SurvivoRudy: Hiking Mt. Audubon

Last weekend the first year grad students (about half of us) as well as some older grad students hiked Mt Audubon (13223ft). Naturally, I took the camera and videocamera to get some footage.

The simple day hike quickly took a turn for the worse as the weather worsened and we were stranded on the mountain (just kidding). But here is my compilation of SurvivoRudy...



And for some more serious footage...

Some of the snow on the mountain:



and a panorama from the top of the mountain:

2 New Bikes!

I recently bought more bikes in one day than ever before. 2. I bought the all black with red details fixed gear bike off of ebay for an awesome $180 and the all white Motobecane Phantom Cross Pro with all SRAM rival from bikes direct for $999! No tax and no shipping is nice...tax in boulder is almost 9cents on the dollar!






And not to be outdone, I just got my new macbook pro! Awesome.

Now that my purchasing spree is over, it is back to school. Starting tomorrow I have 4 grad classes, a grad seminar, and am a TA for general chemistry where I have to attend lecture run a gen chem lab section, recitation, help hours. Should be fun but a lot of work--and no more new bikes for a while...

Operation Yard Work Complete

The weed whacker and I had a fun time conquering the bedraggled back yard. I mowed and weeded for about 3 days off and on. Quite a bit of work, but pulling 3ft weeds is actually kind of fun/rewarding/easy. Doing yard work where it isnt needed (99% of homes including mine) still stinks.

I even discovered 3 flower beds that were not even visible previously! It was like a treasure hunt--the roomies said they hadnt seen fence in years.

A Ride With Rudy: Ward and Lyons

This video is the best yet. I was finally able to figure out how to add real music and edited the video to match it.

The ride was Saturday morning heading up Lefthand Canyon Rd. to the town of Ward at 9450 ft. This is leaving from Boulder (and eventually the base of Lefthand Canyon Rd) at 5430ft making it 4200ft of climbing over 16.7 miles. It took me 72 minutes (hoping for even faster in the future). The downhill must have taken 40 minutes!

Here I am taking video at the top of the climb which was actually past Ward at about 10000ft. More comments on the helmet camera and people wanting my picture...



And, A Ride With Rudy pt 3.



Note all the cyclists parked at the bottom of the mountain. People drive there just to ride up. (I biked there in my car).

PS. Youtube informed me that this video was blocked in Germany because I used Audioslave music in it. Those guys are definitely missing out.

A Ride With Rudy: Boulder Creek

This is just a bit of video of the main bike path next to Canyon Rd. Filmed partly at night and partly Saturday morning, the name of the flipvideo song it fittingly "Perfect Saturday."



And some reporting on the topic...

A Ride With Rudy: Plains and Lefthand Canyon

Inspired by the marginally famous (and absolutely terrible) movie "A Ride With George" featuring George Hincapie, "A Ride With Rudy" is going to be the trademark name of my minimally famous (and hopefully not too terrible) helmet camera riding series.

This is the first test of the helmet camera on a real ride and although it definitely isnt aero (sorry triathletes) and weighs about as much as a motorcycle helmet (I guess it will help strengthen my splenius capitis muscles...), it worked well and I hardly noticed it (even though everyone that went by me sure did).

Lots of comments, stares, and even 2 conversations from passing motorists and bikers. The serious bikers around here are a bit pretentious it seems and I guess they dont like seeing people with rocks strapped to their helmets as counterweight.

In any case, the ride went from the plains east of boulder to the low foothills north of boulder with a view of boulder reservoir at 0:27 and then down through Lefthand Canyon before finishing through the flats of the Boulder 70.3 bike course (3:50 and on) back to south boulder where I live.

Video editing was on flip, but future video edits should be even better with my new macbook pro (if it ever gets here!)

Enjoy.



PS. hopefully you find this video as ridiculous as this blog...

Helmet Camera Testing

So, I finally got around to testing the helmet camera tonight (after finishing it late last night in my laboratory...). I did a few test runs today and the weight of the camera on the right side was pulling the view sideways (a bit uncomfortable to watch). So, I had to make one final adjustment...add a counterweight to the left side of the helmet to balance the weight from the camera on the right side.




With that weight I did a test ride to the engineering school. I edited the other videos for length but left this one just so you can skim through and see the route (that i think is the fastest) to school. 7min of riding time. (more posts to come on the fastest time and shortest distance route to the engineering school).



And here is me returning from the journey. I cut this one down because it was way too long (and honestly there isnt much to see on my ride home...)

Helmet Camera Complete

After much thought, design failure, and a trip to the local hardware store, I was able to fabricate my very own helmet camera using my trusty flip video camera! Here are some pictures of it. My idea was to have it unobtrusively mounted on my helmet and during particularly exciting portions of long bike rides (not many) I could get some footage of the scenery flying by. (Plus I could get some footage around town without having to hold the camera in front of me the entire time.

At first I thought about mounting it on the top of my helmet like is done with the commercially available gopro camera (retails for $300) but I didnt want it to be too high on my head because of the glut of low clearance underpasses around here...I would hate to decapitate my helmet camera.

I also didnt want to restrict the sound quality by taping it on or using velcro (it will likely be terrible sound quality anyway). So, I bought a bolt for the cameras tripod holder port and some metal brackets so that the camera is largely unrestricted for use and filming.

Also note the wrist strap going through my helmet strap...in case of catastrophic failure of the helmet mount, the wrist strap should keep my flip video camera from plummeting to the pavement.

voilà!

Tour around Boulder and my house

So, here is the tour around Boulder Campus. I did it on a bike and tried to hit the main parts, but then i realized that i missed like half of the campus! oh well, here is some of it. Mostly stream of consciousness here on the narration--I am probably not the best tour guide seeing as ive been here like 2 days...



Met some CHE guys so i said hi to them and then continued the tour...



And then later i did a mini tour of the house...



I got my CO drivers license and voter registration today so I am now an official resident!

Part 1: the trip

So after loading the truck Augie and I left Virginia at about 6am for the 16hr trip to WI. Here we are stopped in Pennsylvania with some traffic:



Augie still needs some work with the video camera... Coldplay was playing during this shooting. The penske truck ended up getting 12.013 mpg for the 2000mi journey. A bit on the expensive side! If i had to do it again i would definitely sell some of my stuff, buy a car and just drive out. Or i could GET THE RIGHT SIZE TRUCK!

Packing the Penske

So the first step was to load the penske truck. It was a little bigger than I originally thought...



Then Marty's reaction...



And Augies similar reaction...

Blog #2

Well, since the whimsical west coast cruise was such a success, and since creating blogs is so freakin easy, i figured, what the heck. And thus was born: "Cogitation in Colorado." I hope everyone enjoys the consonance. This is what I think about when swimming...