I checked out some of the singletrack over on High Drive Parkway on my way home from work tonight. So I put a tripod sticking out of my right pannier, used an old toestrap to cinch it to my fork blade, and put my Canon A60 on there.

http://www.omnicast.net/~tmcfadden/commute.wmv (4MB Windows Media Player file, suggest you right-click the link and save it first. ALT 3 tells Windows Media Player to go double-size, recommended)

This section was relatively well-packed. In other places, it was a little tricky. The trail traverses a slope. The snow on the downhill side of the trail will slide my front wheel out. The snow on the uphill side of the trail will grab my lowrider front panniers. So the good line is pretty narrow in a lot of places. Occasionally you can see lights off the right side of the trail, that's the floor of the valley about 100 meters lower, and Highway 195 runs along the floor.

Anyway, frustrating in places, but kinda fun and definitely one of the better workouts I've had lately :)

edit: sample pic for my fellow low-bandwidth victims:

http://www.omnicast.net/~tmcfadden/singletrack1.jpg

Wow, that looks kind of scary. I hope you at least had studded tires (kind of sounds like it, but still)

Makes me kind of glad that my commute is all on city streets that are regularly plowed/salted. My fixed gear and 23c slicks would ensure that I was falling down that slope quite quickly. If I even got to the start of the trail, that is.

Thanks for the vid.

awesome vid, thx for posting it.

Thanks for the nice video. You clearly had more fun yesterday than I did!
You must have been on the new Nokians? How are they?
What were you using for a headlight?

Thanks for the nice video. You clearly had more fun yesterday than I did!
You must have been on the new Nokians? How are they?
What were you using for a headlight?I was using the Nokian 294s, and when the going got tough, The Voices reminded me mech! let some air out of the tires! 2manybikes said to!, so I dropped them down to Fairly Sqwooshy (turns out to be ~25psi) and got much better snow traction. :)

Very nice with the sounds of the Nokains on ice. Thumbs up, rock on!

Wow--That is different from South Jersey. BTW I had kid after kid come over to my computer to see what I was watching. Had to play it again for the whole group.

Great Video! Did you have a camera with a gyo or some sort of steady hand function?

Just wonderin if my Vid Camera would work.

Great Video! Did you have a camera with a gyo or some sort of steady hand function?

Just wonderin if my Vid Camera would work.I have a cheap aluminum tripod I got at Newegg, so I dropped that into the right front pannier, then passed a toestrap around the tripod and around the fork blade (rigid fork here) to hold it pretty tightly. Then I put the camera on the tripod, set it for +2 exposure adjustment to brighten things up, and shot some clips as I went.

A proper video camera would work better, as long as it wasn't too heavy for the tripod to hold on-target. If it could be attached to the frame, rather than the fork, and if the bike had front suspension, then it would be a lot cooler to view. :) Maybe I'll get one of those Oregon Scientific ones sometime, although I hear they're only good for daytime lighting. But I bet the mountain-bike guys would dig our singletrack :)

BTW, disclaimer, this is almost certainly not good for any camera you really care about :p

Oh, and I forgot to answer about the light, that's a Niterider 12-watt HID headlight.

I was using the Nokian 294s, and when the going got tough, The Voices reminded me mech! let some air out of the tires! 2manybikes said to!, so I dropped them down to Fairly Sqwooshy (turns out to be ~25psi) and got much better snow traction. :)

The proper bike lingo term from this day forward for low pressure in your tires will now be ~ Sqwooshy ! :) :)

Check my thread "Snow what?" from today!

Very nice video! I though I was riding with you. :)

I was using the Nokian 294s, and when the going got tough, The Voices reminded me mech! let some air out of the tires! 2manybikes said to!, so I dropped them down to Fairly Sqwooshy (turns out to be ~25psi) and got much better snow traction. :)

mech, the South Hill looks awsome! I might have to check it out on the way home from work tomorrow :D ....have you checked out Riverside State Park this week? I figure there should be some good icy boot pack by now, but I haven't checked it out yet.

mech, the South Hill looks awsome! I might have to check it out on the way home from work tomorrow :D ....have you checked out Riverside State Park this week? I figure there should be some good icy boot pack by now, but I haven't checked it out yet.I haven't been out to Riverside all year, if you can believe that! :( FWIW, that section in the clip would be in the vincinity of High Drive and 30th --> 35th or so, and had gotten a lot of foot traffic. Some of the stuff lower down, below 29th-ish, was really frustrating going uphill.

Wow! I wouldn't call THAT a commute! For less experienced riders, don't try this (even with studs) at home! Never could have managed that.