Hi all.
I feel bad that I keep getting new subscribers based on old work. Don't get me wrong, I definitely plan on shooting more rides when the spring comes and maybe one or two before that. But it seems like most of the rides people want to watch are ones that I've already shot and took a while to gain momentum. Currently the ride getting the most views was shot in fall of 2013. It's the Battle Road Trail, a very scenic ride in Lexington and Concord MA. That's getting about 1,000 hits a month as I write this. The Independence Trail up in Peabody MA is still getting over 500 hits a month and that remains my most watch virtual ride overall currently at around 13,000 total views. There's a few others that get around 200 hits a month, including some nice trails in central MA. But there's also plenty of ride videos with less than 100 hits.
Here's what I'd like to encourage: total hipsterhood. Find a video with hardly any views that you really enjoy and act like you discovered it by being totally intune with your surroundings (because in a way you are). Go ahead, create some bragging rights. Much appreciated .
Love,
-Rat
Hi all, I've had a pretty busy month so far. Currently with the good weather here in New England I've been too busy riding/shooting so I'm a little behind on the editing. Sorry about that. Look forward to some jogger-friendly (8-10 mph) new vids of the Windham-Derry Trail and the Bruce Freeman trail hopefully later this week.
If you look at my YouTube page you'll notice I have been posting a lot ...of rides that might not show the more scenic parts of New England. These are being done to help make things better for commuter cyclists in Lowell by giving people a reference point for areas in need of improvement.
I've also done a couple of street rides around the town of Dracut, MA, the town next to Lowell. Dracut's a nice town but I'm looking forward to driving out a bit for other street rides.
Plenty of rides planned over the next couple of months. I'll try to stay on top of the editing. I promise they'll definitely be up before heatwave season.
Take care, -Steve/Rat
Here's some artsy stuff for you:
This one is a combination of a practical and traditional virtual riding video. The trail itself is a work in progress.
That's a traditional virtual cycling video.
The Battle Road trail is one of my most popular rides from last year. Shot it again without checking the local event listings so there's a pretty cool surprise in there.
Anyway, more clips not mentioned here are on YouTube. More rides are being edited. More rides will be shot soon. Let me know what you're hoping to see. If there's a trail somewhere close to eastern Mass/Southern NH I'll try to shoot it within the next month or so. Anything beyond that give me a little more time.
Recent Rides. Go ahead and watch them all at the same time. Technically the Ashuwillticook clips were already posted as a single clip but there was an issue with stabilization so I split them up and made it a northbound and a southbound ride. I kept the fullsize clip up but took it out of the playlist. Just not sure if there's a lot of people looking for 2 hour rides and it seemed like kind of a waste of the second half.
Also thinking of adding to text to the Battle Road Trail clip about the historic places in it but I'm not sure if people want to read while watching these. The Battle Road clip is also intentionally slower (not slowed down, I just rode slower). I'm trying to expand towards giving joggers something to watch as well. I'm still shooting from the bike because it's steadier than if I were to actually hold the camera while jogging. Another option would be to shoot it at the same pace as the hiking videos and then speed it up during editing, but that would look distractingly fake.
Anyway, let me know what works for you guys. I think my favorite clip in this batch is the Topsfield/Danvers westbound.
So let me make this quick. Hoping to give viewers the chance to do a different virtual ride every week for a year. Right now I'm up to 38 rides not including the remixes. So I've got to make at least 14 more videos before the end of the year. Doable if the weather cooperates. Thanks for watching.
Fine. I learned my lesson about the importance of stretching. I can't fool the stretch gods by doing a five minutes worth of bouncing before doing forty mile rides. I can't fool them skipping the ankles, which are probably the most likely things to be injured. Got it.
My physical therapist (I actually have one now for the time being) gave a me a 30-minute routine I need to do twice a day and more often during long rides. Sticking to it so far.
Anyway, here's my first ride back. After doing a few errands around town on Thursday I decided to do the Bruce Freeman Trail. Proximity, length (14.5 miles round trip, a good test but nothing killer) and simply liking the trail all played factors. I've shot it a few times before and will probably shoot it again next month when the foliage peaks. Here it is at a good, slow rate. 10 mph on the southbound, 11-12 mph heading back up. Edited out was a stop at the pond where I went swimming and did some stretching on the beach. Happy, Doc?
For more information about/to support the trail please visit http://brucefreemanrailtrail.org/
Still waiting for my ankles to heal from the micro tears in the tendons before I shoot more rides. I guess normally this takes a few months to heal fully. But I work on my feet/can't stop working currently so it might be a bit longer. Still hoping I'm all set by foliage season. Those are the rides that would really hurt me not to shoot.
Meanwhile though I shot one video a couple of weeks ago. I've shot the Bridge of Flowers in Shelburn Falls a couple of times, but this time I got a different angle. I picked up a 23-ft long extension pole and put the GoPro at the end of that. Didn't fully extend it, but I did put it out there enough to give the shot a view I haven't gotten before. A little vertigo inducing, but overall I'm happy with it.
BTW, here's the bridge in 2008:
And here it is from 2012:
The 2008 shot was done standard. The 2012 was GoPro on a monopod. I know at some point I also did a slideshow animation of it. That's lost in my basement somewhere. But anyway, here's my evolution as a video artist for you.
I'm pretty sure I first found this place when my wife Neon brought it to my attention. I think an old roommate of hers used to live out this way. I'm not really a big flower guy, but I always thought this thing was cool. Just a couple miles west of Greenfield and slightly off Route 2 (Mohawk Trail), it seems like something that could be worked into a few rail trails. Anyway, real cool place. Check it out if you ever get down that way.
Both my feet are killing me. My primary care physician decided that I have Achilles Tendinitus. Went for x-rays, didn't hear back so assumed all was well. That was almost three weeks ago. I thought I was all healed up and decided to do a quick little neighborhood 4-miler. Pain came up. Giving it more rest. Calling the doctor again soon. Meanwhile I'm thinking of remixing the existing rides. Let me know if there's one you'd like to see sped up slightly or with the colors all funky or without the stabilizer. Till then, here's some other things I've beer shooting.
So the May rides and forward will generally be faster. I wasn't big on the idea of shooting street rides. I like rail trails but there's only so many of them. And the further I have to drive to shoot video of an alternative means of transportation the more the irony slaps me. So I shot a couple of street rides. Here's the NH Coast up and back. I also shot another Lowell ride, but Blogger won't allow the preview to be posted.
Also toyed with colorizations. But for the most part I think I'll save doing these for winter when I can't ride much but still want to post new clips.
Early in the season I went in to get a new computer for my bike. Went to Bill Fox, the same guy I bought the bike from, a local guy who's been in business (http://foxcobikes.com) since the early 80's. He's also about a about a mile from home so that helps. I told Bill about the virtual cycling rides and he mentioned the East Bay Trail down in Providence. So I finally get around to shooting that and the next day I go to the shop and explain that I was again seeing people putting in significantly less effort and going a bit faster than me (Despite the videos I'm actually pretty ignorant about bikes. You can probably tell from my riding style if you look carefully). I just assumed it was because I was riding a mountain bike and everyone else was using smoother tires. Bill takes my bike, says come back in a couple of hours. I come back in a couple of hours and the first thing he does is hand me six thin metal rods. "These are broken spokes. They probably have more to do with your problem than the tires." He also then very patiently explained to me the parts of the wheel, other things that were wrong that he fixed and what differences I should notice now that things were fixed.
This is the trail he told me about, northbound and southbound. This was also my first time riding with somebody else while shooting so it got a little tricky at points because, as noted, she was able to ride easier than I could which means by all rights she should have been ahead of me the whole way. Unfortunately that doesn't really make for good video. Consequently a lot of the ride north we were riding side-by-side (don't ever do that and I again apologize to the person I almost had a head on with). Another minor issue on the northbound was that the GoPro battery died just as we were in the homestretch. Poor planning on my part, but that's honestly a very small part of a really beautiful ride.
Southbound went a bit smoother with my traveling companion for the day giving me a head start. I think this is one of my view videos where the southbound ride going into the sun probably comes out better than the northbound with the sun behind me.
The day before (Wednesday, April 24) I rode from Kennebunk to Scarborough Maine on two chunks of the Eastern Trail. I tried this a couple of weeks ago but there was still snow on the ground. This time it was much better, but I still had a couple of minor issues. Besides the bike issues there was also the "Basic research? What's that?" issue: I underestimated the distance between the two chunks of trail. I figured it was about a mile, was closer to three and a half. Very well marked and not too bad in general, but still an extra seven miles on a neglected bike but the total mileage for the day up to kick-heavy 40. But again, very scenic in parts and I hope you enjoy the ride.
There was one other ride I did this week on Sunday. The Upper Charles in Hopkinton and Milford, MA was a nice ride and certainly worth checking out in person. This is one of those times where (unlike the Eastern Trail mentioned above) I decided to keep the road section in the video since I read a few trail reports where people gave up on finding the second section of it because they couldn't find it. It's completely worth finding. Not too far away from the end of the first part and there were a few locals who were cool enough to help me find it. The trail actually continues to go further than where I stopped, but currently it's all mud and moguls. The group Friends of the Milford Trail is hoping to continue with improvements.
I'll be adding more to this when the videos are done uploading. Just wanted to get the plug in for FoxCo and have something for the videos to link to.
Wasn't really able to upload the rides as I went along this time, the editing was done differently. Since I'm currently dealing with shorter rides (Nahant below) and clip collections (Fort Hill above) there's been an increased use replays within a clip. To save time I've been finishing the editing on YouTube. As much as I'd like to have 2nd run throughs played faster that would involve more time with rendering the files. This adds hours to the editing time, hours that I'd rather spend riding.
The Nahant clip probably could have benefited from altered speeds since it does play slow at times while I'm trying to get around people on a crowded trail. Still though, it's a good clip with a strong variety of visual elements.
I got another piece of the East Coast Greenway shot as well in the Salem/Marblehead area. This was shot the same day as Nahant (after work on Wednesday I think). The editing was a bit scrambled on both rides (you can't really tell unless you're carefully watching the shadows). With the Salem/Marblehead ride it was originally so I could edit out a dog doing a very dog-like thing. This resulted in reshooting about a small segment of trail. Then when I got to the end (middle of the round-trip) I saw the scene I wanted to end with. Same deal with the Nahant video.
Then there was the trip to Gardner on Tuesday. There's two main websites I use to research trails: TrailLink and Google Maps (under the pulldown menu click 'bicycling' to see a bunch of trails). TrailLink is good for learning more about a trail once you're aware of it, but if you look at Google Maps you can start to get a better idea of how trails connect or are related to each other. I probably should have done that before heading out. I ended up shooting a 3-part ride by starting at part 2. Originally I thought that all there was was part 2 and I was just going to add this other ride a little bit north of it to fill out the video. Then I got to the end of part two and saw that a dirt trail with some moguls took me pretty much straight to the other ride/part 3. Part 1 comes into play when I finished the roundtrip on part 3, did a road ride back to part one and noticed another dirt trail across from the parking lot. THEN I checked the maps. So a couple of dirt trails later I get to another paved trail... Fun ride, just wish I planned it better.
Had a good streak going there for a minute. I'm still riding. Rode 12 miles yesterday but only shot maybe 5. It was a Lowell shoot so I rode to where I turned the camera on (Shed Park/Fort Hill area). Fun shoot, I just didn't shoot enough to make a video. Was planning to head out that way again today but the weather had to finally live up to that April Showers bit. Ended up doing a couple miles at the gym while watching the Assabet clip from last week. I have tomorrow off. Helping a friend move then hopefully shooting an RT a little down the 'hawk.
I suspect I'm going to have a lot of rides that just don't go well for one reason or another. Bad weather, equipment failure, bike issues, confusing trails, poor planning, et cetera. But every ride still starts with the big red button being pressed so there will be footage. I'm trying to remember to save these remnants so they can be combined to create a ride called "The Cutting Room Floor" ride. I got a nice contribution to that ride today.
Late last week I was up in the woods of east Manchester, NH where I noticed large piles of snow still present. Not sure why I thought Kennebunk, Maine would be much different.
The thought process prior to going to work this morning was "I'll shoot a ride in southern Maine and then go do a comedy show in Newburyport on the way back." Didn't bother to research the trails much. Just assumed that there would be one just over the border for some reason. I have a coworker who commutes from that area so right before the end of shift I asked her what was up there. She told me that the East Coast Greenway has a finished section that goes from Kittery to Biddeford and she was under the impression that it was paved. This was not an accurate impression.
The trail was incredibly easy to find. Even if I hadn't been looking for it I would have found it accidentally. Just throw "Kittery" into your GPS and it'll take you to exit 25. Before you're even completely off the exit there are signs for the trail. A series of maybe five or six signs guide you right to the parking lot of an elementary school at the trail head. The only issue I had with the trail was all the mud and slush, which most people realize is a perfectly natural thing for the woods of Maine in April.
I shot two miles of it before quitting and heading over to Kennebunkport Beach to shoot a mile of road footage just to make it not feel like a wasted trip. The mile will make it into another compilation ride. It came out nice, but I'm not into the idea of shooting road footage. I kind of like the idea of only riding places where scooters fear to tread... or aren't allowed.
So yeah, save that stretch for a drier time.
One real cool thing that happened today though was that I got a comment on one of my videos from somebody who shoots the same type of thing in Germany. Kind of weird to think that somebody in a scenic area like that is doing virtual rides of Lowell. Here's one of theirs.
Started getting a lot of hits on the virtual cycling videos over the winter. Naturally this calls for overkill. In the past week and a half I've uploaded 7 hours of new riding footage. I have a couple of vague ideas of what people are looking for (constant speeds, decent scenery, steady shots, at least a 45 minute ride).
I think people are also looking for foliage. Not much you can do about that in April. A way around it is focusing more on cityscapes. That was one of the reasons I shot the downtown Lowell ride (the other reason was I got a late start after working that day). This was also the ride that wasn't a ride. Since I'm used to shooting longer rail trails I don't usually have the luxury of thinking in a non-linear style. The trail is the trail, you follow it. To make clip a proper length I reused some of the clips, but put them in a different order. As an editor this was one of those simple things that made it fun.
I also double-played clips on today's ride in Manchester, NH (top). Difference is there is a noticeable continuity to the ride so for the sake of variation I put the second run-through at a slightly higher speed.
I got off the rail trails two other times this week to shoot Lowell-Dracut-Tyngsboro State Forest and the Massabesic Lake area just east of Manchester. In both cases my initial intent of simply staying on carriage roads was thwarted by looking at thinner trails and thinking "how bad can it be?"
Here's LDT:
That question starts to be answered around the 43 minute mark. Again, it isn't the quality of the trails that was the issue (New England Mountain Bike Association did a great job designing them). The issue was my complete lack of ability in riding this style.
Massabesic also has some nice mountain bike trails, though generally flatter. Another thing they still have is large snow banks. Those should be gone by May.
There was also a little bit of snow still on the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail. I'm sure that's melted by now. Had a good ride and for the first time was able to upload a round-trip version. Due to it's proximity to home I've shot this one a few times with different cameras and different styles. Nice evening shadows on the clip.
On Wednesday work cancelled my shift so I decided to check out part of the East Coast Greenway. The long-range goal for this is to create sort of an Appalachian Trail for cyclists. I covered an eight-mile section combining trails in Topsfield and Danvers. This was a fun ride. For YouTube viewers it might not be the most exciting thing to watch (pretty much nobody else out there, lots of woods), but still a good ride. Not too many intersections until you get near the Danvers-Peabody line.
Absolute favorite ride though was the Assabet Rail Trail in Marlborough and Hudson, MA. 10 miles round-trip, well maintained, great variety of scenery, not too many intersections, and easy parking at both ends. I parked at the Marlborough end for the sake of starting with the sun behind me (makes for bluer skies in the shot), but if I were just riding I would've have started at the Hudson end to get more downhill on the return trip.
So that was a much more productive week than planned.
Shot the Bang! Bros twice on Wednesday. They were were trying to do twelve shows in twelve towns on 12/12/12 in an effort to break a world record for most shows in different cities in a 24-hour period previously held (and possibly currently) by The Flaming Lips. Unfortunately due my work schedule I wasn't able to hit more shows.
The Newburyport show (above) was at a large private residence that's hosted a few shows before. Really cool spot. Clip starts with bringing the gear in (everything already taped in place to the table, they just had to kick the legs down). Also caught a brief conversation between the Bros and Marc, D and Greg talking about how a lot of these shows might not be enough to make the people at Guinness happy (unofficial venues, small or non-existant audiences, how do you define the word 'city'). "It's a personal World Record."
The Lowell show was originally set to take place at The 119 Gallery but was relocated to UnchARTed because it would have been difficult to work around 119's current exhibit:
Definitely more energy in the Lowell show with a crowd to play off of and some coffee before the show.
Tech stuff for the videos: These were the first performances I show with the Sony HDR-CX190. Picked it up for $240 at Best Buy. Pros: It was $240. Decent sound and picture for the price. Cons: Inaccurate portrayal of battery life on the screen. With a larger battery it went from saying that it had 4.5 hours of juice left to saying it had 3 hours left in under 45 minutes of shooting. Also it doesn't let you just take the memory card (SDHC) out and put it in a card reader, computer has to read it from the camera.
Had the "Low Lux" setting on which seemed to help (didn't need to adjust anything during editing). Can't remember if the zoom mic was on. Used a rigid monopod (no swivel head) but I think there's parts where you can hear me adjusting the leg for boom shots. There is a built in stabilizer but I had it turned off. Stabilizing was done on YouTube.
Still playing with basic variables such as clip speeds and transitions versus just letting the clips play. After some of the slower (IE real time) clips like Mt Major and Carrigain I know they generally need to be sped up. I'll still post them in actual time or close to it once the clip gets above treeline, the question is how much speed up does it need?
With The Bonds I put the Lincoln rail trail segment at 5x and (I think) dropped it down to 3x once on a regular trail before putting it in real when the views got all rewardy.
Another advantage to the higher speeds is that they cover up the occasional editing glitch (eg shots not quite matching each other after a cut).
The other side of the transitions thing though is that overlapping two high speed clips can look even more obvious.
We drove up to Vermont on Saturday June 30th, taking the highways until we got tired of the kayaks falling off. Something about me not putting them in right, them leaning too far forward rather than resting properly between the two big checkmarks which make up the Thule (pronounce 'too lee' I believe) kayak holding... system... thing. Once we got them on right (somewhere around the state line of New Hampshire and Vermont on 89) we decided to take slightly slower roads. Of course in Vermont this means you go from 65 mph highways to 55 mph dirt. Routes 4 and 100 mark something close to the center of the state. It's where the Long Trail and the Appalachian Trail decided they'd had enough of each other. The Long Trail going to Canada and the Appalachian trail heading east to Maine. It would have gone to Canada but it had legal issues a long time ago and they still won't let it in. That's happened to a lot of people.
Got up to Little River State Park after six, a great campground conveniently located right between Camel's Hump and Mansfield. The next morning I got up and entered "Camel's Hump Rd" into my phone/GPS without realizing that there are two roads with this name (or, more accurately, one road with a mountain blocking the middle of it). Original plan was to come at it from the East because I thought that coming in from the West would mean shooting into the sun. A concern which, in retrospect, made little sense since (a) there was a big freakin mountain blocking the sun and (b) the day was a bit overcast. But to get back to the previous tangent, I ended up coming in from the West due to the previously acknowledged lack of basic research. I followed Camel's Hump Rd to the parking area for the Burrow's Trail at which point I finally figured out my mistake. Looking at the map I could see that the Burrow's Trail was very similar to the trail I originally intended to take (the Monroe Trail), just on the opposite side of the hill.
Normally I hike alone, but this time I had company for part of the way in a the form of a very happy and energetic dog. I don't know who's he was but after a mile or so I guess he figured I didn't quite look like them. You can see him starting at around the 5:30 mark below:
Burrow's is a nice trail, well maintained, easy to follow. A steady climb a little over two miles long. I know I climbed it once about 18 or 20 years ago with my older brother and a couple of people from church. We stayed at the Queechee Gorge Campground then. No idea what trail we went up, but I could've sworn we spent more time above treeline back then. Anyway, enjoy the video. If you're looking for music to play behind it this live Moe performance might work (remember to open it in a different window by right-clicking): http://archive.org/details/moe2012-05-26
If you'd like to watch the video in HD make sure you click on the YouTube logo which takes you to their site. Once there look towards the lower right side of the video for a donut with bumps on it. Click on that to change the resolution.
