Champing and other stuff

I came across a YouTube video from Terry's All Bikes. This guy's in his early 60's and likes to wild camp on his Brompton. His video skills are terrible, half the videos have his finger in the frame, but they are entertaining anyway. This particular video is about Champing. Not camping or glamping, but champing. 

It seems some churches in the UK are raising money by allowing hikers and cyclists to camp in the church. You get a sleeping pad, access to a kitchen and bathroom, and a dry, safe place to sleep. It looks really cool. You show up with your sleeping bag and food, and you have a nice place to eat and sleep. Hence the term - champing.

Probably not all churches provide a teddy bear.

On a sadder note, I read an article about a promising college football player killed recently on an e-scooter. He decided to ride across a pedestrian crossing against a red light and got hit by a bus. I see e-scooter riders constantly riding dangerously - one turned left in front of me just the other day and I only just missed hitting him. I bet a psychology PhD candidate has written a thesis on why e-scooter riders think they're immortal. I doubt I'd understand it, though.

My road bike has a Campy racing triple and it has become almost impossible to get replacement middle chain rings. The problem is the ramping on the middle chain ring is designed to help the chain get on the chain ring from both directions. If I replace it with an inner chain ring for a double I will have trouble shifting from the small chain ring to the middle. It's not something I do very often, but I'd like to still be able to do it. I asked my bike shop to give me an estimate on replacing the triple with a double chain ring. I have a feeling it will be too much.

First YouTube video

My wonderful helmet light that I bought on Amazon for $15 many years ago finally died. So I bought a new one. The new light has a GoPro compatible mount. It's one of the few lights I've bought where the mount is better than the light. 

The light itself doesn't have a very good beam pattern - it's a series of concentric circles of light and dark. It's fine for illuminating street signs or cue sheets. It can maybe catch the attention of a motorist. But it's not good enough to be a stand-alone front light.

I recently bought a GoPro Hero 9 so I thought it would be interesting to mount the GoPro on this mount and record video. I rode from Yorba Linda park to the Bolsa Chica café and back, videoing parts of the ride. The camera's image stabilization feature works really well, but the weigh causes to helmet to shift. I also had it pointing too far down. It's all a learning experience. I might need to increase the thickness of the padding inside my helmet.

I cleaned up the video with the free version of DaVinci Resolve. At first I was put off this software because the official documentation videos aren't suitable for a complete novice. Fortunately I found a lot of good YouTube videos about the software and realized it's very good.

Here's the finished product. It's my first attempt at a proper YouTube video. I need to work on my speech volume and enunciation. I think my trip to Vermont will be my next subject.