Speaking of great rides

[Paul Master <masterps@xxxxxxxx>]

As I have posted to the list before, my favorite ride is Mines Road,
which leads from Livermore to the Backside of Mount Hamilton (San Jose),
in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of these days I'm going to count the
number of turns :o)

Anyway, I recently tried downloading the audio from Eric's site. It was
interesting, but as I tried to follow the sounds and imagine where on
the track the bike was, it seemed to me that it wasn't such a fast pace
around the track. So this started me thinking of taping my ST, which
then led to why not video tape the rider's view.

So I cobbled up (and I must admit, it doesn't look particularly elegant)
a mounting system utilizing the tank bag pad. My video camera only gets
about 30 minutes max out of a battery (about the size of my thumb), so I
added an AC converter, and the camera's AC powered supply to the
package, stuffed it all in a bag, and hooked it into the DC plug. I
don't have a picture, because I use the video camera to provide pic's to
you all. May be I can borrow someone else's.

So on Saturday I tried it out. I rode out Mines to where the road
becomes single lane, then mounted my system. It probably took about 5
minutes or so. I brought the zoom all the way in, to try and catch to
instruments as well as the view. I had taped an accessory mike to the
right rear turn signal (I wanted to capture the sound) to try and get
the exhaust note instead of wind roar. And off I went. This road is SO
much fun.

I got the The Junction, and much to my surprise there were about 30
motorcycles there. It was a BMW Buell convention, by the look of it.
Best license plate I've seen this year on a Buell, "Y2KEULL". A couple
of folks came up asking how I liked my Triumph. I won't bore you with my
typical gushing response, you all have been there, and know what I mean.
And a few even noticed the camera setup. But, because of the huge crowd,
I had to wait about a half-hour for lunch. So I wandered around,
looking, chatting etc.

After lunch, I checked the last few feet of what I had taped, and
noticed that I wasn't getting a view of the speedo or tach, so I stuffed
a cloth under the read to point the camera down a bit. I then rode out
to the "speed section", where two stretches of road are straight enough
to do a speed run. One the first bit, there is a rise and dip, while not
getting airborne, you definitely feel VERY light on the tires. I kept
glancing down to make sure the camera wasn't getting shaken or blown
loose, so no all-time speed records. I turned around, blasted back don
past The Junction, and headed back to Livermore. (I usually go all the
way to Mt. Hamilton, but I needed to get home) :-(

Once I got to the end of Mines, I removed all the camera gear. It looked
like I had almost a hour of video. Once home, I immediately set up the
camera to tape and view the action. It was then that I discovered the
battery was dead on the accessory mike. Arrrrggghh!!! If I turn the
volume ALL the way up, I can just hear the exhaust notes (and the wind
whistle on the straights), but there is so much background noise it
isn't good. My wife was getting carsick watching, I was just beaming.

I also found out that I have to redo the mount to get that forward tilt.
The cloth I shoved under the rear of the pad allowed the camera to shake
much more than without it. But the video is pretty cool. I want to do it
again, and get the audio working. When I do, I think I'll make a copy
available to the group, and we can just mail the thing around to anyone
that's interested.

I have the SW to make a small movie also, but I haven't made a movie for
use on the web yet. (We edited our European vacation using the computer,
and ended up with over three hours of video and probably 40 gigabytes of
tape backup). So these snippets will obviously have to small (both in
size and length). I'll let you know when I have something.

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