MTB trip 2010

My "annual" epic MTB trip plans are once again falling into place. I am planning on taking another 2.5 weeks off from work in June this year. The destination again is the American Southwest.
After heading out there last year, I have been wanting to return and hit some of the best trails and try a few new ones in the process. I am eliminating Fruita Colorado from the itinerary this time, because it is a bit out of the way. I am doing the entire trip in reverse this time, with Moab being the last spot. Last year I missed some key points of interest, such as Monument Valley, which I am going to be taking in this year.
My itinerary takes me from Tampa to Lafayette, LA. the first day, then to Amarillo Texas the next. Third day arrival is in Sedona, where I plan on camping somewhere along Oak Creek Canyon. I am thinking of CAVE SPRINGS campground.
Sedona is a good place to start riding, since the lower elevations will help me acclimate for some of the other riding. Bell Rock Pathway is a good warmup ride, and I may try out some of the other trails out toward Flagstaff as well. I plan on being in Sedona for 3 days.
I'm then heading north on 89 toward Page, where I will be staying at Lees Ferry Campground. This is primitive camping at its best, and one of the few areas where you can actually access the Colorado River without climbing down a cliff. While in Page, I plan on hiking back out to Horseshoe Bend and taking some evening pictures, taking in another tour at Antelope Canyon, doing some kayaking on Lake Powell, and visitng "The Chains" area, which runs off 89 right before the Glen Canyon Dam. This is one of the only other places (aside from Lone Rock Beach) that you can actually access Lake Powell without a boat. It doesn't have a sandy beach, however- it's all sandstone, so I have to make sure I lug some chairs out there. Should be a good site to launch the kayaks from, too. One of the days I also plan on hitting the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I have usually just visited the south rim, but I have heard so many nice things about the North Rim I think I have to go see it. I plan on being in Page for 3 nights as well.
Going up into Utah, I am going to the "cannot miss" ride once again- Thunder Mountain. Camping at Red Canyon this time, which should make for a nice base camp. The tough part will be heading up to Coyote Hollow and THEN riding the whole trail. But at least I can just crash right at the campground at the base of the trail. You HAVE to ride Thunder Mountain clockwise... I only plan on being here for one night. Gonna try to squeeze in a hike on Navajo Loop to the bottom of Bryce again. I plan on leaving Page early on the first day, then doing the hike in the afternoon. The next day I plan on getting up early to ride Thunder, and then packing up and heading to Moab in the afternoon.
I've already booked the Devil's Garden Campground in Arches NP for my stay in Moab, but only for two nights. I want to spend the last night in a hotel just to enjoy the last night in comfort.

 

This campground is highly rated, and is also very picturesque. The next day I plan on exploring Canyonlands and Arches NP. 

The following day I plan on taking a kick ass MTB ride with Utah Outventures ... this is a killer ride down the Schaffer Trail in Canyonlands, along some of the canyon rims down in the National Park, and then into a jet boat for a ride along the Colorado. This night I plan on resting in a comfy hotel room with a hot shower- I am gonna need it after this ride. 

On my departure day from Moab, I plan on cruising right through Monument Valley on my way to Amarillo, TX. This will be a long day of driving, but the scenery will be incredible. I am NOT missing Monument Valley this time.

Headed out and did 17.5 miles out at Santos MTB Park. There was an event going on there, "The 12 Hours of Santos". The 12 hours runs from 10am to 10pm, and consists of various races- timed lap races in different classes, and the 12 hour ride....where racers do as many laps around the track that they can in 12 hours...insane!

 My co-worker Jeff and I ended up pulling off 17.5 miles on this trail today. We tried to keep up with some of those racers, but its hard to keep up on a sub-$1000 bike. Many of these guys were riding carbon fiber frame bikes and they were simply smoking us. By the end of the ride, we were toast. The above GPS map only shows the first 11.5 miles we did. We took a lunch break, then headed out to do 6 more miles. All in all, we hit Dr. Ruth, Sinkhole, Spedway, Marshmallow,Canopy, Bunny, Twister, Dog Bone, Cow Bone, Back Door, and Pine Tree trails. Insane!

Messin' with Picasa...

GOOGLE LATITUDE

So I added Google Maps with Google Latitude to my Blackberry the other day. What this program does, is shares your GPS location with other friends or through the application itself. The application itself is on iGoogle (which can be on your desktop) or via HTML code through your webpage or (in my case) blog. You can see the map with Latitude on the right corner of this page.
Essentially this program allows you to share your current location with friends who add latitude on their phones, so you can see them on a street level map view...kinda like an electronic stalking device. Although I don't really care too much to use it for that purpose, because I really could care less about keeping tabs on people- it's still an OK app for providing information to people about your adventures.
When I head out in June, I plan on tracking my travels through this blog, so until then I am just experimenting with it. Once in a while you will see my location change on the map, depending on what I am doing. Most of the time I have it set to my rough home location. It's not too bad of an app, but I don't see it being used to its fullest because not too many people know about it. Furthermore, you have to either be using Google Maps in order for it to get a fix, or you need to enable sharing (which drains your battery I am assuming). I think it's more appropriate for traveling and showing people where you are/where you've been to help log things. I'll post up more info later on as I mess with the program.

Messin' wit' da page...

OK, I just put up a quick Photochop header. I am really tired and I just threw it together. I will be messing with it again this weekend- hopefully I can make it look a lot nicer than what I have up now...lol. Not bad for a 15 minute job..

GO PRO HD 1st RIDE VIDEO...

Well, here is the first video I made using the new GoPro HD Wide. Video seems smooth, but my computer is limiting the playback when I try to view it in 720p. It looks alot better on my Facebook page than on Youtube. There seems to be a lot of compression on Youtube that takes away from the total effect...
Also, the weather was terribly overcast with rain rolling in. The video appears washed out because I was using spot metering instead of centered. I need to give this another shot when the sun is shining. This Florida weather has SUCKED lately- it rained more this winter than it did int he summer. BS...

GOPRO HD WIDE REVIEW

I've been messing around with the new cam for the past few days, and I felt it was time to post up a review for any prospective helmet cam buyers out there.
I have owned the standard GoPro, the Wide, and now the Wide HD. I still own the wide, but I sold the standard cam. Once you go wide, you can't go standard- there is way too much room for error when it comes to aiming the standard lens cam, and you'll end up walking away disappointed when your video footage is aimed at the ground.
As for the HD, here are the major differences:
1) Full HD at both 30 and 60 fps.
2) rechargable battery
3) higher capacity SD card compatibility
4) slightly larger in size than the standard wide
5) full size USB and output jacks
6) two different rear covers for waterproof/ dry conditions
7) expansion output/inputs (more on that later)

I noticed a HUGE difference in the video quality and smoothness. Absolutely amazing. The camera's casing also has a softer feel to it, and the camera as a whole feels a lot more solid and well put together. There's really nothing bad to say about this camera. I have used the Oregon Scientific ATK series cams (which were terrible in quality), and I have also used nothing but Go Pro for years. I have yet to have one of them fail on me. I strap it on my mountain bike and my jet ski, and they take a beating for sure.
The only major issue the HD version has is with editing. Make sure you read my previous post on this topic.
As far as the other issues, I can forsee the rechargeable battery being a problem on prolonged rides. Granted, it is a nice feature to know you have a good 2.5 hours on a full charge-but once it dies in the field, you are done. I am going to miss the ability to toss in some fresh AAA's and continue recording the ride. I guess I have to be more selective about what I record.
GoPro has plans to release new firware updates to correct a couple issues: one, they are going to add the "upside down" recording mode- which will be a nice thing to have since sometimes it isn't optimal to have the cam facing right side up. Secondly, they are planning on adding a feature that allows the camera to charge and record at the same time- which I am disappointed it doesn't do right now. As soon as you plug it in, it goes straight to USB mode, and renders the keys useless. Grrr! Why didn't they get this right off the bat! The only reason you would need this would be if you are using the cam to record a lengthy time lapse- and chances are your SD card will run out of room before the battery dies, but damn! I wish the option was there. I plan on taking this camera on my June trip back west, so we shall see what kind of cool footage I can get on the trip. I plan on time lapsing a lot of the drive in certain areas, and I plan on recording a TON of footage from some of the trails. Especially since the last time I had the cam out there, it was the standard lens, and not the wide...most of my footage was of the dirt. I wasn't too happy with the results.
So in conclusion, here are the pros and cons:

PROS:
1) High quality video footage in WIDE angle format
2) rugged and dependable
3) high capacity SD compatibility
4) rechargeable battery (also can be a con!)

CONS:
1) rechargeable battery
2) no upside down mode
3) inability to chage cam while in use
4) a bit tougher to edit due to format- but once you get the software, a piece of cake.

Time lapse test with the GoPro

Just another test...screwin' around with time lapse mode....pretty cool!

GOPRO HIGH DEF HERO!

I picked up the new GoPro High Definition Hero helmet cam. This thing is amazing. The cam itself is waterproof (in its case) to 100 feet, and shock resistant like the other Go Pros. The best thing about this puppy is it shoots in WVGA, 720P (30 and 60 FPS), 960P (30FPS), and 1080P (30 FPS). For such a small piece of hardware, that is amazing in my opinion.
The HD Hero now has a rechargable battery, which is good when it comes to longevity, but questionable when it comes to ease of use in the field. Where I was once able to carry a couple extra AAA's in my pack or in my truck, I now have to carry a laptop or buy a DC car charger for it. The rechargeables are supposed to last 2.5 hours, so we shall see.
I have had a real hard time finding a lot of decent info on editing the HD GoPro format for some of us Windows users, it seems most of it is geared towards Mac.
Additionally, I am on a budget, and I can't afford $500 for video editing software, but I still want my video to look good and flashy like the big dollar programs.
For $100 (or less), you can have everything you need to edit HD video at least at 720p at 60 FPS on your Wal-Mart bought E-Machines running Vista like me! LOL I haven't yet tried this with 1080p, but I am sure the results would be similar.
It should be noted I am running an EMachines $340 system, which is running a 1.6G Celeron, 1 gig of RAM, Vista SP2. Not a cutting edge combo, but about average for a 2 year old system.
The raw GPHD files play pretty choppy on my system, but not so bad I can't watch them. My main goal is sharing, so I don't care if I can watch them on the PC all that well.

I started off upgrading Quick Time7 to PRO for $30. I use this editor because it is the simplest way to trim and clip the files and save them without any loss to original image quality. I'll go through all the footage I have taken for the day, then trim out the unnecessary parts and save them in a folder in chronological order. No need to use the lousy trimming tool QT7 Pro uses. I think you can even get this for free off some sites on the web. Or even on Limewire.
As soon as all the videos are saved, I use PROSHOW GOLD. http://www.photodex.com/store/products/proshow/gold. I selected this program because it isn't just good for video, but it also works best for slideshows and has a verrry cool Facebook and Youtube uploader that allows you to easily export to these and more with one click. Talk about EASY! You just log in to your account via Proshow, and select the output format and quality and it renders and uploads it for you.
The only downfall, is the video trimmer on ProShow is poor and not user-friendly (actually, I think it's non-existent), hence that is why I have QT7 Pro and also use an ancient Roxio program for AVI and MPEG files if I want to use those from my standard def GoPro.
ProShow has excellent transitions, music and audio editing, and great slide and video effects you can work in to the show. Sure, it isn't like a $500 program, but what do you want for $70?
Here are the end results on Youtube:

This is a quick sample video, but at least it gives you an idea of what this combo can do. And it doesn't take a lot of time to edit this stuff either. I cranked out the sample video in about 3 minutes, not counting upload times.
Like I said, this is mainly intended for those of you who have recently bought a GoPro HD and have been having a bear of a time finding good editing programs to use. Also for you guys with weak computers like mine and can't afford to shell out a load of cash for software that works. I have seen some people recommend free programs online like AnyVideo Converter, which is an outstanding piece of freeware, but these programs destroy the quality of the final product! Especially because you're working with HD.
I am looking forward to seeing all this cam can do. It has an awesome "time lapse" feature, which will allow me to make some really cool videos in time-lapse style.
Next purchase is going to be a car charger so I can have this thing hooked up when I drive across country later this year.