Stony Mountain Crit Report

Stony Mountain Criterium from Cindy Titus on Vimeo.

I missed the registration cutoff and wasn't able to race myself unfortunately. So instead, I played around with Cindy's d7000 and made this video. Nothing serious, just trying to capture the feel of the race. Unfortunately I had to leave before the last few laps of Cat 3, but either way it ended up being a fun evening. I think I'll try making a few more short videos this year.

Snow blind

I went out to the cabin with some friends recently. The wind picked up while we were on a hike across the lake. Things got pretty disorienting.
 

Go West

I was looking through my harddrive and found a bunch of photos from my iPhone that I took on last year's motorcycle trip. I pretty much dropped the ball on putting together a comprehensive trip report with medium format photos, so this will have to do. Plus it's starting to get warm and looking at these photos is making me extra excited for summer. I'll give a few coles notes: Here is a quick snapshot of what kind of materials you need to bring along on a motorcycle trip. I had one pannier that was loaded full of tools. Everything from a complete metric socket set, to tire patch kits, spark plugs, fuel clamps, feeler gauges for adjusting the valves, pliers, a clutch tool, crush washers, oil filters, spare wire and so on. The trip was over 8,000km long, so I would have to do some routine maintenance at the halfway point, which necessitated taking some special tools along. The red bottle was my emergency fuel reserve.

Loaded up and read to go.

I pulled into the first gas station and my odometer read 666. That happened about 5 times on the trip..! You can also see the sweet GPS and USB charging plate my Dad made me before I left. The Garmin ended up being a big help when I got lost, but it wasn't equipped to handle a 8,000+ KM route. It crashed many times. The USB charger kept my phone, iPod and GPS charged the entire trip.

My buddy Mike joined me up to the border. He was on his newly purchased cb400f. It is a sweet bike.

The route I took was designed to avoid Minot, which is an oil boom town. The downside was there were no gas stations for miles and miles. I ran the tank dry on the first day. Then I emptied my tiny fuel reserve into the tank, and pulled into Ryder with a few tablespoons worth of gas in the tank. There was a ton of construction on the highway I chose, and it turned to very loose gravel many times.

One thing I love about the US is real mexican food. Finding this burrito truck was like winning the lottery.

I eventually pulled into Jordon. There was a pile of lightening flashing around me and my engine was starting to leak oil out of the cam cover, something that would continue for the remainder of the summer. Two deer jumped out infront of me while I was riding around 90mp/h. Time to get off the road and take it easy. I pulled into a gas station and learned there was no room at the inn, so to speak. He suggested I setup camp in the field across from his service station. The sheriff might arrive, he said, but only to make sure I was safe and had what I needed. Ok...sweet! When I woke up, I realized I was camping in the front yard of the town hospital. The staff were arriving for work and just smiled. I covered 650 miles on day one.

I started the day by pulling into the T-Rex capitol of the US to have some breakfast. It was on the edge of turning into a ghost town. Despite the lack of people, those who remained had a strong sense of patriotism...

I continued on through rolling dusty countryside, with cattle grazing alongside most of the highway. I passed a few touring cyclists climbing a long hot climb. I stopped to give them a cheer. For the second day in a row I hit reserve (motorcycle speak for the gas light went on and you're gonna be dead in the water really soon), and when I arrived in Lewistown I filled up with 4.1 gallons. That's really close to dry. I started to race a storm as I made a beeline for Glacier National Park in Montana. I was starting to feel really good on the bike and was taking the corners pretty quickly. As I got closer to the mountains, I started to drift into the oncoming lane from carrying too much speed. "Ok, you've got thousands of kilometers of mountains coming up, slow down and don't be an idiot" I thought. I reduced my speed and started to just enjoy the bends. Then I crashed!

Most of you have heard the story, so I'll keep it short. My rear tire lost traction for reasons I still don't understand. I was riding around 65km/h or so. The tire washed out, then caught again and the bike lurched. I tried to wrestle it back into the curve, but it was too late. The gravel shoulder was very soft and the grass was wet with rain. I was heading straight for the road sign had no chance of pulling back up the shoulder. You can see just to the left of the sign, the grass is a bit blacker underneath. That's because the shoulder drops off very sharply. My best bet was to continue down the shoulder and try to come to a controlled stop. I flew between the sign and the tree, started to slow but the tires just slide over the wet grass. I hit a falled tree trunk under the grass and was bucked ass over end into the trees. A bunch of cars passed by, and eventually a van with some young guys stopped and helped push my bike back onto the road. That was scary.

I rode for about 5km before I found this pull-out. My bars were pointed way to the left and my forks were bent. I setup shop on the side of the road and got to work. Here is where it really pays off to do your own work, because I knew how I could straighten the forks in the triple-clamps. With some violent jerks I got the front back in line. I gave the rest of the bike a once-over. Other than a bent signal light and a broken mirror, I was good to go. In hindsight it may have been a blessing in disguise as I rode with extreme caution for most of the trip afterwards. Everyone has to crash at some point. I'm just glad mine wasn't serious.

This was the start of Going to the Sun road, said to be one of the most beautiful drives in the world. I mostly saw fog, but it was still amazing. I camped near the exit of the park with no food, water, or beer to unwind. My campsite neighbours took pity on me and gave me some firewood. I spent the night going over the bike closely. Day two covered 451 miles.

Once passed the Glacier National Park, I turned onto a tiny single-lane logging road that I found on Google Maps. It looked like a back lane going into the wilderness. I had no idea if there were any gas stations or anything for at least 300 miles, which is at least double my gas tank capacity. Luckily it worked out and was one of the most beautiful rides of my life. At one point I stopped for a photo, and as I was shooting, a dog barked right next to me. It scared the crap out of me. In the middle of nowhere, I choose to stop right next to a dog that has been tied to a tree. Minutes later the owner came out from picking berries nearby. Weird! I saw maybe two or three people in the entire day. I also stumbled onto the Libby damn, which was very cool and unexpected. I stopped for a rest in the shade.

I passed over a massive trestle bridge and spent the next several hours on the most twisty, most remote amazing mountain road of all time. At least it felt that way. I think I made it out of second gear only two or three times all afternoon. At some point I stopped and found white smoke coming out of my engine breather hose. Not sure why. I was engine braking constantly due to the constant start/stopping. Maybe that has something to do with it?

My goal was to camp in Spokane. I arrived and discovered that Spokane is not a town. It's a massive city. It's like saying you're going to camp in Winnipeg. No you are not. I continued on into the night and another massive thunderstorm hit - that's three for three now! I pulled into Davenport and walked up to some highway patrolmen. I said I needed to get off the road and camp for the night. They checked my passport and then said I was free to camp on the police garage front yard. Another unusually friendly US police experience. I spent the evening listening to thunder and coyotes howling. I fell asleep before finishing half of the trips first High Life. Day three covered 430 miles.

I woke up in the middle of the night to an absolutely raging thunderstorm. I love the sound of rain on a tent. I got up at 7am and it was still drizzling with thunder in the distance. I packed up and hit the road anyway. The ride started out as pretty boring prairie, but suddenly the road dipped into the most amazing red canyons. I felt like I was riding through a western movie.

I hit the Washington border and stopped at this abandoned gas station. The tumbleweed just reenforced the western feel.

The road then hit the mountains again. I took a fantastic winding road with great grip. One of the nice things about Google Maps is that you can find roads you might never go on otherwise. One of the downsides is that sometimes the roads Google tells you to take...aren't exactly....roads.

I took this gravel road because it was supposed to skip past some crappy interstate sections. However, it eventually turned to this:

And then to this. That is not a road Google.

I got back onto some B-roads that followed a canyon river. It was nice and winding and beautiful. But it was also very hot. I tried to pull off the road to cool off, but every parking lot and pullout required you to pay to enter. Screw that! Persistence pays off. I eventually found this little boat launch that while technically you couldn't park and stay at, would suit my needs just fine. I had been carrying this watermelon slice in my bag all day and no parking ban was going to keep me from enjoying some fresh watermelon and taking a dip in the river. I spent some time cooling off in the river, eventually joined by this awesome Texan hippy dude who was travelling the coast in his pickup truck. You meet cool people on the road if you're open to it.

I continued on toward Hecla down route 25. It was an AMAZING ROAD. I capitalize because that's what it was in my notes. I honestly don't totally remember it, but I seem to have been pretty excited at the time.

I camped in Iron Creed campground among massive redwoods. Mist passed through the trees and the thick vegetation silenced all sound. It was a very spooky, Lord of the Rings vibe. I decided to take an early break from riding. I took a shower from a small tap I found on the road.

Day Four covered 386 miles. I woke up on the fifth day to a beautiful morning. Today I would see the ocean! I continued on down a very challenging, foggy road. I could hardly see ten feet infront of me. I had to drive in second gear for quite a long time. Apparently Hecla is somewhere right infront of my bike here...

As I continued down toward the ocean, the road became a bit less twisty and foggy. I could carry more speed and was having a really fun time flying through the forest. One of the things I really wanted to do on my trip was take a ferry. Not for any particular reason, I just think they are so cool. I ended up having to take the ferry in Westport without knowing it was there, and it was only $3! Sweet!

I continued on through Astoria and into some small beach-side community. Five days later, I was at the ocean.

I neglected to record my milage that day. But who cares, I reached the ocean.

Part two: The Return, coming soon.

End of the world CX

No racing for me today, next time for sure though. From the looks of it, there were at least a few others out there that opted to take it easy today.

Use fenders that are wood, you should

You probably know by now that Lyle, or the BF as some refer to him as, makes very beautiful custom wooden fenders. He built up a pair for my latest bike and I only recently had the chance to test them out. The fenders are stained a nice dark finish to match the black components, but you can still see the wood grain clearly through the finish. He also worked up a sweet new mounting system after I asked that there be no excess mounting hardware poking past the fenders like you see on cheap plastic ones. I'm really happy with how they turned out and highly recommend them to you all. Already random people have come up and asked about them. Plus they have tons of clearance so they work well in the winter, even with 32mm tires as shown here.

How to Photograph Bikes - Petersen Style

One of my favourite cycling icons, Grant Petersen of Rivendell Bicycle Works, put together a great guide for how to properly photograph a bicycle. Apparently it was originally a chapter in his fantastic book Just Ride. 

I've re-posted his guide here, but I encourage you to check out the Rivendell blog as well over here.

Sixteen Ways To Shoot Bikes Slight Better Than the Average Photo-Joe Does

Bikes with no riders

1.  Shoot the drive side, because everybody wants to see the crank and derailers, and it seems to be moving left to right, the same way you read and the most natural way for your eyes to move (since you’re used to reading this way). When you shoot the bike on the street you get the left side of it and it’s pointing left, too. The owners park for convenience, not for your photographic needs.

2. When you can pose the bike, put the right pedal just above horizontal. It makes the bike look ready to go.

3.  Back up, zoom in, split the handlebar. Close, wide angle shots distort the bike. Back up at least twenty-five feet and zoom in. Make the bike look like it’s split in half vertically. Hide the left (far) side of the handlebar behind the near side of it, so you see only one brake lever, and there’s as little evidence as possible that there’s even a left-side handlebar. You can’t do this close up.

4.  Shoot in the shade…to avoid distracting shadows.

5.  Watch your backgrounds. Use a plain background, or at least a consistent one. Brick walls and barn sides aren’t plain, but are consistent. When you can’t control the background, make it blurry and the bike sharp. Some cameras allow that, some don’t. When possible, shoot against a background that’s white, off-white, grey, or black—whatever looks right with the bike. Bright colors draw you out, not in.

6.  Keep the cables, crop the wheels (a little). If the bike has cables sticking up, show all of them. But if the focus is the bike’s frame and parts, it’s good to crop a few inches of the wheels out. This enlarges the rest of the bike, and you aren’t eliminating anything that matters.

7. Don’t get too wound up about perfection. The “wound-up” way of shooting bikes for slick catalogues is to show the tires with the labels legible, usually at 12:00 and 6:00, and with the valve stems either at 6:00, or hidden behind the chainstay and the fork blade. When it’s your bike or your friend’s bike, or a shot for eBay or whatever, that’s too fussy. It’s fine to know these tricks, but draw the line where it makes sense to you.

Here’s a bad photo, with tons wrong.  I went out of my way to mess it up, but it’s not all that unusual in the real world:

The wrong:

• It’s the left side of the bike. SHOOT THE DRIVE SIDE.

• Shot close-up with wide angle, so front wheel looks huger. BACK UP, ZOOM IN.

• Inconsistent background is distracting. MAKE IT PLAIN.

• Crank is at noon and six. MAKE IT HORIZONTAL and flatten the pedals.

• Too sunny & for pete’s sake there’s the photoguy’s shadow: SHOOT IN OPEN SHADE.

Here’s a better way:

It’s all pretty cool here. Drive side, —- oh crud, I goofed the pedal. I never do that. It must be so smooth that it rocked up. Well, pretend it’s horizontal—-no shadows, “split” handlebars with one side blocking the other. No wheel distortion, because I stepped back and zoomed. Dang that pedal. I usually don’t crop the wheels, but doing so lets the bike be bigger, and you know the wheels are complete…

Riders on bikes (no examples to look forward to)

8. Shoot the bike heading right, and showing the drive-side components. It’s easier to do that in Japan or England than in America, and it’s easier on trails or bike paths than on roads.

9. Shoot riders coming into you, not riding away. It looks like something’s about to happen, not like something just did and you missed it.

10. Try to shoot riders with their pedals close to horizontal. Besides being at maximum flex, it looks more active. Don’t get hung up on horizontalness, but try to avoid vertical cranks. That always looks weird in photos, like the guy doesn’t know how to coast.

11. Tell your friends what to wear. Black and navy blue get underexposed, and make heads look suspended above nothing. White gets overexposed too easily. In color photos, red looks great, and plaid looks great, and if you can combine the two, in a nicely composed scene, it’s going to look fine. Think Paul Bunyan.

12. Helmets in the woods …make the rider look like a robot. Some people get nuts about published photos of helmetless riders, but not every photo sends a message. It can be just an image. Brilliant, super-vented, elongated and aerodynamic helmets wreck outdoorsy bike shots. The least photo-wrecking bike helmets are plain looking ones that aren’t white. Ball caps or other hats with big bills hide faces, often in shadows. Bare heads, beanies, and bike hats look the best. Race team jerseys in the woods don’t belong, either. They’re covered with advertisements and corporate logos, and they wreck woodsy photos.

13. Shoot from below and above.  It makes even photos more interesting.

14. Rule of Thirds. It’s an old rule (not law) for any photo. Visually divide the scene into three equal parts both vertically and horizontally, and put the subject at the line intersections. When you have both land and sky in the photo, or road and land whichever one of them you want to emphasize should make up two-thirds of the photo. In this case there aren’t any imaginary intersections to guide you, but there are imaginary horizontal lines.

15. Don’t let the road itself eat up the whole lower half of the photo …unless the road itself is the subject. Otherwise, if you get down low, point the camera up so the road or trail takes up no more than a third of the frame.

16. Shoot blurry or grainy black and white. People are too used to seeing total focus brilliant color these days, courtesy of $80 digital cameras and phenomenal cell phone images that anybody can shoot and everybody does. If you want your photos to be a welcome reliever from all that digital perfection, mess them up some.

Film is a natural for messed up action photos, because it’s easier to screw up and if you shoot 3200 iso film, the graininess is automatic. If you don’t shoot film but you’d like to try, get a Holga for $50 and dive into it. I’m sure there are digital ways to simulate a blown black-and-white film shot, but that’s a phony way to go about it.

This is not the last word, it’s just how I do it, but there are thousands of bike photographers better than me—except when it comes to quickly set-up static shots of complete bikes against walls—that is my domain free and clear. The thing is, if you’re floundering and care a smidgen about improving your bike photos,  you can go by this and up your game immediately. Go your own way once you’re comfortable with it all.

When cross season is over

After seven weeks of consecutive racing, it looks like I'll have some free time this weekend. I finally saw a doctor about my nagging knee pain and I've been given the order to stay off a bicycle for the next few weeks. What a bummer. So that means I have time to catch up on other interests, like scanning a few more photos from the summer. Here are a couple of my favourites:

 Cindy and I have gone camping for the last couple seasons at the end of the official camp season. It's great - campgrounds are empty, it's quiet, the weather isn't too bad, and there are no bugs. Here are a few of my favourite camping items.
 

These two are from the motorcycle trip in August. Both photos were taken along the tail end of the Going to the Sun Road in Montana.
 

And this was along the Beartooth Pass. It would be an awesome place to mountain bike.
 

I found this guy off a road in Yellowstone National Park. I tried to sneak closer in the bushes, but decided not to test my luck any further.
 

And just to make sure this post has absolutely no common theme, here are some photos from Montreal along the main climb of the circuit. It was very steep, and awesome to watch the pros crawl up out of the saddle.