Biking around Texas

I've been enjoying the lower budget sports recently, well, except I had to buy a new bike! The limestone rocks in Texas hill country have been rattling my brains out. I ended up with a KHS 204 - fairly generic full suspension bike with hydraulic disc brakes. It rides pretty well, though in hindsight I may have opted for tubed tyres and cable disc setup. It does handle the terrain spectacularly better, to the point where I'm still too chicken to explore it's full potential. Mind you if you've seen the Red Bull Rampage in Utah, then you'll understand ;) but at least I can now keep up with Heidi.

Localish around here there is some good riding. Closest is the Madrone trail so named for its one Madrone tree, which doesn't appear to be alive. The trail has got some good drop off's and rock gardens.

The trail is on a lake Peninsula, so there are nice views and its peaceful.

It also joins up with the Hancock Trail, which Tracy and Chris came and joined us on.

Time Lapse

A month ago or so I saw this effect on the water early morning, it started my brain gears turning on how to capture a time lapse of it. Something I've been meaning to figure out for a while. Any way long story short I figured out a way of doing it for free with the gear I already have.

Canyon Lake Sunrise Time Lapse

Interesting to note the surface wind was east and the wind at cloudbase was west. Quite typical here.
I'm sure it is now way easier than it used to be... But in case you are interested (and I'll probably forget and look back here to remember) here's how I did it.

First obviously you need a whole bunch of pictures that are framed the exact seem way, or move at a steady rate. Then you'll likely need to re-size those pictures to the resolution of the movie format. I used my GoPro Hero 2 in the medium mode (narrower field of view @ 8MP) at an interval of 2 seconds for about an hour. You'll need some kind of tripod.


I used MIR (Multiple Image Resizer 4.0) - (open source)
 to crop and resize to 720p.

720p is 1280pixels×720pixels progressive (non-interlaced)
 - 921,600 pixels (~ 0.9 megapixels) per frame
 - Aspect Ratio of 1.77  or  16:9

Note most pictures are taken with an Aspect ratio of 1.33  or  4:3
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Then use PhotoLapse 3.0 - (open source)
  to put all the reformatted pictures into a movie format.

You'll want to use a decent codec - I'm currently experimenting with DIVX
I saved  @ 30fps but 15  (frames per second is probably fine).
---------------------------------------------
That will spit out a avi file which you can edit, or not.
I used AVS which is not free, but windows has MovieMaker and Apple has Imovie.

Now I am wondering what would make good subjects. Cloud life, flowers opening, plants growing.
My Old Camera has a great lens but will only automatically take a picture every minute which for a sunrise is not quick enough. Knowing the interval is key. With the practice though you'll end up with a lucky shot in the mix.

Nice lake day

Last week, we had an exceedingly sunny warm pleasant day, so I grabbed the camera and went for a run.

It was my birthday so I somehow justified taking some time scrambling around these rocks and stumbled upon this cave.

The morning light and calm air really made the rocks come alive.

Later on, the wind remained calm and air warm, it was too tempting to throw the kayak in the water.

Heidi and I headed out passed the harbor

and noticed a collection of trees poking out the water. There was an Osprey perched right there.

What a fantastic way to enjoy a spectacular sunset.

Found Maples

This weekend, Heidi and I went down to Lost Maples state park to check out the fall colors.

We were probably a week early, along with a few thousand other visitors.

We did get a nice hike in though, once we got out of the waddling zone.

Being in the hill country, the terrain is limestone river bottom or chaparral like and plateau.

We crashed Tracy and Chris's party in Leakey which was there that evening by coincidence :) Great to see them. On the way home we took a route along the "backbone", a higher limestone plateau. There's not a whole lot there but big ranches and a few rivers. Along one fence we saw a Giant Kudu, quite a surreal sight in Texas, but it is hunting season...

Heidi got these shots out the car window. The Guadalupe river basin is every bit as pretty as the state park. This was just outside Ingram, a cute little town.

Buffalo Mountain, Oklahoma

Last weekend, my new local flying buddy and I went upto Mt Buffalo, Oklahoma, with what could have have been the last good flying forecast up there this season. Our local foot launch site is just 7 hours away.

Well the forecast didn't hold but we flew Saturday.

It was a little blowy, but workable ridge lift with thermals to 4k.

 Launch is around 2000ft MSL and the LZ is around 900ft MSL. There was a strong hint of fall in the air, with a few colors starting to show. Here's Andy on his Sport2.

It is a pretty area, reminds me of lookout mountain, Georgia.

A fantastic bonus was meeting up with Kit, whom I've not seen for ages. I haven't really flown around with him before. It was great fun.

Talihina is it's own special little local town, with the "Hateful Hussy" being center of the action, which is a diner.

The local club (Buffalo Mountain Flyers) do a fantastic job of keeping sites open. I'm keen to check out a few more of the sites. Next time I hope I do better with forecasting the weather ;)

Together again and back in Texas.

6 weeks didn't seem like it would be a long time at the end of our summer trip, to me anyway, at the time, but in reality from then to the end of the HG nationals seemed an eternity. Regardless of my complete misjudgement, happily I finally arrived back at Heidi's :)

Overjoyed !

As always there was far to much to do, before departing, I missed saying so long to a few folks, hopefully it won't be so long... The trip went fairly well considering how over loaded I was and how old my truck is. But as I got to my cursed mountain on I10 in Texas, I ran out of gas. Same place where I got a flat tire last year. There's a section where's it 70 miles between fuel stops. All of a sudden I was getting terrible gas mileage. I put it down to a headwind and a few hills, but a day after I arrived I found I had a bad ignition coil, so that was the likely cause.

Since then I've just been unpacking and rediscovering what I packed up 3 or 4 years ago. Quite fun, a little like Christmas!

And of course, I've been catching up on some exercise! Check out this critter we found on a trail run. A Snake eating another snake!

At first I thought it was a harmless King snake.

But actually it turns out it was a coral snake ! Yikes,one of the most potent venoms of North American.

At least it's mouth was full ;)

Another surprise here in Texas is how green it is.

It has been hot and humid, 95'F and 80%. Though it cooled off nicely this passed weekend. 

Perfect for checking out the Hancock trail, close to here.

Santa Cruz Flats Hang Gliding Nationals 2012

was in the same spot as previous years, the Fransisco Grande resort 40 miles south of Phoenix Arizona. The meet staff did such a great job of reporting on it, on the event blog, I yielded instead to sleep. Life had been very busy the previous few weeks...

We flew 7 out of the 7 days at the comp, and as is common there the air was hot and surprisingly stable. I think we saw 104'F (40'C) on the hottest day, most other days were just a couple degrees cooler. Thank goodness for the ordered launch.

As has come to be known, knowing the winning strategy is a fickle challenge. Most often it is essential to stay with the main gaggle, just to remain in the air. But as the day progresses knowing when to speed up, or slow down is far more difficult. 

The conditions are most often unforgiving, one wrong move often puts pilots on the ground, scratching their head as to why. Day 2 was like that for me...  

A meteorological quirky trend of the Santa Cruz Flats is just after the peak heat of the day (say ~4pm) lift in the flats shuts down, whereas in the mountains; lift is pumping right through the inversion.

This led to some interesting tasks, where we would limp and grovel our way to the mountains, get crazy high, then glide back (hopefully), without hitting a single bump of lift.

After 27 hours of airtime, considerable luck and Kraig letting me demo this new Litespeed RX3.5, I managed 3rd place just stealing it from Matt Barker at the last moment.

Here is the glider that squeaked me into goal, days 6 & 7. 16km and 26km respectively, with not a bump along the way, making it by just 20 feet ! The improvement in handling is the biggest difference, and it helped immensely not only in the gaggle flying, but picking a line to glide.  What a great way to end a season. Final results here :  Congratulations to Jamie for a flawlessly run meet, and a huge thanks to the helpers and tug pilots. More pictures here.

Bridgeport Fly In

A labor day weekend, east side sierras the Bridgeport Fly In was hosted by Pam and supported by the motherlode sky riders club. Terrific job. 


Around Bridgeport there are a number of sites, Saturday we launched Sweetwater, so many folks were sinking out, I threw off my jacket. That was a mistake, I went to16k where it was well below freezing!

Flying here always leaves an impression on me, so much diversity, so many possibilities, fantastic scenery.


Landing in Nevada can be lonely, no cell phone, no radio, no people. How was a found ? Well that was my flight plan direction, but it was the SPOT that got me found. I was too cold to make the jump to Hawthorne.

Monday we flew Copper, a beautiful launch. Overlooking Mono Lake on the backside of Yosemite.

 I've not had much luck here in the past, and this day was no exception.

A chased a dust devil around the LZ while sinking like a rock. A normal landing approach is downwind, base, final. This approach was downwind, downwind, downwind. I hate it when that happens! I left an impression on this site. Landing downwind at 7500ft is not much fun, the glider knocked me in the back of my helmet while we continued to slide through the soft (thankfully) grass. Had I done a left hand approach I likely would have gone up and been in a headwind.

The go-pro took this random shot mid-slide.

Dan Murphy Memorial Air Races at Funston

Catching up again. A few weeks ago, Fort Funston hosted the annual air races. The weather was about the most perfect one could have arranged with the weather gods. 

Much fun was had by all, 1st place was traded between Kenny Brown, Zac Majors and Brian Horgan. Zac ended up taking the title. Results Here : http://flyfunston.org/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1332&sid=4628af8d9ac10f61d8d9f30b1e3634bf#p3206

 The next Day we were treated to a really pretty day.

Funston can be a really beautiful place to fly.

 Even though generally speaking the best flying is when it is overcast.