Finally got it!

So I already wrote about my first attempt to do “Active Track” with my drone at Bristol Mountain Nearly lost my drone today. My second attempt got abandoned because after I launched the drone and was trying to set up the video when a gust of wind took it and drove it into the bushes. The third time I think I forgot to start the video recording. The fourth time, I bought a screen shade / screen protector so I could see the screen better, but I forgot about the big video start/stop button on the top of the controller, so it stopped recording as soon as I tucked it into my jacket, and started recording again when I took it out at the end.

But this time, it all came together. I decided not to tuck the controller into my jacket, and just let it pendulum around in front of me. That was mostly a factor on the big climb at the turn-around on the Hale-Bopp train. But I checked that it was still recording a couple of times, and it seemed to be recording fine.

Bristol Drone Video

Ok, there’s one weird thing – at one point it gets very close to a small branch, I can’t tell if it touched it or not, but the video got strange and wobbly. About 3 minutes later, it gets close to another branch. This time, it really doesn’t look like it touches, but the wobbliness clears up. I wonder if the gimbal is a bit frozen and it’s just bouncing around. I’ll have to look to see if there’s anything on the logs.

Oh, and a second weird thing – on the second loop around, the drone hits that very same branch and crashes. Maybe it was harder to see because the snow got knocked off the first time, but I don’t know. When I tried to relaunch it, it first wouldn’t climb, and then when I tried to land it, it suddenly took off upwards and hit a branch way above me and crashed again. I figured there must be some snow in one of the motors or something so I put it away..

YouTube versus 360 Video again

So as I mentioned in YouTube versus 360 degree cameras, I had problems getting the full resolution version of a 5K 360 video. Subsequently, I uploaded a 360 4K video on the 2nd, and YouTube told me it had finished processing SD, HD and 4K version in a short time, but it wouldn’t show me the 4K version. Even 6 days later, still no 4K. I just uploaded it again, and it finished processing SD, HD and 4K versions in less than an hour. And I could immediately see the 4K version of that one. Very annoying.

I don’t know if it’s significant or not, but the first time I uploaded was on Firefox and the second was on Chrome.

First cross country ski of the season

I’m trying to remember when was the last time I really skied. I had pretty much quit by the end of university in 1985, because skate technique hurt my knees so much. I know I had one winter where I got out 4 or 5 times sometime between Shani and I breaking up and me moving south, so I guess 1992-3 or sometime around then? Then a few years ago where I tried to ski at Mendon Ponds with my now ancient ski equipment and my boots (bought in 1981 at great sacrifice) both completely separated from their soles within a few hundred meters of the parking lot. a

Last year I found out about Cummings Nature Center, and the fact that they rent there. I tried it out once and immediately fell back in love with skiing. Unfortunately I discovered it pretty late in the season so I didn’t get back out. So I’ve been itching for a chance to go out again this year. First we didn’t have snow, then we got fresh snow and the temps immediately plummeted to around 0F. Not good for starting out. But today the weather finally cooperated. It was 26F and lightly snowing when I set out for the nearly hour long drive down to Cummings.

Driving for an hour meant the return of the painful butt. I’m still in making rounds of doctors to try and get some relief of that, whatever it is, and that means I spent half the drive trying to sit only on one buttock or lift myself out of the seat.

By the time I got there, it was snowing quite a bit harder, although the roads were well plowed. I was hoping they’d still be plowed when I finished. I got there just on the dot of 9am and there was one other car in the lot. They were skiing but not renting (I could tell because they’d skied from the parking lot to the chalet). The rental form asked what level skier you are. They didn’t have a spot for “I used to be quite good, but that was before you were born”, so I ticked “intermediate”. I was sure that when they saw that I’d put my e-mail address at xcski.com they’d accuse me of giving a fake address, but they didn’t say anything.

The equipment was quite good quality and new this year they told me. The new bindings are so much better than they were when I was a skier. And the ski lengths aren’t multiples of 5cm for some odd reason. I got a pair of Madshus Actives at 207cm because I used to race on 215s and I was a lot lighter back then. The wax less system felt like a combination of steps and skins. It worked pretty well at first.

Felt like old times. Set off and hey, my diagonal stride isn’t too bad in the grooves, but the muscles you use to keep your skis in a straight line when you aren’t in the grooves, or to skate around corners, or snowplow turn on a downhill, are all completely atrophied. Oh well, I’ll get this back.

My heart was pounding pretty hard, but the values displayed on my watch were ridiculously low. Stupid heart rate strap had had problems last time I’d erged. I didn’t think it had been long enough to need a new battery, so I hoped it would start reading right after I’d worked up a sweat. I figured it was probably in the high 140s or more because I’d had to stop to catch my breath on a couple of climbs.

I did the yellow trail out to the blue and did the blue loop, and when I got back to the yellow I thought “I don’t need to go back to the lodge yet” and set out around the blue trail again. Even though it was only 1.5 or 2 kilometers, it felt like a victory. And when I got to the junction with the orange trail, I took that one. Half way through the orange trail I got a notice on my watch that the heart rate strap had a low battery. I stopped to take it off, hoping that the watch would revert to the built in optical heart rate. I’m not sure what it did, because it was still giving me numbers around 100 bpm when the pounding in my chest was telling me it was actually over 140. I wonder if the strap was continuing to broadcast crappy data in my backpack.

When I finished the orange and blue, this time I took the yellow trail back to the lodge. I didn’t note the actual distance, but I think it was somewhere between 4.5 and 5.5 kilometers. My goal for the day had been to make it for 5 kilometers total, so I was feeling pretty good. And after having a brief sit down in the chalet to drink some water and eat a banana I’d brought, I was feeling good enough to go out and do the blue trail loop again.

This time, I think the wax they’d put on the skis to improve the glide had worn off, because my skis stopped abruptly instead of gliding a few times, once pitching me onto my face. I had to stop a few times to do the old “scrape the ski over the edge of the other ski” trick to get my glide back. I was also definitely tired now. But my heart rate was now showing up properly on my watch, and I was seeing numbers in the very high 140s and low 150s.

I finished up back at the lodge with a total of 6.6 kilometers. Goal exceeded! But I was really done – I don’t think I could have done even the yellow loop again. So I returned my rentals, suggested they renew the glide wax, and headed off to the car. It was barely 10:30. And it was snowing quite hard.

The first part of the drive was plowed but now bare, but after taking it easy on that I soon got back to bare road and headed home. Once again, the sore butt problem “reared” it’s ugly head but it was an excuse to stop for a Coke at least.

I can’t wait to do it again.

Still a slave to my competitive spirit.

Today I was out for a long bike ride. I was 35km into what was shaping up to be a 50km ride – my previous longest ride this year was 40km or so. The combination of the pea gravel and the headwind on the canal path was kicking my ass, and I was barely holding 18 or 19 km/hr. (There will now be a short pause while real cyclists laugh themselves silly at how slow I go and what I consider a long ride.) I passed a cyclist going in the other direction, and paused to do one of those standing stretch things that provide temporary relief from a sore butt and stiff legs. But as I was doing it, the cyclist I’d just seen going in the other direction now passed me going in my direction.

I couldn’t help it – I sped up a bit, and when I realized I was going almost as fast as him, I sped up some more and tucked into his slipstream. I soon found myself going at 26km/hr but not working any harder than I’d been going 19km/hr alone. He kept glancing back at me but he powered along. I saw he was riding a much newer bike than mine, with a lot of gears in the back sprocket – probably nine or ten, and he was in the smallest. When I was riding more 20 years ago, the Shimano XTR with 8 gears was considered almost too much. I couldn’t see the front rings so I don’t know if he was in the biggest one. He was also dressed in shorts and had regular toe clips rather than the SPD clip less pedals like I have, so I figured I looked more the part even if I wasn’t as fast as him.

Anyway, I didn’t want to lose the free ride so I put in an extra effort to stay behind him, but after a few minutes I was feeling I’d gotten some rest and was more energetic, so when his speed dropped to around 23 km/hr, I pulled ahead. He said something about me enjoying the free ride and hoping I’d return the favor, so I resolved to take a pull. At the front, I made sure I maintained that same 26km/hr he had, and he tucked in behind me for a long pull. It felt like I’d been in front for more than my share, and we were just coming into Schoen Place, where you kind of have to slow down anyway, so I was planning to let him take another pull after we’d cleared the village, but then he pulled off! So unfair.

Beautiful Sun

Like many lucky kids, for many of my teenage years I went to summer camp. I went to YMCA Camp Beausoliel, on Beausoleil Island in the Georgian Bay Islands National Park. It was a wonderful and very formative interlude in those years, and probably did more to create and reinforce my love for the outdoors that continues to this day. It was a very long time ago and my memories aren’t 100% complete of that time but I’d like to share my memories of my last year there.

The oldest campers were put together in a cabin called “Islanders”. Being an Islander was like being king of the camp. Our cabin was on a tiny island just off shore from the camp, so we had our own canoes to get back and forth to the main camp. It was actually a prank that seemed to happen every time that the kids from the second oldest cabin would sneak over in the night and steal the Islanders canoes, so they’d have to swim to breakfast. That wasn’t a bad thing, because any cabin that went swimming before breakfast got the “Morning Dipper” award that sat on your table for the day.

As the oldest cabin, we got the least experienced counsellor – I guess they figured with our experience we could take care of ourselves if the counsellor wasn’t great. In our case, we got a counsellor who was a major flake.

The most major feature of YMCA Camp Beausoliel was that it was a “tripping” camp. Generally you spent the first day or two preparing for your big canoe trip, then left on your trip. The time back in camp after the trip was almost an after thought.

As a senior cabin, we did the usual long ambitious trip that senior cabins did – up the Musquash River to near Bala Ontario, then down the Moon River to Georgian Bay, and then down the shore back to Beausoliel Island. It wasn’t an easy trip – the first night was spent at Flat Rock Falls at the top of Go Home Lake (if you think some of these names sound a bit familiar, maybe you’re remembering the song “You Sold The Cottage” by Martha and the Muffins). When I had been a more junior camper, Flat Rock Falls had been a multi day trip to get there, but back then we’d stopped at the diving rocks in McRae Lake.

All Beausoliel cabins had 7 campers, and each trip consisted of three canoes with three people in each canoe – the counsellor took the stern of one canoe, and either a junior counsellor (jc) or the camp’s trip leader Larry Owen took another, and the three most experienced and strongest campers made up the “camper canoe”. I was considered a strong paddler, so this year I got to be the bowman in the camper canoe. Generally the counsellor got the pack with the sleeping bags, because he was supposed to be the best canoer and therefore less likely to get them wet. The jc got the food, because you didn’t want it getting wet but it wouldn’t be a disaster if it did, and the campers got the tents and cooking pots because it didn’t matter if they got wet. This year that turned out to be a big mistake.

On the first or second day, the counsellor decided to show off and do a handstand on the gunnels of his canoe. That didn’t go well, and he ended up upsetting the canoe. While all of us had been taught how to roll a sleeping bag in a groundsheet to waterproof it, unfortunately only mine and four other sleeping bags had actually turned out waterproof. So we spent the rest of the trip with seven campers crowded into one tent with two sleeping bags underneath us and three on top. It was only years later that I realized that the counsellor in question must have been pretty damn high to do something that stupid. All counsellors were only a few years older than the campers, so you’ve got to expect some immaturity, but that was just crazy.

The third or fourth day, we were on the Moon River, on a stretch called The Seven Sisters which is a sequence of rapids. As is usual in these trips, at each rapids everybody got out to scout the rapids. At one rapids, the camper canoe had a look, and said “we’re portaging”. The counsellor and jc had a bit of debate on the best line, and either the jc decided on a different line or they decided to portage. The counsellor said “HELL, LET’S SHOOT THEM!” We all portaged and then walked back to watch the action. The counsellor’s line went between two rocks that nobody but he thought the canoe could fit between. And as soon as he got into the rapids, past the point of no return and lined up on them, he realized we’d all been right and yelled “BACKPADDLE!” They didn’t have a hope in hell. The river was running too fast and with him in the stern and his strongest paddler in the bow paddling on the same side only balanced by the weakest paddler on the other side (whose name was Jeremy – don’t ask why that’s the only name I remember of the other 8 guys), it was inevitable that they’d turn sideways and be carried into these two rocks. The rush of the water under the canoe flipped it on its side, and the force of the water pinned it there, and the contents of the canoe, including sleeping bags, paddles, life jackets and Jeremy were carried down river to be rescued by the rest of us watching this performance. Meanwhile the counsellor and jc were finding it damn near impossible to pull the canoe off the rock, and they only managed to do it after the bow split open, relieving some of the pressure.

We spent a considerable time on the shore of that rapid, trying to dry out our sleeping bags and clothes in the sun while the counsellor and jc repaired the bow of the canoe with every canvas patch, tube of ambroid (a glue that we used for making canvas repairs) and piece of wire in the canoe repair kit. It took a while, but at the end of it they had a mostly water tight canoe that would have gotten them home if the counsellor hadn’t been such a moron.

One funny thing that stocks with me – the counsellor’s clothes were completely soaked, just like all of us (his canoe load from dumping, the rest of us from jumping in to rescue them), and we were all sitting in the sun stripped down to our underwear, except the counsellor was naked. And as we sat there eating lunch and waiting for our clothes and the repair to dry, a giant horsefly bit him on the penis. You’ve never seen a guy jump so high!

After the repair, we crossed under a bridge, the only road that crossed our route from Bala all the way back to camp. We went through one set of rapids safely and sanely, but at the next one the counsellor proved that there is no way in hell he should have ever been in a leadership position. The rapid had a shelf, about a two foot drop. An experienced canoer might have managed it, but not a moron in a canoe held together with baling wire and partially dried ambroid. He took one look at it and yelled “HELL, LET’S SHOOT IT!” Those of us in the camper canoe thought he was completely mental and we portaged. But the jc agreed to try as well, and he went first. Now he was a lot heavier than the campers in his canoe and I think the fact that it was stern heavy helped him get through it. The counsellor’s canoe was more evenly balanced, and when they hit the shelf they kind of hit the water below nose first, and dumped in the whirlpool below it. I have a vivid memory of Jeremy getting smashed between the canoe and the rock wall on the side of the whirlpool before we could drag him out. He also lost his camera in the whirlpool, although god knows how he held into it on the previous disaster.

This time the canoe was a write-off. The split now went beyond the bow seat and no amount of wire was going to hold it together, even if we’d still had any more canvas and ambroid. So we did the only responsible thing we could do – we distributed his packs and campers to the other two canoes, making them dangerously overloaded and tippy, and paddled back upstream to the bridge. The counsellor paddled his banana split of a boat from the stern deck, which kept the bow out of the water. We made camp at a fishing access that was not a legal campsite while the counsellor and jc hitchhiked to a phone to contact the camp. Much later that night a truck came from camp with a replacement canoe, but sadly not a replacement counsellor.

For the next couple of days, the trip went as they usually went. I don’t recall if the counsellor stopped trying to shoot unshootable rapids or if he just got overruled, but we ended up making it most of the way home without further incident. Until the very last day, when once again this moron decides he wants to try another handstand on the gunnels. Fortunately by this time the two campers in his canoe were more seasoned paddlers and so when he inevitably fell into the water, they kept the boat upright and prevented him from further soaking people’s sleeping bags. (I should mention that campers used the same sleeping bags as bedclothes in camp, and the camp didn’t have laundry facilities of any sort, so even without this a few of the campers still had damp sleeping bags for a night or two after we got back.)

Rereading this, I sound awfully angry about the incompetence of the counsellor. But the amazing thing about being a kid at camp is that we weren’t mad at him. Well, except for getting the sleeping bags wet. Everything else was dumb, but we just took it in stride. Just part if the adventure. It’s only afterwards as a parent I think back and think “we’re lucky he didn’t kill anybody” and I get mad at him.