Jan 30, 2011

IKEA Ordning Kitchen Timer -Panning Time Lapse 2.0



Here's my latest kitchen timer - panning time lapse 2.0.

My utter one only last for 2 or 3 video, before it got buggy and would stop turning. It was unbalance, so when it would lean the mechanism would get caught.

Anycow, I went out on search for a better timer, so I went to the Amazon page and search for mechanical kitchen timers and stumble upon IKEA's Ordning kitchen timer.

What I liked about it was that is had nice flat surfaces on the top and bottom for attaching the Gopro quick mount and and a 1/4" nut on the bottom for a tripod.

It also looked fairly balanced, and didn't have awkward edges that would cause this fine piece of Swedish ingenuity from getting messed up in my bag.

It was cheap and it didn't look stupid. I did haveta go to deep into the bowels of the IKEA on a Saturday. That is messing with death, but I wasn't too bad. I easily found this contraption, and was out the door. At $5.99, you can't beat it.

I kinda with I could disable the alarm bell, but I aint gonna tear this thing apart just for that. I tried to do it on my last one, and the spring came unsprung.

I simply ruffed up the bottom and dabbed on some two-part epoxy and stuck on a 1/4" nut for the tripod mount. Then I took one of my spare quick sticky Gopro mounts and stuck that on. There! Project done!






This might possibly be the worlds worst time lapse video, but here's how it works:

Jan 22, 2011

Quadruple Bypass - McDowell Mountains

Okay, allow me to start this ride review with a couple of apologizes.

1) Thank you everybody for allow me shove a my camera in your face. Your patience is much appreciated.
2) I didn't have bad gas yestaday, but rather that ripping sound was my tire buzzing on my front derailleur every time I my suspension compressed.:madman: Very annoying, I know. I need to figure out some sort of mod so my 650B wheels don't do this.

This was my fourth Quadruple Bypass in 5 year history of this social ride, and here is the MTBR thread.

Anycow, it was a great day out on the trail. And the clowns at the back of the bus had a great sufferfest. I've done a few of these, not to get all dorky on the scene here, but the encouragement of finishing is equally given as it is received. Well played to the 6 person trail sweeper team.

Big thanks to WaltAZ and CoyoteKis for the support at the beginning, middle and end. That was freaking ahsum, and thanks for waiting for our sorry a$$e$ to finish. Walt, you need to stop making excuse for not riding Quadruple Bypass, and CoyoteKis you will not be called 'Diesel' until you get back on your bike.

Utter than my tire on derailleur issues and one Tom29 having a case of the flats, us slow pokes really had no mechanical issues. Suhweet!:thumbsup:

Sure there many, many harder rides than this, but for a chump like myself, it is a pretty big challenge. To be honest, I felt pretty good all day; way better than last years edition. Shoot, I drank less than 150 OZ of water, only a 1.5 qts of gatorade, on snickers, two goo's and an apple. I had a nice burrito in pack, but didn't bother eating it (I need to go out to my car and grab it before some serious ickiness happens).

Great weather too, although I had my lungs from all the crap in the air. I had some pretty painful coughing fits after the ride.


Those two doods from Colorado just made us look silly finishing the ride in sumpin like 4:40, and big ups to the riders who did the Gnardruple. The Gnardruple doods started at the same time as everybody else, but caught up the stragglers at Bell Pass. And then there is Chollaball, the only dood that I know of that has ridden each 'Annual Quadruple Bypass Ride' who started half hour later than everybody else and caught up to us at Bell Pass. Guts awards to you all.
I know, I know the song is kinda of a trite anthem, but it seemed to touch on the emotional feel of the ride for me, at least.

Here's a vid of the day:



And here is an interactive Google Earth tour:



Here a some write ups of some my past Quadruple Bypass Rides

Jan 17, 2011

Bartlett Lake

I rolled on up to Chollaball's place and we split from his a little after 8:00 to get some paddling in on Bartlett Lake.

This was my first time up there and it was another nice AZ lake. It has a little different feel compared to the reclamation lakes on the Salt River (Saguaro, Canyon, Apache and Roosevelt), because it didn't have the massive cliffs on the shoreline. The shoreline pretty neato anycow. Bonus, selecting a spot to get out of the boat is pretty dang easy to find, since the shoreline doesn't have the steep cliffs of the other lakes.

Chollaball and I parked at the Jojoba Bartlett Flat ramp, and pulled his tandem open-hull kayak off his truck. We were on the water by 9:30. Neither he or I have been on this lake before, so we didn't really have a clue what the features to see here were. We just decided to head north until either we ran out of lake or we ran out of time.

I'm not sure what the normal lake level is, but you could definitely see that this lake has held a lot more water than what was in the lake today. The water was pretty calm except we did get a little morning head wind. And this died down after an hour or so.

I was the stoker on the mighty tandem kayak, so my job was easy. I just need to keep paddling. It actually paddle pretty well for a rec kayak, but I could see the wind hampering things a little bit if it picked up much more than what we were experiencing.

We weren't paddling all that hard, but we managed to get a little of 8 miles up the lake in about 3 hours. And it even though we hadn't run out of lake, we were running out of time. We chowed down on some lunch before ripping back down the lake. About 5 minutes into our return home, we spotted a couple of otters cruising down the shore. At least we thought they were otters, the small glimpses of 'em didn't give any a good look. They were in the water the whole time so we couldn't see what their tails looked like.

The traffic on the lake was pretty mild all day, but we did get a few more boats in the afternoon.

Anycow we got back to the truck about 3:00, thus wrapping a pretty kick ass day on the water. A little over 15 miles of paddling aint to bad either.

If I roll back on up there, I think I'd park a little farther north up the lake and try to paddle to the headwaters of the Verde River.

Here is a little Video of the day:




And thanks to Chollaball's GPS tracking, here is an interactive Google Earth Tour of Bartlett Lake:

Jan 8, 2011

SoMo Perimeter Ride (South Mountain Trails - Phoenix)



I did a major beatdown ride and the goal was to stick to the perimeter of South Mountain. I had a major problem in that I just didn't see a logical route from the central norther edge of the park to the northeastern corner of the park, where I started.

Here's the criteria I approached the ride:
6. Learn some new trails.
5. Big miles.
4. Get some good climbing in.
3. Avoid the gnar, cuz I was on my XC bike.
2. Stick to trails on the perimeter of the park.
1. Make it fun.


I met up with a dood from MTBR at 9:00, and he wanted to get some Desert Classic miles in and so starting at Pima Canyon was the natural spot to start my adventure-epic.

The dood I was with decided to turn around at the watertank on Desert Classic, so I pedaled on, and on I did.

I actually took 'secret trail' and tied back into Desert Classic. From there I did the hike-a-bike up Telegraph Pass and then more hike-a-bike up National. Actually, I pedaled up more of this section of National than I have ever before. Suhweet. Then I ripped down 620. I had only been down this trail once before on my big bike, I and wasn't all that impressed, but I kinda dug it this time. My goal of cleaning all the swithchbacks on 620 came to an end on the last tricky one; the one with a quick left turn followed immediately by a sharp right turn with a step. Drat. Anycow, I had an audience, but I still should have been a 'get'.

Now it was time to pick my way over to Bees Knees trail for another kinda hard climb. It was only about 600 vf, but it still sorta hurts. This trail gets a bad wrap as being a waste of effort and trail, but I really had a good time ripping down this trail. I've done both directions, and can easily say heading west on Bee Knees is the way to go. Dare I say the flow on Bees Knees trail is some of the best South Mountain has to offer. Twisty and swooping is the way I like it.

At the bottom, I skipped the Gila trail connector to National and opted for the short jeep road (with a hump over a small hill), easy but nothing to remarkable. I jumped on National but stopped at San Juan Rd. for a peanut butter jelly sammich, then it was on to the end of National.

At the end of San Juan Rd. I jumped on a trail that wasn't named, but directed towards 35th Ave. I had been on it before and this was my route back along the northern edge of the park boundary. My only concern about this trail was that the only I had been on it, we exited on 35th Ave, but I wanted to continue. This was a none issue, because as the trail Y'd, I took the high road and that turned into a jeep road. I had a low pass to get over, and this spit me out into a residential neighborhood on 28th Ave. I pedaled about a half mile of streets and ended up on Elliot. At the end of Elliot (near 25th Ave) I bypassed a couple barriers and ended up on single track again. This half mile single track took me to 19th Ave (South Mountain Access Area).

There I jumped on the first trail I saw that would head east over the ridge, and that happened to be Ma-Ha-Tauk trail, this was a little bit more of a climb than I wanted. It was terrible, and once I got up on top I the other lower option that would've spit me out at 'The Big Ramada'. I zoomed down the ridge back into familiar territory, as the Central Ave (inside the park) was visible.

I took a left on Max Delta for a quick jog to the road. Once I got to the road I headed up the the 'Little Ramada' where the Kiwanis trailhead was located. The thought had crossed my mind that could've done the hike-a-bike up Holbert, but I figured that at this point I was gonna be in survival mode, and knowing the road wasn't far away was comforting.

I know I'm capable of riding more of Kiwanis than I did, but I was starting to fatigue, and taking a stupid hard fall at the point was unnecessary.

I got up to the road, and now it was time for an easy spin on up to Beuna Vista, and at that point I knew I had enough in the take to take the longer wide way down, by going down National to Mormon Loop to Javelina to East Loop. Thus expanding the radius of my route.

National rawked as it always does, and everything else went as planned. I thought I was outta water when I was coming up the road, but somehow I managed a few more precious ounce on Javelina. And on total I had one apple, one PBJ sammich, and one liter of gatorade, and 100 ounces of water. Not bad for 8 hours out on the trail.

I climbed off of East Loop right at 5:00, and felt pretty dang good.

Sure doing this 33 miles with about 5,300 vf of climbing could've been done faster, but I wasn't sure how this loop was gonna work out, so I moved slowely in order keep something in the tank. The hike-a-bike also really speed the clock up too.


I didn't shoot any video, and I only took two pics, but here is a Google Earth Tour of my approximate route:





Here's an interactive Google Earth Tour of my route:



Jan 1, 2011

New Years Day Freak Show Ride - National (South Mountain)

Chongoman organized a little ride up to the waterfall on National today to celebrate New Years Day. And in fitting course, we dawned our craziest duds. I rolled the ride in lederhosen. Guts award goes to Robert who ascended national with his duel crowned Turner in knee high boots with 5 inch heels.

Here's a little vid of the day: