Passing clouds of inconsequential observations
After recent observations about the state of local bike lanes it was amusing to watch the video by [wikipop search=”Neistat Brothers”]Casey Neistat[/wikipop] dealing with bike lane problems in New York:
Interestingly cycling with a camera is not a new idea:
From: The Cyclists’ Route Book for Great Britain and Ireland, Including the Isles of Man and Wight, etc. by William James Spurrier (1893). Found in the excellent [wikipop]British Library[/wikipop] History of Britain & Ireland app
April’s 30 Days of Biking came and went without our active participation. Our biking is mostly a daily commute to work and occasional shopping trips. But coinciding time off and some sunshine inspired us to venture out last week. Being new to the area we are still exploring various routes and are grateful for knowledge and insights shared by local bike bloggers (Note to self: Remember to sponsor Lorenza.) From the map we reckoned we could get along the [wikipop]towpath[/wikipop] on the [wikipop]Bridgewater canal[/wikipop] to Dunham Massey. So we set off to explore:
The Cascade Bicycle Club in Seattle have produced a video that pretty much says it all in under three minutes:
When cycling in the [wikipop]Cotswolds[/wikipop] you could not go more than a mile without hitting a hill. Here you can cycle all day without hitting a hill. Although people do seem to buy bikes with lots of gears or, even stranger, mountain bikes. So without any hill climbing challenges one has to resort to speed. Starting from the bridge over the [wikipop]M60 Motorway[/wikipop] round the [wikipop]Sale Water Park[/wikipop], across the bridge over the [wikipop]River Mersey[/wikipop] and along the riverbank to Chorlton Water Park in under 4 minutes 😉 The recent snow has left everywhere wet and muddy 🙁
[video:http://blog.duncanmoran.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/sale2chorlton.mp4|http://blog.duncanmoran.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/sale2chorlton.ogg|http://blog.duncanmoran.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/sale2chorlton.flv http://blog.duncanmoran.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/sale2chorlton.jpg 680 550]I turned the camera upwards while crossing the motorway bridge thinking it might make a neat kaleidoscopic movie…
[video:http://blog.duncanmoran.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bridgekaliedoclipsnd-desktop.m4v|http://blog.duncanmoran.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bridgekaliedoclipsnd-desktop.ogg|http://blog.duncanmoran.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bridgekaliedoclipsnd-desktop.flv http://blog.duncanmoran.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bridgekaliedoclipsnd-poster.jpg]Before the [W:BBC] series Britain By Bike reaches hereabouts and shows you some fantasy rural cycling idyll I can reveal some of the real everyday horrors you can encounter…
The opening shots are from a head mounted camera hence the swaying effect.
This post was to test the [W:HTML 5] embedding thing but it did not work. And so there is a better mp4 version (25MB) and a full screen version (120MB) available.
The music is a version of The Maids of Mitchelstown by [W:The Bothy Band].
Update:
The HTML 5/ MP4 thing seems to be alive and well. Next stop the [W:Ogg] version.
Updated update: There is an Ogg version now and it is working on my Mac with Safari, FireFox, Opera and Chrome browsers. And in FireFox on Ubuntu in Virtual Box too.
So farewell Flash!