Helmet Cam - July 29, 2014, CCAP Tuesday Night Race Bs

This is the second in a series of three helmet cam clips I've made from the 2014 CCAP Tuesday Night Races. The original race took place July 29, 2014 with my report here.

Another example of tactics and teamwork. I try to offer some advice to others as well.

Enjoy!

Helmet Cam - June 24th CCAP Tuesday Night Race, Bs, Heavy D Wins

So as promised here's one of the clips I finished in the last month or so. I uploaded this last night without issues so phew, my post yesterday was a lie.

This is the first in a series of three clips. They sort of fit together although it's not necessarily totally interlocked like, say, the Lord of The Rings trilogy.

But it's sort of close, you know. In terms of production quality, length, special effects, and storyline.

Or not.

Anywho… For the first of the trilogy it's a B race at one of the CCAP Tuesday Night Races. I posted a "pictures + words" race report here.

The attack that won the race.

For the action in motion, check out the video below. Remember you can click on the YouTube logo to watch the clip in YouTube. Usually it's the better way to do it because you can resize it, unlike the tiny thing embedded in the blog.

Enjoy!

Life - YouTube Errors So No Clip Tomorrow

Last night I thought I'd be a nice guy and upload 4 of the 5 clips that are ready for release. I planned on releasing them one every few days, between posts that I've half written.

Today, while I was away from the house, the Missus texted me.

"The video has failed to process. x3"

Ugh.

3 of 4 videos failed to upload to Youtube last night, and since they need to be in order, I don't want to release the one that actually made it up there.

I'm going to upload one at a time, one per night. I didn't even review the 5th clip so I'll review that before I put it up.

Basically three go together and the other two belong together.

The set of three work well together, at least in my eyes. They definitely need to be in order and unfortunately the last one of the three is the only one that made it. I'll upload the first and second clip in that set.

Then I'll work on the two clip set. One clip is basically ready, although now that it didn't upload I've thought of changes I want to make to it. The other is only on its first version and hasn't been reviewed. Most of the clips are on their 3rd or 4th revision at this point.

Of course if anyone local has a nice wide connection to the internet (upload speeds, not download) the clips are 1 GB apiece, give or take, and you could, you know, watch them before they go live to everyone.

At home it's about 1000 minutes upload time for each clip, so about 15-16 hours, give or take.

Ugh. Not what I want to see.

Life - Still Interruptus

I promised a little while back to post some race reports and such but I still haven't had time to work on posts here.

I'm taking a break from things to write this but some of the stuff that's been happening in the background:

 - Junior got sick. We ended up in the ER when he hit over 105 deg F. He was okay but it was worrying for a while.
 - Of course I got sick after that. I was laid out for a good weekend plus, and that sort of put the brakes on a bunch of stuff.
 - We tried to get some post-season stuff done. All the stuff that normal people do on weekends we typically postpone until after the racing season. This includes some work around the house, car maintenance, stuff like that.
 -  Helped with registration for the club race, the Silk City Cross race. It went well but it's another few days/nights of time where I can't do much else.

Junior

And, of course, we have a much more interactive kid now. He hit 2 1/2 years old last month and he's talking, running, climbing, jumping, asking, wanting, refusing, potty training, everything. I keep thinking that, oh, "such and such stage" was a bit tough, but each stage seems to be tougher. Now I long for the days where I just feed him and then put him in his Pack N Play and let him nap for another hour or two.

Now the instant the house gets quiet I get worried. He's chewed the buttons off of an unused remote (which he was playing with as a phone). He shreds every piece of paper he can get his hands on. He likes peeling decals off of things so much he bends his nails backward trying to peel price tags off books and such.

And at the same time he wants Daddy (and Mommy). He loves going to the playground, to the slide, to climb, to the library for song and dance, he loves being able to watch construction vehicles, dump trucks, police cars, stuff like that. We visit the farm a few times a week to pick up his milk, we were visiting another farm to pick up our veggies, and those visits are 10% "getting food" and 90% "looking at things".

Monetizing Cycling Knowledge

One thing I'd like to do is to monetize my cycling knowledge. Specifically I'd like to monetize the stuff I put up on the web relating to cycling. For example the blog has always had some ads but I have no revenue from them, not that I know of anyway. However my YouTube clips weren't monetized and after some discussion with my brother I've gotten permission to do so. Therefore my clips are now monetized.

This has encouraged me to look at the clips I had sort of stalled in the queue. There were a number of them that I meant to finish but never got around to doing the work. Clips take me about 10 to 15 hours minimum and the long ones are literally weeks of multiple hours a day (I counted two clips to be in the 40-50 hour range).

So for the clips I have in the queue - two are from this year's Bethel, one is a lesson on not taking a break winning for granted, another is simply the last of the Bethels. Three are from the CCAP Tuesday Night Races. Two are of Expo working well as a team, with team tactic stuff, with different riders being the leader. One is where the favor gets returned and one Expo rider in particular works for me.

At any rate I have those clips and I've put something like 40-50 hours into them in the last few weeks.

Carpe Diem Racing

I've been looking at the Carpe Diem Racing site as well. I want to make it into an Event Services site, rather than just a Bethel Spring Series site. There's a rough draft out there, I have help with it, but it's still far from completion.

2015 Spring Series

One piece big news is that I'm looking for a venue for the Spring Series. That's obviously been taking some time/energy. I'll have posts up on the search etc later.

Work/Job

All this is because I need to bring some money into the household. With the Bethel Spring Series bleeding money left and right, I absolutely have to start working. I'm going to do a future post with some Bethel numbers in it. I've been told that I make money from Bethel. I have, in the past, but the reality is that the race costs a lot of money to hold and it hasn't generated enough revenue to come close to covering the expenses.

So it's been tough.

And it's been really really good.

I've been fortunate to see a lot of Junior's development, to have bonded so well with him. I read somewhere that 4 out of 10 kids don't develop a strong bond with their parents. They found that 40% of kids don't develop that bond with their parents. The breakdown? 25% of kids don't go to their parents when they need comforting because the parent ignores them, and 15% of kids actually avoid their parents because the parents actually cause distress.

The fact that Junior comes running to me after a race with his arms extended, or that his eyes light up and he can't scramble to the door quick enough when he hears the Missus returning home, those things mean a whole lot more than if I had a good race or if we have the living room picked up.

So it's been busy, it's been less cycling oriented (although I want to be better for 2015), and it's been good.

Junior laughing - Simsbury Farms Cross race, Oct 8th

Cozy and drowsy Junior with the Missus at the Simsbury Fly In