A couple of weeks ago was the first XC race of the Island Cup. Since it was in Victoria, I decide to ride down. I rode to Mill Bay and too the ferry to Brentwood Bay, which is less than 10 km from The Dump. The problem with rides brken up by ferries is standing on the deck and freezing your toes off.
I arrived toward the end of the beginner race, and hung around all day. I took my camera and a flash, and set up by a little stream. Despite taking photos of every rider that passed, I only got a handfull of half-decent photos.
It started to rain as I rode down Mt. Work, and continued to do so until I got home. The ferry ride was colder, and the ride home was terrible.

Last weekend was the second race, this time in Port Alberni. I was going to get a ride up with Kurt and Kevin, but felt horrible the night before, sneezing and clogged sinuses, so didn't.
In the morning though, I felt quite a bit better, and thought it would help to go outside, so rode up Touzhalem along the trail from Providence farm. I come down this trail every time, but only twice have I ridden up it before , and that was over a year ago. I ride up that way to get out of the sun on a very hot day, but that was before I'd realized there was a bus that goes up through The Properties.
Mount Tzouhalem is my favourite place to ride, but I don't go regularly because I hate getting there. It's either a slow (on a mountain bike) 40 minute climb on the roads, or a 30 minute bus ride, preceded by 10 mins spent waiting for the bus (that only goes up there twice a day).
But realizing that I can comfortably climb the Providence Farm trail (I walked 2 bits, which I could probably ride when dry, or when more determined) makes Tzouhalem much more appealing. It takes me 10 mins on the road to get to the white church, and 45 from there to get the fireroad that goes from the main road to the cross. It takes me 15 to get down, and ten to get home from there. This means that mountain biking before work is possible! I could probably squeeze in Chicken Runs 2 & 3 and Three Musketeers while I'm up there.
It's rained almost every day since though.

Last Monday (my weekend is now Sunday and Monday), was reasonably clear but windy, with puffy clouds, so I thought I'd get going with my time-lapse project. The plan was to ride up Prevost to the very top, and shoot a time-lapse sequence of the valley with the clouds going by, but I got distracted by some hang gliders floating down from the top (and it started to rain, and my backpack isn't waterproof).
I followed them to their landing field and watched one land. I've often watched the paragliders, but never seen the hang gliders up close. The hang gliders are definitely faster in the air and much more maneuverable and "sporty", but they only seem to stay in the air for 20 mins at a time. The paragliders are often up there for 2 hours or more on good days. Also, the paragliders just fold up their wing and shove it in a bag, and thow it on the backseat of their car, whereas the hang gliders spend quite some time disassembling them, and then need a truck with special racks on the top to transport them.
I asked them if they were planning on doing another run, in hopes that I could get a timlapse of them winding their way down, but they said the wind was too rough.
I rode down the highway a bit and ended up setting up in a ditch at the side of the gold course. I took a few test shots, and when exposed for the sky, the bottom of the frame looked way over exposed, so I cut out the golf course and re-composed for just the sky, which was un-interesting. I should have trusted the histogram though, because the ground, while a little dark, was still usable.
I set up for one frame every five seconds, and sat and waited for about half an hour, and this is what I got (played back at 30 fps, at 15 was too slow):



Why is it all flickery? When I compare the frames, some are darker than others. Why? Everything on the camera was set to manual; aperature, shutter speed, iso, white balance, focus, etc.
What happened?

Evil Toddler Bike

I'm sat here at the computer, and can see the two little boys playing outside my window. They are probably about 5 and 2. The younger one's on a trike-of-sorts, with four wheels. A bit like this,
but the front wheels are further apart, and the back wheels very close together (and his is made of metal and painted red). Who designed this? I can't thing of one advantage to having the front wheels spread apart. As soon as he gets up any speed he falls off sideways. Forget cornering. It's clearly made for a child his size, but the bars are so wide that his arms are stretched right out to reach them, meaning any slight movement of his body or either arm causes a crash.
I saw one of them three-wheeled motorbikes in town the other day. I don't understand why having the two wheels at the front is better than having the two wheels at the back. Just to be different?
Do they even have a differential? Are they front wheel drive for that matter?

NEW BIKE

...in a temporary flat-bar configuration (waiting on brifters).
Will also switch the tires, saddle and pedals.
The red bottle cage will have to come off too, but the bike shop only have these horrible red ones or the cheap plastic ones that brake when you're 50 km from home and have nowhere to put your bottle but in the garbage.
I'm not keen on the Campy, mainly because of (lack of) compatibility.
The wheels look really cool, but it'll be interesting to see how long it takes me to brake them.
Kurt gave me an awesome deal on a great bike though! Thanks Kurt.
I'm very excited. I wish it would stop raining. I want to go riding.
It needs a name...

Some Photos (sort of)

I keep meaning to write a post. Whenever I go riding I ride along writing it in my head, but I never get around to it, or when I do I've forgotten what I was going to write.
(Do all my posts start like this?)

I haven't taken any photos in ages. I went out to take photos along the Trans Canada Trail a couple of weeks ago to take photos. I was out for about five hours, but only got around to processing these two:




I was still itching to try the time-lapse thing, but after breaking the first and having the second one stolen, I decided not to go with the cheap Canon point-and-shoot, asnd instead get an intervalometer for my D90. It arrived two days ago (this was written over a week before it got finished and posted, we've had nothing but flat cloud cover and rain since), and I've been messing around with it at home, and once I've got it down I'll go and find some more interesting scenes (top of Prevost, Tzouhalem, Mill Bay, etc. Any more ideas?).





There are so many thing to get right though. With stills, I take a picture, look at it on the LCD, and fix whatever's wrong. With a time lapse sequence though, everything has to be planned for several hours (or, if I can figure out an external power source, days). Predicting what exposure settings you'll need in two hours means predicting the weather. In the crocus one, the clouds shifted and the resulting video is over exposed. Although I remembered to set the white balance to manual, it isn't quite right. With a still, this would take two seconds to fix in Adobe Camera Raw, but quite a bit longer with thousands of stills to process, even with batch processing (does anyone have any recommendations for batch processing software? Lightroom?).
And then there's the problem of how often to take a shot, which is just guess work really.

I think I'm going to have to make a checklist.
exposure
white balance
manual focus
jpeg (not RAW)
jpeg size and quality
turn LCD off
lens flare?
will lens steam up?
shadows (tripod/camera in shot?)
rain?