPro HD at a tradeshow about 18 months ago. It was too good of an offer to pass up. Here's some basic info:
1. You can get a lot more out of the camera than I do. My use is very rudimentary and I use a low quality setting. I do this for a couple of reasons, primarily that I can't be bothered with changing the settings and I have a smaller SD card; secondarily, Blogger.com has limits on the size and resolution for video. If I shot in true HD it doesn't really make that much of a difference in the blog-sized format. I promise to explore the issue this summer and see if I can milk a bit better resolution out of the process. Also, using a bigger, HD specific SD card will remove the glitches and herky-jerkiness; and it will record a massive amount of footage.
2. All that being said, the camera is amazing. It charges quickly on a USB connection; has a million different secure mounting options (though I think I would get more use out of a chest harness and handle bar mount); takes a lot of abuse; has a built in battery heater for cold weather; is fun; and can be set up to take a pic every few seconds; is a lot of product for the money; waterproof casing.
3. The downsides: can be obtrusive; can make people nervous when you're cruising around with it sticking off the top of your head (or can make people ride fast); isn't equipped with a standard LCD screen (you can buy an attachment), so I'm never quite sure if I'm shooting a good angle or not. My best advice with that is to just use it a lot. You'll throw out a lot of footage, but eventually you'll get it. Even so, I still get it too vertical sometimes. It's not as sleek as a Contour but I was surprised at how much it "disappeared" given its size.
4. I've ridden with this thing a lot and I tend to not be affected by it - the weight is pretty insignificant. I don't ski with it as much - I'm a pretty slow skier on the uphill and down and I feel like it makes me even slower; it's hard to remember to take off my skins, switch my bindings to downhill mode, lock my boot cuff, adjust my poles, close all the zippers, buckle my waist belt, take a pee, and get the camera ready. Half of the time I'm skiing with my boots in walk mode on the downhills because there's just too much to remember. If you're a bit faster on the uptake than me then you should be fine. Most of my skiing this season was squeezing in a few hours on a powder day before work so that caused me to leave the camera behind in favor of streamlining the morning routine.
I edit in iMovie which is ridiculously easy (though I still can't figure out how to fade music). The footage that you get is the footage that you get. iMovie will let you zoom in on the frames a bit, which helps, but generally what I post on the site is fairly raw. Like I said, I could definitely be getting more out of it. Questions? Fire away. Hope this is helpful.
For some reason I never fixed up my blog settings to display comments. Not sure why. I do see them and it's crazy sometimes to know that people actually read this stuff; and there are some of you from other continents that read this. Weird. Cool that the Google leads you to this very small corner of the internet. The biggest source of comments was the very brief mention of a Yeti Bigtop. That bike has a rabid following. I wish I would have written a more comprehensive review of it. The other request that I get is for information on the video on the site and what I use to get it (anonymous responder from today, I hope you come back to read this). I bought a GoPro HD at a tradeshow about 18 months ago. It was too good of an offer to pass up. Here's some basic info:
1. You can get a lot more out of the camera than I do. My use is very rudimentary and I use a low quality setting. I do this for a couple of reasons, primarily that I can't be bothered with changing the settings and I have a smaller SD card; secondarily, Blogger.com has limits on the size and resolution for video. If I shot in true HD it doesn't really make that much of a difference in the blog-sized format. I promise to explore the issue this summer and see if I can milk a bit better resolution out of the process. Also, using a bigger, HD specific SD card will remove the glitches and herky-jerkiness; and it will record a massive amount of footage.
2. All that being said, the camera is amazing. It charges quickly on a USB connection; has a million different secure mounting options (though I think I would get more use out of a chest harness and handle bar mount); takes a lot of abuse; has a built in battery heater for cold weather; is fun; and can be set up to take a pic every few seconds; is a lot of product for the money; waterproof casing.
3. The downsides: can be obtrusive; can make people nervous when you're cruising around with it sticking off the top of your head (or can make people ride fast); isn't equipped with a standard LCD screen (you can buy an attachment), so I'm never quite sure if I'm shooting a good angle or not. My best advice with that is to just use it a lot. You'll throw out a lot of footage, but eventually you'll get it. Even so, I still get it too vertical sometimes. It's not as sleek as a Contour but I was surprised at how much it "disappeared" given its size.
4. I've ridden with this thing a lot and I tend to not be affected by it - the weight is pretty insignificant. I don't ski with it as much - I'm a pretty slow skier on the uphill and down and I feel like it makes me even slower; it's hard to remember to take off my skins, switch my bindings to downhill mode, lock my boot cuff, adjust my poles, close all the zippers, buckle my waist belt, take a pee, and get the camera ready. Half of the time I'm skiing with my boots in walk mode on the downhills because there's just too much to remember. If you're a bit faster on the uptake than me then you should be fine. Most of my skiing this season was squeezing in a few hours on a powder day before work so that caused me to leave the camera behind in favor of streamlining the morning routine.
I edit in iMovie which is ridiculously easy (though I still can't figure out how to fade music). The footage that you get is the footage that you get. iMovie will let you zoom in on the frames a bit, which helps, but generally what I post on the site is fairly raw. Like I said, I could definitely be getting more out of it. Questions? Fire away. Hope this is helpful.
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