learning new things

Well I'm off today so I got up early and took a ride up to Idyllwild to get breakfast at the Mile High Cafe - From Palm Desert up the mountain is about an hour ride and goes from 200 feet in elevation up to a bit over 5200 feet, it was 50 degrees when I got up there and 92 when I got back home. I figured no one would want to sit through an hour long ride video, its a bit like sitting through someones home movies, so I decided to film it as a time lapes - so here you have it, my 1 hour ride up the mountain in 3 minutes and 7 seconds.

Quote from Doc&Ruby

Edward Neal

Nice video! How fast were you going when that pickup blew by you?

I was expecting to see him pulled over! 😀

Do you take audience requests? How about the Ortega Highway from Elsinore up to the Lookout Cafe!?

actually I was going just over 60. it was a very long straight and he passed over the double yellow - as soon as it got twisty again I caught back up and he ended up getting out of my way.

As to the Ortega Highway to the Lookout roadhouse that can be done as a continuation of what I did today. California State Route 74 runs from SanJuan Capistrano in Orange county to palm desert . The end of 74 that runs up from the Desert up to the turn off to Idyllwild that I took today is known as the Palm to Pines Highway and the other end is the Ortega Highway

If I were going to ride to the Lookout Roadhouse I would normally go the way shown below, but there was huge damage to 74 on the side that goes back down the mountain toward Temecula so I would have to go around the mountain on the freeway - a bit faster to the start of the ortega highway ride, but not much fun

The part of the Ortega Highway that is the well known motorcycle ride goes down the other way from the Road House to the beach or the other way depending on which end you start at - its a ride I would like to do someday, but starting from home its a pretty long ride round trip

here is the "ride" people like to do

Quote from Doc&Ruby

I lived in Menifee for more than 25 years. The hop over the hill to run up to the Lookout or watch a Storm baseball game was a regular treat.

Did the Ortega run in many cars (Dodge Stealth, Honda Civic, Mazda 6, Subaru Legacy Spec B, and more) Never did it on a bike & certainly not on a slingshot!

Ran Palms to pines many times as well as I taught in Hemet for 18+ years.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane - I miss the desert and the rugged brown mountains! The Ozarks are green and beautiful, but the stark beauty of the San Bernadinos still haunts my dreams. (Nevertheless glad to be out from under the thumb of crazy California Democrats!)

I love everything about living here except the politics. Where else could I use a Slingshot as a daily driver other than Palm Springs?

Okay, things I have concluded so far in this learning experence

Mounting locations. I like the camera centered on the Slingshot, The perspective on the roll hoop didn't feel right kind of like it was over looking what was happening instead of being down in the action. I think off center might work better for me if I could mount the camera right where a passengers head would be so that the perspective was that of someone riding with me and I might try making a mount for that later down the road. Also if it were a 360 camera then the roll hoop would probably be perfect

Of my center mounts I really like the one on the nose, a great feel for speed and the road, but its not good if you want the viewer to know its a slingshot. The one at the base of the fin truly gives a feel for riding in the slingshot putting the viewer right next to me in the slingshot, but I feel a bit uncomfortable with this view knowing that everything I do shows in the video. Considering the above I really like the windshield mount the best so far, it gives a good feel of riding out in the open and you can tell its a slingshot without having to see me wipe my nose or whatever.

To the videos themselves I have come to the conclusion that keeping things short is probably the way to go. my first tests made on my rides to and from work seemed way too long too me, Correct me if I am wrong, but don't think people want to sit for a long time watching someone else ride. I personally think that getting someone to want to sit and watch for more than a few minutes is pushing it and if its going to be much longer the content better be very interesting. I am hoping that going forward if I keep things short and interesting I can share things that hold peoples attention so they actually want to watch

Also keeping things short eliminates the process involved in merging the go pro's chapters back together to form a single video - The processing power used to do any video editing and recombining of chapters seems to really drag my computers to a crawl and the transferring of the larger files or uploading them to youtube takes a great deal of time

at this point the last thing I have noticed is that the wind sound hitting the camera really detracts from the video. With the time lapse this is not an issue as they don't record sound, but with the regular videos it is a real problem - even with the camera on the mount at the base of the fin where I was hoping the wind would go up over the wind still was very bad. I bought a pair of wind suppressors that wrap the camera with the same kind of foam that they use on microphones, but I have not tested it yet. When I do I will report my opinion and a sample back here

Anyway for those thinking about recording your rides to share I hope you find this useful - also none of this is written in stone, I am a very new to this and still have tons more to learn and try - - - I will say that if you are considering getting a camera to do this - Go for it!!! Its a kick

Edit - one more thing, the video files are huge and take up a great deal of computer space, be sure you have room to store them, Personally I have been getting rid of the originals after I have uploaded them to Youtube - no need to have them taking up space if I don't plan on editing them further

Quote from MiM

Here's one of the 1st videos I made. Roll hoop mounted... Used music with road sounds (wind really)...

Excited to get back into this when I install the ZZP mount. Kinda wish I had it going when I was hydroplaning and hit the concrete divider on Interstate 45 because that was all a blurr...

Nice, but I am surprised youtube let you keep the music - my first try I had the radio on and youtube got all upset because they could identify copyrighted music - I had to take itto get them to remove restrictions from people viewing

here is a picture of my Gopro wearing the wind suit I will be trying next time out - I really hope it kills the wind noise and lets you hear the motor