Doing my bit for the economy

With a bit of luck we are emerging from what is generally being described as the most severe downturn since the great depression of the 30's. Only time will tell whether the economy is slowly stirring into life or there is more pain to come.

Some indicators both here and abroad seem to indicate that that the worst is over. In the United States, still the engine of the world economy some indicators point to the greenshoots of some kind of recovery. Some pundits have been seeing these for a while now while others have been cheerfully being mowing them down.

There was a spike in activity earlier this year as businesses possibly restocked but activity has been flat over recent months. Plenty of businesses have managed to perform well in the face of adversity but if confidence doesn't improve soon and people don't start buying then they are going to have to start another round of cost cutting.

Many businesses will already have harvested the low hanging fruit or worse still are mortgaged to the hilt and no longer have any wriggle room.

The only way out of this is for us to start spending. Forget about saving or paying off the mortgage we need to spend and spend big if we are going to get out of this hole. If we spend with a bit of confidence then that confidence will spread despite what the experts say and in the words of that great Kiwi scholar Fred Dagg: 'she'll be right.'

I already know how I am going to help economic growth. I am going to buy one of these.

Buying a new bike will help the local economy and the local dealer and of course Husqvarna the manufacturer. I know this sounds a little self serving but it gives me a nice little warm fuzzy feeling that I am doing something for the greater good.

So you want to be famous?

When I was a kid all I ever wanted to be was world famous. It wasn't for the music, the game, or for the art. It was all about being famous and what I was going to do once I was famous.

For me it was about the money, the adulation, the parties I'd get to invited to, the other famous people I would meet, and the pretty girls. Not that I was sure what I would do with all those things at the time. I couldn't sing, I wasn't any good at sport, I didn't even know what acting was. I didn't know how I was going to become famous. I just wanted to be famous.

Looking at the life of Wacko Jacko I am glad that things have turned out the way that they have. I'm not famous, I'm not rich but I lead a fairly happy and normal life, and can walk down the street without being mobbed.

If I had achieved any sort of fame at a young age I am sure it would not have been pretty unless someone had stepped in and kept my feet firmly on the ground. Given free reign in a sweet shop I would not be able to restrain myself. I am not even sure that it would be pretty now. Unfortunately for Jacko and others like him he appears to have been surrounded by sycophants who indulged his every whim instead of looking after him.

This wasn't supposed to be about the crashes.....

I can go to the supermarket or go out at night and misbehave and nobody will really care. Photos of me misbehaving won't appear in papers across the globe, my every move and eccentricity (and I have a few) won't be documented and analysed incessantly by supposed experts in the name of news.

Wacko Jacko's music wasn't really my cup of tea but there is no doubting he was an extremely talented individual and his music had wide appeal. Like many talented people he also had his well documented eccentricities and because of his wealth he was allowed to indulge his whims - which most likely contributed to his untimely end.

He was also perhaps a little unlucky in that he also suffered various debilitating illnesses and injuries due to accidents on film and concert sets that may have led to a reliance on various prescription drugs.

But for all his supposed faults, brushes with the law and, a lifestyle that most of is can simply have no conception of, he can't have been the total nutcase that the media would have us believe.

Despite well publicised troubles with his finances he was in no danger losing his shirt. He owned catalogues of songs that included many Lennon and McCartney hits and he continued to earn tens of millions of dollars from his own work.

The saddest thing about Jackson's life is that he probably never experienced anything like a normal one. From an early age he was famous and in the public spotlight subject to all the pressures that living in that kind of bubble entails. Especially in this age of instant communications where everyone with a cellphone camera is a source of news, gossip, just waiting for a celebrity to start behaving badly.

We put people like Jackson on a pedestal, we idolise them, we buy their music, the magazines to help create the myth that they are special, we watch and hang on their every move and then delight in mocking them when they turn out to be as weak and mortal as we are ourselves.

The problem for anybody famous, for anybody who has never had the opportunity to live a real life, is that they don't realise, often until it is too late that their lives are not real, that they don't really matter any more than anybody else and that in the end we all have to live by the same set of rules.

Yes I am glad I am not famous-even in my own lunchtime. The young French Rugby player Mathieu Bastareaud probably feels a bit the same way after his recent trip to New Zealand.

Vio POV 1.5

We now sell the VIO POV 1.5. Contact us via www.dirtvideo.co.nz for a price.

As I wrote my last post I was lamenting the difficulty of getting good advice about helmet cameras, at least locally here in NZ. I was also agonizing over separating myself from my hard earned bucks to buy a new camera.

I love riding dirtbikes. The Husky WR 250 is the greatest thing since sliced bread as far as I am concerned. This bike has quite a hard edge to it. I need to be fit to get anywhere near the best out of the bike. So there has been a double benefit to me in buying it. Not only is the bike new, got a great suspension package and handles exremely well, so it is basically just awesome to ride even for a weelend warrior like myself. It has also prompted me to work pretty hard on my fitness. Since Christmas I have lost almost 10 kilos. So I am fitter, skinnier and can enjoy blasting around the trails on the WR-which equals more fun.

This just proves that with any sport or physical recreational activity you do actually have a lot more fun when you are fit.

The other thing that I realized was that I get almost as much if not more pleasure out of the hours I spend editing hours of video down to short clips posted on YouTube. (let me know if you have any bright ideas around making money out of this as I have exhausted mine)

This self discovery had a major bearing on my choice of camera. The other major influence was the old but true adage that when you are buying equipment, well lets' be honest-when we go buying toys. Anyhow you need to buy the best that you can possibly afford, spend the extra to buy a modern dirtbike, instead of that cheapy 90's 'great deal'. As sure as god made little apples most of us end up regretting taking the cheap route when we find that the 'cheapy' doesn't cut the mustard and end up having to spend more bucks to upgrade to something decent/suitable. I speak from experience.

To cut a long story short I spent the bucks and bought myself a Vio POV 1.5 extreme/sports/helmet cam system. I have taken it out for a test run and I am not disappointed in the usability of the system and the quality of the output.

I still have a bit of work to do in sussing it out-particularly the mounting of the microphone and the sound levels in general-but this will give me something to do next weekend.

This camera system is everything that I expected and more. The video quality is second to none and I was particularly impressed by the battery life. With my old camera system I would be lucky to generate an hours' footage. Running on AA batteries and saving to a 4 gig SD card -gives 3 hours plus videoing -almost an entire ride for old farts like us. If this is not enough all I have to do is slip in some fresh batteries and another card.

The four minutes or so of footage in the YouTube clip above was created from almost 3 hours of raw footage. Clearly I am going to spend more time shut in my office with my editing suite as well. I'm not sure whether the missus thinks this is a good idea or not.

She says that it is 'cos it keeps me out of her hair-but you can never be sure about these things.

What helmet cam to buy?

A few years ago I did one of those once in a lifetime rides -Cairns to Cape York, Queensland Australia -and back again -with Cape York Adventures. It was a great ride and as an aside I would recommend one of these trips to anyone looking for a great adventure.

There were two of us Kiwis amongst a bunch of Aussies and despite the inevitable sheep jokes we really enjoyed the ride and showed them a thing or two about riding, especially through the wet bits.

One of the Aussies had a video camera hooked up to a lipstick camera and took plenty of footage. I was impressed with the whole concept and even more so when a tape arrived of the ride and saw myself in all my glory. I resolved to get my own camera.

Eventually I bought a Samsung Minikit. Samsung no longer makes these cameras and to be fair technology has moved on. This camera has served me pretty (click here for links to various videos) well but has finally succumbed to the kind of abuse you'd expect if you were duck taped to a trail bike. I had thought that the video quality was fairly good but now I have been looking around for a replacement I can see I can do much better for a package that will cost $6 or 700 less than the Samsung unit cost me four years ago.

Latest Video- as the helmet cam died

I am not all that technologically savvy in some respects so I have found that actually selecting a new unit has been a bit of a mission. There are not many places locally that you can go to get information about this kind of thing. The staff in most local stores, even the professional suppliers just give me blank looks when I as a=bout this kind of thing. Shopping on the internet has its own risks, you need to know exactly what you are after. If the shop is in the US or Europe you can't just stroll in there to look at the device or get some expert advice. However, I have made some progress-now it is just a matter of coughing up the bucks.

There are two main types of helmet camera system. Single unit models that you simply strap to yourself or your bike. The video quality is not too bad -resolutions of 640 x 480. The same as my Samsung. The advantages of these cameras are that there are no wires to worry about, they generally record to SD cards and they are relatively cheap. They can be quite bulky and generally don't have a playback function so getting the angle of the dangle  right could be a challenge initially. 

The last thing the budding videogropher wants is to find that they have spent several hours videoing the sky or the ground just ahead of their front wheel and not the series of crashes, hills, and spills they thought they were. This blog has a good review of these options. The winner appeared to be this little beauty from Tachyon.

The other options are generally variations on a theme-a bullet camera and some kind of recorder. The recorders can range from someone hooking up a bullet camera setup to a camcorder to fully integrated units -some using DVR's as the recording device. There are all kinds advertised on the interweb. It is actually a real mission to sort out what they are offering in many casesand compare various units.

The best units have an package where the bullet camera gets its power source from the recording device via the audio/video cable that. Most units require a separate power source for the bullet camera. More batteries and wires to get hooked up or cocked up.

You also have to be careful with these options that the solution-dictated by the bullet camera specs and the recording device - delivers a better quality picture than the much cheaper one piece units. Otherwise why bother?

The best value for money seem to me to be the likes of the Vio POV 1.5

Not cheap but the resolution is good up to 720 x 480, they record to an SD card, they do have a small screen for playback. Best of all these little babies apparently record for hours on a couple of AA batteries which seems to me to be a great solution. 

I am still tossing up what to get. It really comes down to how much do I  want to spend. $4-500 NZ or a bit over a $1000.

For me the choice has come down to the Tachyon or the Vio POV 1.5. The Tachyon  appears to be the best of this type of unit around. Simple, rugged, and well priced. The only thing that concerns me is that it is a fairly bulky unit and I wonder how easy it would be to attach to my helmet and how often I would whack it with something out in the bush.

Of all the integrated systems I have looked at the thing that struck me about the Vio POV 1.5 was its use of AA batteries to power both the recording device and the camera and an impressive recording time. It appears that it is not called the Holy Grail of helmet cams for nothing.

Now it is just a matter of justifying to myself how much I want to spend.

If anyone wants my old Minikit for spare parts and batteries let me know.

Desert Storm 2009

The Epic Events Desert Storm trail ride is a classic 2 day trail ride featuring some 160km of trails around the foothills of Mount Ruapehu in the central North Island of New Zealand. The 2009 ride was held on the 17th and 18th of January. A ten minute clip of Day One of the ride is avaailable from www.dirtvideo.co.nz

I'd hoped that this ride would be a good workout for the new Husky after the muddy PowerAdventures Maramarua trail ride a few weeks ago. It isn't as if I mind riding when it gets wet and sloppy, though to be honest as I get older I am more of a fair weather rider. I just wanted something moderately challenging to get to grips with the new bike. I wasn't disappointed.

After it's initial workout I took the bike into Matt at Bikesport.  Matt  checked it over and changed the jetting to see if that would overcome some of the starting issues I was having. The Euro bikes should start on the first or second kick. The Husky also has a short awkward kick starter that takes a bit of getting used.

We arrived at the motel at Ohakune early Friday evening to find a  hearty group already starting their weekend's entertainment. Apart from a beer with dinner I remained virtuously sober. 

On day one of of the ride there were two tracks open, three if you count the novice track that we didn't go near. The Middle track, roughly 35km and the East track which went up to the bottom of the mountain, roughly 55 km.

YouTube promo 

We headed off on the Middle track to warm up. This was a great we track filled with lots of sweeping loamy tracks that were just simply a lot of fun to flick the Husky through. 

One of the great things about this bike is how responsive it is and how it pulls effortlessly away in 4th gear and even top if you're going fast enough. The bike has no problem lifting the front wheel in the higher gears to whip over the bigger sharp bumps. All I have to do is hang on-like trying to hang onto a runaway train. More than once I found myself going a little faster than I had intended -and had to break heavily as the sharper corners came up really fast. My cornering skills are improving as a result. Pulling away out of these corners in 3rd and 4th was effortless and Mr Castle didn't enjoy the roost!

The only real problem was that given the extremely hot and dry weather in the week leading up to the ride was the dust once we got out into the open areas and gravel road sections.

The dust was more of an issue on the more open sections of the main track but once we were under the trees the tracks were in mint condition-still just moist enough to keep the dust down and provide awesome traction. 

The main track had a bit more open stuff in it and it was pretty dusty in places, while some of the faster riders are quite happy to blast through the dust I tend to button off when I can't see where I am going. 

I did manage to give Mr Castle's WR450 a good run for its money down some of the road sections when we rode side by side. I had initially felt that the bike felt a little under geared but this didn't seem to be the case once I wound the wick up to about 120km.

We had a great day on these tracks-once again superbly marked out by the Epic Events crew. In fact the organisation at these rides is generally superb.

Unfortunately for the people that organise these rides they can't control the weather gods. Run the ride in the summer and dust might be a problem. Run them in the winter and you run the risk of sleet, snow, and tracks that get cut up by hundreds of riders so that they can become almost impassable to a number of riders.

Some time over Saturday night it started to absolutely hose down. I didn't hear anything on Saturday night, the rain or  the other riders in the motel reliving the days' riding over a  few beers until some ungodly hour I am told. I was dead to the world. Waking up to steady rain was enough to dampen the spirits of most of the riders at the motel. I am sure all those camping at the site had a terrible night as it was apparently pretty windy through the night as well.

While I wasn't all that keen to ride in the wet we had come a long way just for one days' riding. Besides the last time we had ridden the Dessert Storm it was almost the middle of winter and it was wet then. Once we had cleared the first part of the track it was ok riding.

Still there was a fair bit of negative sentiment around the place and I didn't really want to go out and ride in those conditions by myself. So although I really wanted to ride I joined the Exodus of people heading away who had made the same decision. I should have made the effort to do at least one loop as I am sure although I would have been wet and cold it would have been a blast.

Thanks to the team at Epic Events for another great ride.

Husky WR 250 Ride 2

Day One of the Power Adventures Possum Trapper Maramarua trail ride (Jan 3 2009)

Day one of the Possum Trapper trail ride quickly brought home to me just how different the old GasGas and the new WR are. The GasGas, no doubt belying it's trials bike origins would happily negotiate with some aplomb anything that got in it's way. Point it in the general direction of attack and with a gentle tweak of the throttle it would gently wend it's way up the most gnarly,snotty hill without too much effort. I always had the feeling that there was always a little more power if required for that last sharp steep stretch before chugging over the top.

The WR requires a lot more attention to detail, feathering the clutch on the big snotty up hills to stop the front wheel coming back past the vertical and throwing the rider off when it hooked it. And hook up it did.

The mostly clay based trails in the Maramarua forest should be dry and dusty at this time of the year - it is almost the middle of summer after all. To be honest the tracks were not too bad on our first circuit. They quickly got harder to negotiate once it started to rain. Harder but not impassible, certainly a little daunting for those unused to the conditions or without decent tyres. One of the biggest problems for those with a little confidence like myself was people in the way stuck halfway up hills that had to be negotiated on the blast to the top.

The WR is not content with the more or .less smooth and gentle approach. The pilot needs to suck in a big one and attack. The approach seems to work well. I can't confess to have got up all the nastier hills first time but they all succumbed on on the second go. I just need to get fitter so I can hang onto the bike.

I didn't manage to get any video of the ride, it was just to wet to bother. Mind you the helmet cam would have worked ok on the head or bike of one of the faster riders circulating on the day. The kind of rider that ends the day with a more or less clean bike-nothing like mud encrusted steed that mine was at days end.

The Power Adventures rides are generally pretty rider friendly but with clearly marked more challenging expert sections. I don't know for sure but I assume that Greg sets these rides so that those with lesser ability don't get overwhelmed. Today the weather gods conspired against him to some extent.

I know some people would have found the ride a bit too demanding and would question whether some of the tracks should have been closed or more diversions put in place around the sections that became harder as the day went. But for a large number of riders, those fit enough and with the confidence and technique to blast up wet snotty clay cliffs it was all good clean fun.

Like the good old days.

Not that I am soft or anything-we didn't get to day 2.

Husky WR 250 first ride report

One of the great things about the credit crunch and having some more or less spare cash in the bank is that when someone comes calling offering a pretty good deal-I was in a position to take it.

Out went the GasGas 300 which I thought was the greatest thing since sliced bread and in came the Husky WR250. Now the Husky is a 2007 run out model but when I look at the way the $NZ is going and the likely increased cost of any new bike, let alone any big ticket imported item, the change over deal sounded pretty good to me.

Like most people when they buy any kind of vehicle and I have bought a few over the years I almost always leave the dealer with the nasty thought that I have been screwed some way. Well in this case I can report that I came away feeling pretty good about the deal. I feel even better about it after riding it for the first time yesterday.

Matt at Bikesport had done a pretty good sales job - the Husky is an improvement on the GasGas, I wouldn't notice the difference in power, and it had a better suspension package (out of the box. I haven't touched it) so was much more stable in the rough stuff than the GasGas. If I thought the GasGas was a great bike I would love the Husky.

Suffice to say that he was right on all accounts.

The Husky is a much harder edged bike than the GasGas. The GasGas is a performance machine that is cleverly disguised in a fairly docile package. The GasGas is a great trail bike for the average rider and a highly competitive package in the hands of a good rider.

The Husky has much more snap to it and is also pretty stable-the big whoops on some of the return tracks out at Woodhill are suddenly a bit more fun and easier to negotiate.  The Husky combines straight line snap and stability with agility in the tight tight stuff which on the basis of a few hours of a shakedown ride bodes well for the kind of riding that I generally get into.

The gearing is suited to a sandy place like Woodhill with the bike managing to lug my 95KG plus along in 4th and 5th on the longer return tracks and still accelerate when I have the nerve to twist the throttle a bit more. The bike seems to be a little under geared in some ways so it will be interesting to see how it goes in more open, faster conditions.

There are a few things to get used to. Being the a highly strung piece of Euro competition bike it is not as forgiving at low speeds as the GasGas and stalls relatively easily. More judicious use of the clutch will solve that problem. Being relatively low geared it is not as easy to bump start as the GasGas after stalling while undergoing low speed manoeuvres. The bike is also a surprisingly stubborn  starter. The kick starter itself is a little awkward - it is hard to get a decent swing at it and it will just not start in gear.

Cosmetically it is a good looking bike - it looks as if it is ready to attack anything thrown at it. After years of owning bikes with see through fuel tanks the black fuel tank is an interesting novelty.

I enjoyed my first blast on the Husky and can't wait for the next outing in the new year. After years of riding four strokes I finally realised after testing a GasGas that two strokes suited my style of riding. On the basis of the first ride the Husky brings a new dimension to my riding enjoyment.

Not so long ago I thought a DR400 was the pinnacle of offroad engineering as after throwing my leg over one I thought 'this is built with me in mind'. I thought the same about the GasGas-but the Husky feels even better.