Tag: bike camera

This Is My Life

I am a menace to society.  People have hatred towards me.  When people see me I honestly think that it must make their blood boil.  I’m as heinous as they come.  I should be locked up put away for my crime.  What’s my crime, you ask?  It’s because I legally ride my bike on a roadway.

After another close call with the car driving public, the thought of this is how life is for a cyclist passed through my mind.  This is my life can have different meanings, such as:

  • This is my life…  It can be positive, just like this blog in which I post things about the amazing experiences that running, triathlon, and life have provided to me.
  • This is my life…  The things I do day in and day out.  Mostly the same as everyone else, but from my perspective.
  • This is my life…  Or possibly something that occurs occasionally that can be burdensome, such as doing laundry nearly every damn day.
  • This is my life…  But my intended purpose of that statement today is that THIS IS MY LIFE YOU ARE ENDANGERING!!!  DOES A HUMAN LIFE NOT MATTER TO YOU IN YOUR FUCKING CAR AS YOU TRY TO PASS ME IN A DANGEROUS SITUATION?

I was riding my bike on a road that within less than a mile I would hope off of to catch the adjoining trail.  I just needed to be on it shortly.  But to people in cars, I might as well have purposely gone out of my way to plan my ride to coincide with their trip to Starbucks or whatever.

I get being inconvenienced.  I don’t like it either.  But I am a life out there on a bike, exposed to the world and your one-ton enclosed, all steel, with numerous safety features vehicle.  It blows my mind to think that a driver would go out of his way to avoid crashing into another vehicle, but some old guy in tight clothes on a bike is open game.  I probably wouldn’t even scratch your car as you hit me.

I wasn’t really intending to make this post an argument for sharing the road with cyclists.  I could tackle the arguments about why cyclists shouldn’t be allowed on the road, or give a counterpoint to “just because I can doesn’t mean that I should.”  I’ll save it for next time if the next time doesn’t kill me.

So as luck would have it, I have a video of this incident.   I have gotten to the point in my cyclist life that I feel it necessary to document my ride so that in the event that something happens to me, the authorities can look at the video and say “Yep, he was doing it right when he got run over.”

I was riding up some hills, the road was striped with double yellow, no-passing zone markings, and I was taking up a little more of the middle than the far right as safely possible just to give the impression that there wouldn’t be enough room to pass.  She attempted the pass anyway.  Watch the video.  Form your own opinion.  (Warning – The audio is quite loud – turn it down before hitting play.)

All I ask is that you think about that person on the bike when you drive.  They are someone’s family.  And it’s someone’s life that you put in jeopardy by not passing with caution.

This is my life.

Week 9 Wrap-up

IRONMAN CHATTANOOGA 2019 TRAINING

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WEEK 9 – Monday 4/29/19 – Sunday 5/5/19

Not much of note for the week as far as training.  The miserable wet weather we have been having in much of the midwest forced me inside to do a couple of my ride and run workouts, but I can’t complain about having that option.  Overall, the week went well and I’m starting to build a little speed on the bike again.

Speaking of the bike, for Christmas last year I asked for a flashing light/video camera device for my bike.  I had heard several people talking about Cycliq and the Fly6 rear and Fly12 front cameras, so I put them on my wishlist and Santa delivered.

Since I hadn’t really had an opportunity to ride outside with them during winter and most of the early spring, I realized that the time to add them to my bike was ideal now that the weather is trying to get better.  First and foremost, they are hi-viz flashers so that you are seen, and they certainly do that job well.  But the most recent camera updates to the devices produce a pretty decent video of your ride.  I guess the idea is to have proof of the offender should you be driven off the road or driven into, but I don’t really want to think about that.

The issue I had was finding space on my very crowded aerobars to mount the device.  I finally was able to attach it so that it wasn’t in the way and I could easily access it.  The rear device mounted very easily to my seat post.

Fly12 Front Camera
Fly6 Rear Camera

After working out some bugs with my son’s help and figuring out how to use them I gave them a try.  I tried using them both for Saturday’s long 2-hour 45-minute ride but had a couple of issues.  First, the Fly12 (front camera) gave me a notice that the battery was low about 1.5 hours into the ride and it didn’t produce any video for some reason.  Had to be operator error of some sort.  Secondly, the mount bracket came loose and the camera was just bouncing around on my aerobars.  Minor issues that I can easily resolve.  The rear camera produced some great shots though.  Here is an example of the footage it will capture (Note:  Turn the volume down):

The wind noise is horrible.  I’m trying to figure out if that is just a fact of life with the Fly6/12 or there is some feature that I can turn on to make it record sound better.  Interestingly enough it does not pick up the crazy conversations that I carry on with myself, which is a good thing, because they are usually profane laden rants.

So I will be interested in doing a group ride someday and capture some of my teammates riding together.  That would be more interesting footage to watch than seeing the truck that runs me over.

The last thing of note is that I am trying to find another company to make team triathlon racing kits for our small group.  The trouble is we are somewhat of a small group and most of these custom companies have minimum order numbers that we can’t reach.  The company we last used upped their minimums by a few and also declared that the order all has to be of one sex, which stinks because we have added Gunner Jan to our group.  I looked into another company that initially looked promising.  They had promised to work on our project in April, and when I hadn’t heard from them I started emailing them with no response.  I figured the guy was swamped or something, but it turned out that his company got bought out by another company from Mexico.  No wonder I wasn’t getting any response from him.  So I went back to the internet and found another company called Jakroo, which might be our best choice.  They have basically no minimums, will assist with kit design, and you can order in both male or female sizes with no penalty, and I can add cycling jerseys, bike shorts, and other items, not just tri suits.  They had a semi-custom design it yourself feature and I played around with it.  Here are a couple of designs I came up with:

I ordered a kit that I made and will ride in it a few times to see if the quality meets what we need.  I’m starting to get excited about having some new team kits!

Week 9 Training Totals:

Swims: None > Rides: 3 total / 76 miles > Runs: 4 total / 24 miles

 

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Getting close to being done with the base phase of training!