I went out at noon today. They weather fools are predicting thunderstorms for tomorrow. I filled the tank (ouch, $3.99.9/gal), and went for a 2 hour ride. I had the GoPro with me, so I decided to record this one, since it was a nice day. I took regular pics, too. The first pic. is of the way the mount is now, with felt pads insulating the camera. The second pic. is of the sign at the Mindoro Cut. This is the same trip I made when I was with the Boy Scout charity riders, but this time, there is no schmutz on the lens...The third pic is of my bike (obviously) at the Mindoro Cut..you can see what this thing actually is. The recording is riding up to, and stopping long enough to take pics., and then down the other side...what fun! The Drifter is a competent handling machine..certainly no sport bike, but it can be made to hustle.....
https://picasaweb.google.com/109550952480484427597/GoProVideoClips#5879487505809186770
Awesome film and fun to watch..... ;) you must be some proud of all that you work you did there as a young man, were you one of them there mule skinners back then?
Quote from: Troll on May 18, 2013, 21:17:30 PM
I went out at noon today. They weather fools are predicting thunderstorms for tomorrow. I filled the tank (ouch, $3.99.9/gal),
It's $9/gal here now..
John.
Good gas is $1.18 per liter.........ok someone else do the math....
Yeah, well...Two weeks ago it was $3.50, then some refineries in Illinois shut down, and the price went straight up since then. They had promised that the price would be about $3.00 by Memorial day..liars. According to a report I read, the price went up $.60 in one week in Minneapolis...Oh well...nothing we can do about it...just now. RatMan...I didn't work on the Mindoro cut, I lived in New York...I helped with the Erie Canal. I changed the position of the camera half way through the ride I took yesterday. I put it back down on the guard bar. I ran a few more back roads, and this clip is Bliss Road, again..this time going down with the camera close to the road. NO, the fork leg isn't curved, it's the fish-eye lens of the camera. I'm now officially experimenting with camera resolution I still have a little time before Drift-In...
https://picasaweb.google.com/109550952480484427597/GoProVideoClips#5879705338749988850
Ratman, how I wish it was only 1.15/liter here; it is 142.9/liter this morning; time that by 4.546= $6.49/gallon (imperial) or $5.72/gallon (U.S.). :'(
Troll that was really good, not sure were I like it better personally, but it was a fun watch.
Worked on the Erie canal that is cool, I grew up on the Welland Canal for a while......
49 it is the shipping cost of getting the fuel to the top of the mountains, way out there in the sticks.....I'll just stick to around here till I retire and then ride out to see you.......plan on it.......
If they ever build a bridge from America or Canada to Great Britain they will have to increase the size of the fuel tanks on our bikes, or else the bridge will be so wide and heavy to fit all the filling stations that it will sink our island...
now I'm going on to my other (faster) computer to watch these videos..I have to find the best place to mount a camera that will be out of the rain, hopefully wher I can leave it mounted and just change the memory cards..
John.
Burned a tank and a half of Saudi gold today. Popped for $4.03 for premium w/o ethanol. Not sure it mattered much but after the first ten miles on the back roads I completely forgot about the price of gas and focused on the road. Lilacs and clover is starting to bloom. Sweet smelling ride through the Kettle Moraine countryside.
Lilacs & honeysuckle are blooming here. beautiful ride this evening.
;) GreenBarn my 150 ft of lilacs are just today really coming into bloom and soon the little hummingbirds will be about........
Great vids! Nice rides! I do prefer the rider's view over the guard bar. You get to see much more scenery and it feels more like the real experience. Should be some great documentary of the Drift-in! Wish I was able to go :-[. Thanks for taking the time and sharing the vids. They are really good!
Take care,
Pete
I love riding the Kettles...When I used to teach at Road America, I would always take an evening after classes to do a tour.
Here's an interesting, but annoying discovery I just made. I had the camera shell open on my down stairs desk over night, and I cleaned the lens inside with a micro fiber cloth, put in the camera, mounted it on the bike, and went for a ride. I stopped to go into a grocery store, and the lens was all fogged over on the INSIDE!! Make sure you don't have a temp differential when you close the back, it really is water tight.
Quote from: jmbo on May 19, 2013, 21:29:03 PM
Burned a tank and a half of Saudi gold today. Popped for $4.03 for premium w/o ethanol. Not sure it mattered much but after the first ten miles on the back roads I completely forgot about the price of gas and focused on the road. Lilacs and clover is starting to bloom. Sweet smelling ride through the Kettle Moraine countryside.
Born in Wisconsin, miss the Kettle Moraine area and the smell of Lilacs. Don't find that much in Florida. Confederate Jasmin is as close as I get. Ride on!
Kettle Moraine is one of my planned rides this year, gonna ride the entire Kettle Moraine route. Other planned rides for this year are:
* Iron Butt ride around Lake Superior (did Lake Michigan last year)
* Angle Inlet in MN (northern most point the 48 states)
* Great River road
I have been thinking about picking up a GoPro. Saw a guy who had his setup to take just a few frames a second while riding up to Alaska. Record pretty much the entire ride, that was a fun video to watch.
Let me know when you do the great river road, I can see it from my house...
I notice that your films are only 2 minutes long, is this because you have edited them to keep interest high or something to do with the memory capacity..
The picture quality seems good and both films seem very clear, I would have expected at least one bug to splat on the screen and plenty of road splatter on the lower mount, can you remember what speeds you were travelling at?
John.
I edited the sections down to a short piece to make it more friendly to the free sites I use to host the films. The actual sections the camera breaks the recording into vary in length based on the resolution I'm using. At the highest setting, it runs about 14 minutes, and at lower settings as much as 25 minutes. I have a 32 Gbyte memory card in the camera, and I took a trip of some 70 miles last night and only used about 1/3 of the capacity. The camera automatically cuts sections at 1.85 Gbytes.
I have some new software (freeware) that should allow me to edit the MP4 files the camera generates without having to transcode them first. I did a computer housecall last night, and tried several different resolutions while I was going to and coming from the patient...This video is shot in 1080 I with a 120 deg. field of view. Gives you a look at the part of town I live in. Looks like it's taking a LONG TIME for picasa to process the video...I'll post the link when it gets done. :o
https://picasaweb.google.com/109550952480484427597/GoProVideoClips#5880953630358732466
I'll watch that till I can remember the route to your house ...thanks....lol.....
I,ve been looking at the gopro and there are several different models ranging from the Hero to the Hero 2, Hero 3, in white, silver and black all with different prices and specs..
Which one are you using?
And does yours have the ability to use the bike battery from a lead like a GPS or are you limited to the camera battery time?
Thanks.
John.
Mine is a Hero 2...There are a couple of options for powering it, but so far I've just been using the internal battery. It will charge off a computer usb port or a usb charger like a cell phone. When it's connected to a computer, it automatically goes into read/write disk mode. I don't own a charger with the correct size plug that isn't a computer, but I seem to remember reading it will function off a charger. More experiments! The case it mounts in is waterproof, so there is no way to connect to the power port, unless the camera is out of the case...
Hey Troll, they make a cigarette lighter-to-USB adapter that is common and available, I imagine, in most electronic departments. It's common for some of the new phones to charge this way. I just bought one for my wife, I think it was $10 or so.
I would need to buy a "skeleton" mount...The original it came with is waterproof to 60', so no holes at all. always something else to buy....
Sometimes, when you agree to make a "house call" in a rural area, you get surprised. By following directions I found that the saying "you can't miss it"in this case, actually was true...the road ends at her garage door. For a while, there, I was starting to think I was in the "outback"
https://picasaweb.google.com/109550952480484427597/GoProVideoClips#5882319352291666530
ok what was that a wabbit or a cat that crossed the road?
love the music....
That was a good one Troll, the choice of music was swell. Can't say I love the sun in my eyes, though.... A couple of times I thought you were going to hit something in the road.... I guess I better get polarized sunglasses to watch these when you're riding into the sun... 8)
I don't like riding into the sun, either, but I'm just glad there was some. I am a little south of the arctic circle....
There are always two sides to the road and whenever I go out and take photos I am stuck with the choice of great views blocked out by the sun or, not so great views with the sun behind me, If I choose the one with the sun behind me I have my shadow to contend with..With a fixed video camera you have the same problem every time you change direction and editing the over bright bits out can leave you with a very jumpy film.
John.
;)how close to the arctic circle are you Troll.....?
I started to watch your video, then realized I could be making a memory of my own instead of sitting here watching yours! Reaching for my helmet now!
Thanks for sharing.
I'm about 50 miles south of the 45th parallel....but is was damn cold again, today. Rode about 300 miles in rain, wind and 50 deg. temps...bright side, the new to me stock exhaust system didn't change my fuel calibration...got 48 mpg! I rode up to Winter, WI to visit my parents...do this every Memorial Day...Dad was a B-17/B-24 ball turret tech, and Mom worked for Grumman Aircraft.
Quote from: Troll on May 27, 2013, 18:11:05 PM
I rode up to Winter, WI to visit my parents...do this every Memorial Day...Dad was a B-17/B-24 ball turret tech, and Mom worked for Grumman Aircraft.
RIP.
Quote from: Troll on May 27, 2013, 18:11:05 PM
Rode about 300 miles in rain, wind and 50 deg. temps I rode up to Winter, WI to visit my parents...do this every Memorial Day...Dad was a B-17/B-24 ball turret tech, and Mom worked for Grumman Aircraft.
Good for you..too many people wouldn't bother..
John.
When I was riding back from Winter, Monday, I was mulling over different ways to mount the GoPro so I can get the best possible video. That's when it hit me like a ton of bricks...The top of the clutch or brake cylinders have NO vibration that I could feel. I took some ZipStrip to the clutch master cap, and then polished it (absolutely down to raw metal), and I put an adhesive flat base mount on it. They recommend 24 hours cure time for the adhesive, so tomorrow, if we don't get more thunder storms and hail... I'll road test it. For the time being, I'll just post this picture. I went down by the river, and as soon as I stopped, the storm started. I made it home before the hail started, but just barely. The rain drops are pretty obvious in the water....
;D I for one am awaiting your next production into the video world. Bike is looking really nice right now.......
Other than REALLY dirty..I love the modular design of this machine. Took off the dual seat and horseshoe, put the solo back on, took off the trunk...that takes about 1 min. due to the mounting system I made. Total conversion time, about 45 mins....Decided a "new" look was in order after all of last year...
Bike is looking real nice, is the seat stock? I would like to hear more about your stereo setup. What is that?
The seat is the stock solo with a (made for a 2 piece nomad seat) Mustang cover. I cut the skirt of the stock seat and had it sewn on the cover, just at he rear seam. I added the fringe with some leather glue on the inside of the skirt. I did all this in '11, and ran it that way until I got the dual seat, which I modded a bit and had on all of last year, and this year, until Wednesday. The radio/mp3 player is from firefly designs on eBay..like $50. I added a 500 watt pmpo amp (probably about 15 watts per channel in reality) for another $30. I put the amp in the left side cover, in the tray on top of the tool box. I made sure I can still remove the windshield by having all the connections between the radio and the bike done with molex connectors. I will see how well this works out, and may go to something else, but I had the connectors scavenged from old computer power supplies. I decided to add the music box after deciding that listening to my own singing inside the helmet on those 10 hour rides, just wasn't doing it for me, anymore. That was one of the things I missed about my TourGLide...
Quote from: Troll on May 26, 2013, 11:19:34 AM
Sometimes, when you agree to make a "house call" in a rural area, you get surprised. By following directions I found that the saying "you can't miss it"in this case, actually was true...the road ends at her garage door. For a while, there, I was starting to think I was in the "outback"
https://picasaweb.google.com/109550952480484427597/GoProVideoClips#5882319352291666530
Nice vid, nice place. With that background music, I kept expecting to see a big-eared little kid with a banjo..... ;D
Just in case you didn't recognize it...I'm sure Lurch did, that was a didgeridoo........google it.
49 you get a lot of them people in your neck of the woods eh! banjo playin' single eye brow types.....lol
Sooooo, further experiments in mountings. I spent, as it turns out, way more money than I needed with this mount thing. I think you'll agree that the latest permutation is the best so far. Mounted on top of the clutch master (pic), the jello effect is almost non existent. Very steady and smooth video. I'm obviously no cinematographer, but I think I can live with these results. The sound track is not added, it's the MP3 player.
https://picasaweb.google.com/109550952480484427597/GoProVideoClips#5884218525195394914
When you look at the web results, remember they are converting an MP4 HQ video file to flash media. I know I don't have to say this, but let me know what you think......
;) you have 2 M/C cool.....lol....ok I like the veiw it is really good and it really gives you that leaning feeling as you are cornering. Sound is good too, like the music. What is the golf course at the start? Alpine inn seems to be a popular place...lol....
Hey that was really good. Haven't we ridden this route before? Looks familiar.... Pretty soon we're going to know your neighborhood pretty well!
The left-bar perspective keeps making me think we're going left-of-center. But I think it's the best so far.
Was that the sound I heard of a right running board dragging a bit on a right turn?
Ya heard that, huh...grinding off the hero knobs is an honorable thing to do..they are about 1/2 gone on the "W"...Just got back from a ridge run on apple blossom drive. I'm never going to get 100,000 on it if I don't ride it...
Quote from: Troll on May 31, 2013, 14:42:53 PM
Sooooo, further experiments in mountings. I spent, as it turns out, way more money than I needed with this mount thing. I think you'll agree that the latest permutation is the best so far. Mounted on top of the clutch master (pic), the jello effect is almost non existent. Very steady and smooth video. I'm obviously no cinematographer, but I think I can live with these results. The sound track is not added, it's the MP3 player.
https://picasaweb.google.com/109550952480484427597/GoProVideoClips#5884218525195394914
When you look at the web results, remember they are converting an MP4 HQ video file to flash media. I know I don't have to say this, but let me know what you think......
Quote from: CDNRatMan on May 31, 2013, 14:12:20 PM
49 you get a lot of them people in your neck of the woods eh! banjo playin' single eye brow types.....lol
[sigh] yes, and most of them look a lot like you....
https://picasaweb.google.com/109550952480484427597/GoProVideoClips#5884693210964272258
I kinda thing the last few seconds explain it all. You young guys have something to look forward to. >:(
other then three rolling stops, I must have missed something.......
Quote from: Troll on June 01, 2013, 20:53:10 PM
https://picasaweb.google.com/109550952480484427597/GoProVideoClips#5884693210964272258
I kinda thing the last few seconds explain it all. You young guys have something to look forward to. >:(
Front row parking!!! ::)
Senior citizen parking spot....Sometimes I get grief from people...until I open the front of the helmet...
I used to work with a guy with a wooden leg. He was in his 60s, but looked like earlyl 50's (blond hair that didn't get much grey in it). He used to tell me people would give him grief about parking in the handicapped spot, too. Until he pulled his wooden leg out of the car....
Ah ok we don't have Senior parking here, I thought he was showing us his rolling stops in a parking lot......duh.......
GreenBarn I personally know a person who was walking through a parking lot here one sunny afternoon, saw an older dude pull into a handicap spot and get out, put the Handicap card in the windsheild and start to walk to the mall. It frustrated him so he called out the guy and asked if he was using his wifes' or mothers card...the guy turned and said no he was using his own and as he finished he pulled up both pant legs......he had 2 artifical legs.....the poor guy near stroked out he felt so embarrassed.....but a lot of people misuse the cards.....
First off, I discovered a strange quirk in Wisconsin Motor vehicle law about 15 years ago... Parking lots, of any kind, unless the owner specifically asks to have it done, are not subject to road laws: i.e. if a person were to run a "stop" sign in a parking lot, there is no penalty, as the laws don't have any effect. I found this out when a woman cut across a parking lot while attempting to evade a traffic signal, and hit the car I was driving...I called the police, and got this sad news...Soooo, if I ignore a "stop" sign in a parking lot, or as I did in the video, a "pause and go" which we teach in the BRC class, no big deal ( kinda makes you wonder about the enforcement of handicapped spaces). Now, on to what I have in mind. I believe I have worked out a mount for the GoPro for the W-650 that produces better than acceptable video. I'm post-processing the video right now, and I will post a link when I have it uploaded to Picasa...Clearly not as smooth as the Drifter, the majority of the vibration is pretty well damped out with my new set up....Ok, post processing is done, so here's the link:
https://picasaweb.google.com/109550952480484427597/GoProVideoClips#5885003991624522434
The engine sounds pretty good in the video, but you should hear it in person, at say 7500 rpm! The first thing you will see is the infamous La Crosse Oktoberfest Grounds, then a left turn down 2nd street, then a right and into Riverside Park. The only music is the sound of that wonderful 4 valve OHC 360 deg. Parallel twin....Oh, yeah, some pics of the mount...Since I'm not using the stock mirrors, I have the perches open for other uses. The mount consists of a piece of PCV tubing with fender washers on each side, bolted to where the left mirror would be, and a the GoPro handlebar mount....One of those Gibbs slap moments...
Just messing with you about your taxi stops.....in Canada if you are involved in an non injury accident in a parking lot of a private business, ie. WalMart, Canadian Tire , any big mall the police will not respond, it is private property and they are not in that business of enforcing rules there......
In many places, Stop signs and the like on private property are only suggestions, as they are not regulated as on public roads. So be even more vigilant in a parking lot.