Low Speed and High Tech Pt.1.

Alright, so I've fallen miserably short of my goals for getting a blog entry in for each week in November.  I was all hot and bothered but some distractions popped up and I had to prioritize a little.  I had resigned myself to the fact that I would have to do short blog entries to meet my goal and in my defense I started several but as anyone who ha ever read this nonsense knows I prefer to drone on forever.  Short and sweet is not my way.  Save that sort of writing for the damn Twitter stuff. 

I have a Twitter acct. by the way and I have yet to do a tweet.  I just haven't seen the point yet I guess.  I mean who gives a crap if "I just walked the dog!" or "I just bought new socks on sale!" or "I just had a prostate exam!".  Really, doe's anyone need to know or even care. Maybe my assessment is a little broad and superficial but when I hear that Kim Kardashian has over 5 million twitter followers I find it a little annoying. 

If she contributed in a positive way to the betterment of our society I wouldn't have a problem with it but I can, with a high level of confidence, assume that most everything she tweets is superficial, materialistic crap.  Especially since it has nothing to do with snowkiting.

Moving on....

Beautiful and Deadly

So we've been a little behind our usual start period for riding here in New England.  Even when we didn't have ice we usually have a few places to ride on land but one of the key ingredients in snowkiting is missing. That would be the snow.  We've had great wind but no snow and until recently no ice.  The weather just hasn't cooperated.  Things were looking promising a few weeks ago for Umbagog.  I drove up to check it out and it was about 3 inches thick but with a thin snow layer.  It was only about an inch deep but enough to cause a real problem.

CRAAAAACK!!!

Ice obviously needs cold to form.  The water needs to be cold and the air needs to be cold.  But when the ice forms on the surface and the water isn't down to it's optimal temp and you get a layer of snow on top, bad things happen.  The snow layer protects the ice from the freezing air while the water at the same time melts the ice slowly from below.  This is the deal with Umby.  It's had ice on it for weeks but you can't go out on it.  It looks beautiful but the risk factor is too great.

For a few weeks we've been watching Umby.  Mike and I went up last week to check and it was messed up worse.  It has the "Slush Sandwich" effect going where it's a layer of ice with slush/water then another layer of thin ice covered in snow.  Really unstable an almost impossible to freeze in any reasonable amount of time.  This is the result of rain on the ice and snow that we saw 2 weeks before.  Bummer.

Slush

Mike and I checked further north to the Connecticut Lakes.  All three lakes were in the same state.  Also they appeared o have lowerd the water level so that makes the ice even more dangerous.  We drove around and checked all three lakes and decided that i would be another week before they would even be close.  It's been a week but it hasn't been cold.  I'm not heading up there for at least a month.

Fortunately good ol' shallow, Lake Chocorua has frozen up nice.  4-5 inches of black ice.  Good for speed runs if the wind is right.  Unfortunately the winds on Chocorua are, even by my loose standards, usually a complete mess.  It's a small lake, gets a lot of wind and is up tight to Mount Chocorua.  Wind reports mean very little when it comes to riding Choco.  It is one of the hardest places I've ever flown a kite.  But it's also one of the best when its good.

Chocorua early season

We've been flying Choco for the last few days and it's been a wild ride.  One day the winds were super punchy and shifty.  Wind range was 2-26mph.  No joke, you were either dead still or completely lit. For my first day of the season I usually prefer mellower conditions.  I actually flew my 12m Charger because I opted to be more cautious and not be completely over powered on the 15m.  After a bunch of crashes (results of hitting holes on the wind and the kite dropping me) I managed to eek out a top speed of 59.1 mph for the day.  I only rode 16 miles because I'm so out of shape still.  Check the video above.

HD 170 on my helmet

Speaking of video I just got myself a Drift 170 HD helmet cam.  A lot of people have never heard of Drift or the 170HD but after dealing with the Vholder last year (which the more I think about it the more I think it sucked) I decided to maybe purchase the new Go Pro Helmet.  The Go Pro is a tried and true set up.  It's obviously very popular and it does a great job.  But I think it a little bit clunky and not very user friendly.  No more so than the Vholder was for sure.  So before I bought the Go Pro I did some research and came across the Drift 170 HD.  I remember at work a few years back hearing about a new cam from Drift but nothing else.  It wasn't up to par (at the time) with the Go Pro and since Go Pro is like the I-Pod of helmet cams and we never heard anything about Drift again.

But after doing some research recently I found the lastest version and decided to give it a try and this new HD version is awesome.  Sure it shoots 1080p HD and its 170 degree wide angle but the key features for me are as follows.

1) It has an LCD screen.  This is awsome because you can sight the camera AND you can play back footage that you just shot.  No laptop, no tv you can watch it out in the field.

2) IT HAS A REMOTE!  Yes, a remote.  Turns the record on and off.  Has a 15' range. And the camera beeps a different tone for record and pause.  No Guessing, no missed footage, no pulling the camera off to check. 

Not only is this a kick ass convienience feature but from a safety point of view it makes sense.  For example if I have it mounted on a handle bar or my kite bar I don't have to take my hands off to activate or shut down the cam.

3) Lith-ion battery.  Charges fast, anywhere (laptop, car, etc.) 2 hrs plus on a standard battery. An extended time battery is available as an option.

4) Adjustable iris and a low light setting.  Both are handy out on the ice/snow and for the short winter days when we get sessions that go on until after sundown.

5) 4X digital zoom.

6) SD Card.  I run a 16Gig because that's all the time the standard battery allows.  It will take up to a 32gig.

7) Tons of mounting options because it has a standard 8mm mount.

8) The lens/cam assembly rotates in the housing!  So pretty much no matter how the camera is mounted you can level out the image and get good footage.

9) You can get a remote mic for it.

10) HDMI connection.  Just pull it off your helmet and plug it in to the T.V., no muss no fuss.

The only thing that's "bad" about the camera is that it's waterproof to (get this) .5 meters.  Yup, that's what the manual say's.  Not "splash proof" or "water resistant". Seems silly to say waterproof.  If I go in the water with this thing doing what I'm doing then the camera is going to be the least of my worries.  Full specs can be found at (http://driftinnovation.com/).

I'm really looking forward to getting some footage with this thing.  It's so much easier to use than all the other cameras I've had in the past and as a result I'm actually motivated to use it and use it creatively instead of just for documentary purposes.

I shoot mostly in 720p because it's just faster to edit and upload with my crummy DSL.  But in HD the images are stunning.  Some other reviews I read said that the audio quality was poor.  I'm not concerned with audio as usually wind at and beyond 60mph just sounds like white noise but I will say that the audio on my camera is actually damn good.

Another sweet piece of high tech goodness I've picked up this season are my new Transcend goggles by Recon Instruments (http://www.reconinstruments.com/) in Vancouver BC.  If you've never heard of the Transcends they are the perfect goggle for what I do. What's so hot about them?  Well, they're GPS enabled for one thing. Meaning no more missing the good gusts while checking my Garmin GPS units.  I still carry those as well but the Transcends are my primary source of data now.  It tells you everything you could possibly need to know.  All you speed info, tracks, location, elevation, temp and how high you jumped.  And here's the kicker.

They tell you all this in realtime on a display inside the goggle! 

Goggles and Chocorua

That's right, inside the goggle on a very small screen.  You can scroll through the menu with the use of buttons on the right side of the goggle.  The buttons are big and glove friendly.  The display has been refered to as a H.U.D. (Heads up display) but it's more like a dash board.  The data isn't projected on the lense, but is on the screen.

Screen

And if you're wondering if I was overly distracted and constantly watching the screen instead of what I was doing I am happy (to my own relief) to say that was not the case.  I have the screen set up so I can see my max speed and average speed.  So I just look after I have a good run.  When I get home I can load my data to Recon HQ and see my tracks, stats and keep them on record.

They come with a regular tint or a photosensitive lens that self adjusts to lighting conditions.  My expirience with this kind of lens has been mixed but I will say that this lens works the best I've seen so far. They're comfortable and helmet friendly. Thanks Heather Hendry and the good folks at Recon Instruments for providing me with such a kickass piece of hardware.  I've used them two days and I feel like I can't live without them.  Very few things impress me this much.

Well, I think I've droned on enough for one night.  I'll do part 2 soon I promise.  We'll cover a low wind session that Molly and I had today where I got a chance to pit my 24m "Big Blue" Peter Lynn Arc against Molly's 19m Flysurfer Psycho 4 SA DLX.  Let's just say that I'm very happy with "Big Blue". 

More on this later.