Getting Ready for the Hill Country - Camera Mount

Things around the old Buddha house this year have been pretty tough.  Now, I know that in a lot of ways I don't have much to complain about.  I have a job and am able to pay the bills.  My house hasn't burned to the ground.  Heck, we have only been close to having to evacuate once.  Nope from all those perspectives life has been pretty good.

With that said, there have been a lot of personal challenges this year.  I am not going to air the laundry or bore you with it all, but this year has definitely tried my patience, faith and resolution.  To go hand in hand with that my most effective stress reliever, riding, has been fairly limited as well.  Sort of a lose/lose spiral into some pretty rough times.

But, on the up side, we have a ride up to the Hill Country coming in a few weeks.  A ride that combines those I love with the things I love doing.  A big chunk of the family is headed up with me; some on bikes and some in cars (OK, an SUV), we have reservations for a nice little cabin at Koyote Ranch and plans to ride the great roads, enjoy the scenery and hit the Harvest Classic to drool over some cool old bikes.  Awesome!

I can't tell you how excited I am about this trip.  I just tried but it doesn't even come close.

Anyway.

One of the things I want to try and do this time out is capture just how awesome some of these roads are  on camera.  Stopping and shooting just doesn't cut it and I am no Josh Kurpius who can get incredible shots while riding.  So, I went shopping for a camera mount...

Although I was tempted by the coolness that is the GoPro action photography set up.  The reality is, I am no action sport hero to invest hundreds of dollars in such a set up.  No, I want to grab a few cool vids of the roads Hill Country ride to share and to remind me of the awesomeness that is the Hill Country when I am stuck in a cubical fighting with a server.  I have a decent but inexpensive Canon SD1100 that I use for taking pictures on the road and around the house.  It is a point and shoot but more than adequate for my limited photographic skills and it would have to the camera for taking videos (and stills on the hill country ride.  Like I said, I am no Josh Kurpius so I would need some way to mount the camera for action shots and videos while on the road.

I started my search for a mount on the more traditional motorcycle shopping sites but everything I found seemed like overkill for experimenting with motocycle photo/videography.  The dang camera cost less than a hundred bucks so I couldn't see paying $60 just to experiment...time for a trip to the Amazon.

i.Trek Handlebar Mount

Sure enough, I found a good selection of mounts and for very reasonable prices. After spending an hour or so checking the specs and reviews I settled on the i.Trek Robust Motorcycle Handlebar Mount; fairly decent reviews and less than eleven bucks...five cents less to be precise.  Looked like a pretty good deal on a piece of equipment to get started with and find out if this whole idea was even going to work.  Now Amazon offers free shipping on orders over $25 and to make up the difference and get free shipping I went ahead and picked up the latest season of Dexter.

The mount is plastic and seems sturdy enough for my limited needs but it is definitely not what you would call professional grade.  I was concerned that the air pressure from moving "at speed" would push it back and cause it to tilt backwards.  This was a common complaint on some other mounts that I looked at.  There was really no way to determine that without a shake down cruise of sorts so I immediately headed out to the bike and mounted it just above the bend in the bar.  I had read that this would reduce vibrations and to be honest that was my biggest concern.

Let's face it, as much as I love my Sporty, smooth is not a word I would use to describe it.  While it may not be one of the "paint shakers" of old the definitely let's you know that all 54 cubic inches are engaged and working to motivate you forward.  To be honest, this is one of the things I truly love about the Sporty.  It helps to define it's soul like the near perfect smoothness of my other bikes failed to do.

Anyway...

Just as I headed out to the garage the phone rang.  I shouldn't have picked it up...but I did.  I shouldn't have answered it...but I did.

Yes, it was work...

Yes, there was a problem...

No, there would be no shakedown run for the camera mount...

It took 72(ish) hours, very little sleep and a lot of work but we eventually contained the virus (would you believe this company patches their workstations but not their servers?) and return the environment to a semblance of normalcy and I was ready for that test run...

Ok, so as you may know from the news or reading this blog Texas is experiencing the second worst drought in recorded history.  We're about 20 inches down on the year so far and have set records for heat and numbers of days without rain...guess what we get when I finally get a chance to take that test ride?

Yup...

Rain.  Not a lot.  Not enough to do much good at all.  Just enough to make the roads about as slick as snot  and raise the humidity to pre-drought levels (just south of 100%).  Not good weather to ride or to test a non-waterproof camera...but I did anyway.

I waited for a little break in the clouds and managed to test the mount at speed and even capture a one minute clip to test for the vibration.

Not much to the video, just down the road a bit and then a U-Turn in the parking lot of a little beer joint but it proved the mount works reasonably well.

By the way, you can see (and hear) the drops of rain as they come down ;-)

Hang in There

-Buddha