schnauzers.ws

Hauling the camper to the Arkansas River headwaters.  A bastion of recreational goodness in the heart of Colorado.  A mere three hours from the hot and smokey air of the Front Range to the sound of the rushing river and unique community that is Salida.  A very livable community at the base of several 14,000′ mountains.  I camped, I ate, I fished, I drank beer, but the best part of it all, was riding the Monarch Crest trail.

I guess my goal in going it alone, wasn’t to score any brownie points.  When I am alone, that usually means the horse blinders are on.  Not this time.  I got thrust into the limelight as soon as I registered for the campsite.  Do I give off some kind of computer geek aura?

“Do you want wireless access?”, the clerk said.

Sure.

“Do you know how to enter the password?”, she quipped again.

Sure.

“Do you know how to fix a computer, because I can’t get one of our seasonal retirees laptop to work”.

Huh? Now why do you think that? Let me see. Um, you have to push the button to turn the wireless card on.

Ding ding.  Score a karma point.  The first of a few, I hope.

Saturday morning I ponied up my $20 for the shuttle ride to Monarch Pass.  This was the sky that greeted me at the top.  A sight that would not change throughout the five hours and thirty two some odd miles of the ride.  I had thoughts of completing this in three, but who was I kidding?  Monarch Crest, Silver Creek, and the new to me, Rainbow Trail (it’s always been sketchy weather every other time I had gotten to that point before).

(continue reading…)

I debated whether I would even attempt putting this together. I love my Flip video camera, but it was getting old and banged up, Cisco bought them and single handedly destroyed the product, So I bought a Flip wanna-be from Samsung. So much promise, but so few results. For some reason it always thinks it’s in back-lit mode. I took a few creative liberties with the footage and once I reached the half-way point of editing, I wasn’t about to stop.

Gold Dust Trail (06/10/12) from Mitchell Sprinsky on Vimeo.

Finally reaching my leg strength, I headed out for a longer singlespeed ride. It was an absolutely beautiful day. Blue skies, temps, no crowds, and just awesome dry dirt. I spent a lot of time doing this video. Lots of setup, ride, setup, and ride again. Though I despise chest cams, I was determined to find a less shaky mount than helmet and bars. I worked on the chest mount before the ride. I think that getting the camera to point up a little more will do the trick, but this was a good start. My goal is to eliminate arms from the chest cam. I tried to keep my arms as stiff as possible, while keeping my chest up. Enjoy!