Penasquitos Canyon at Night ~Video~

Sorni, Miles, myself, and several others had been doing a regular Wednesday
night ride for about a year and a half but last fall I was no longer able to
attend. Instead, I got the honor of sitting in a very uncomfortable desk
for three hours each Wednesday at SDSU while I finished some courses for my
Master's. Well, my last Wednesday night class was two weeks ago so we
resurrected the Wednesday night tradition and went out for an evening ride.
It was nice
for several reasons, but this week it has been ridiculously hot so an
evening ride in a coastal canyon would certainly be a good thing too!

Sorni, myslef, and a non-AMBer decided to hit Penasquitos canyon since it's
close to everybody's house and is a pretty good little ride to boot! Plus,
Ebasil has been instrumental in opening up actual legal single track in the
park so poaching is no longer necessary!

I had been wanting to shoot a night ride video for some time but never got
around to dragging the gear along. Plus, I hadn't really done much night
riding in the past 7 months or so anyway.

We always started our night rides at 7:00 since it provided a good window
for people to beat traffic yet still get home at a reasonable hour. Of
course, starting a night ride at 7:00 means that some of the ride happens
while it is still daylight out. This isn't a bad thing and it probably
worked to my advantage for this ride. I was able to get about 25 minutes of
decent footage in the daylight before it got too dark.

all of the daylight footage is shot heading east, so the shadows are quite
long. The camera had a tough time picking up enough light at times so I
bumped up the brightness and contrast a bit to compensate. Unfortunately,
there are brief moments where this is too bright but I think there are more
better moments than bad moments.

all of night shots are heading back to the west. That's why there seems to
be a lot of light on the horizon. it seems like there was a lot of ambient
light out on the trail but I can assure you it was quite dark. There was a
mostly full moon the other night so that certainly helped.

I don't know if I'll do another night video because the total darkness
certainly causes a lot of detail to be lost on the trail. But, this one at
least seems to showcase the differences between day and night riding.

Hope you like.

direct link to video file can be downloaded he
http://www.mountainbikebill.com/vide..._night_low.mpg This
link will only be active for about a week. if you try to view after one
week, just go to my web
sitehttp://www.mountainbikebill.com/videos/MFP/penasquitos_night_low.mpg and
access the file there.

I only noticed when I put my web page together that I shot my very first
ride video at the same place on the very same day two years ago. This
certainly wasn't planned but just one of those weird things that happened.

Michael

Michael Paul wrote: {snips 'n edits taken}

Sorni, myslef, and a non-AMBer decided to hit Penasquitos canyon
since it's close to everybody's house and is a pretty good little
ride to boot!

direct link to video file can be downloaded he
http://www.mountainbikebill.com/vide..._night_low.mpg


Pretty cool -- except now I'll have rut nightmares even more often!

One question: where the hell is the freaking DEER near the end of the ride
that almost flattened me?!? Michael and Dan flushed him out, and then he
headed right at me. Thank God he decided to bolt off to his right, instead
of charging the blinding blue light coming at him!

Bill "needing a second HID I think (just not seeing trail well at night
these days)" S.

PS: I think a great new figure 8 loop could be done from Cantina now!

"Michael Paul" wrote in message
...

we resurrected the Wednesday night tradition and went out for an evening
ride.


It looks like you had a great time. I'm jealous.

I don't know if I'll do another night video because the total darkness
certainly causes a lot of detail to be lost on the trail.

The twilight shots are great. They have a unique look to them. The descent
at the end had a real familiar, on the bike again, feel to it.

I give it two thumbs up.

On Fri, 07 May 2004 16:54:40 GMT, Michael Paul wrote:

certainly causes a lot of detail to be lost on the trail. But, this one at
least seems to showcase the differences between day and night riding.

Hope you like.

It was cool seeing the transition to night, although at first I was
wondering if it was really night riding or if you had a camera that does
an amazing job of picking up ambient light!

Very nice. Guy likes! -(MXC reference)

--
-BB-
To reply to me, drop the attitude (from my e-mail address, at least)

Awesome! I've ridden alot of those trails, but never at night. Time
to go get a light and have a go!

"Michael Paul" had this to say


http://www.mountainbikebill.com/vide..._night_low.mpg

Damn that kicks ass!! great vid!!

Michael Paul wrote:
Sorni, Miles, myself, and several others had been doing a regular
Wednesday night ride for about a year and a half but last fall I was
no longer able to attend. Instead, I got the honor of sitting in a
very uncomfortable desk for three hours each Wednesday at SDSU while
I finished some courses for my Master's. Well, my last Wednesday
night class was two weeks ago so we resurrected the Wednesday night
tradition and went out for an evening ride.

You used up a fair chunk of my bandwidth, you *******, but it was worth it.
Nice vid. Nice ride.
--
Westie
(Replace 'invalid' with 'yahoo' when replying.)