Another one

This one is a little more aggressively HDR'd

More HDR

HDR too

Created from a single RAW file.

Rainy Weekend

Bozeman creek flooded into Kagy and decided to head down it instead. It also flooded closer to down town onto some streets too. It's been raining for 5 days now, with more in the forecast.

We went to Lewis and Clark Caverns yesteray and did their cave tour. It was pretty fun, there were some pretty big rooms and some cool formations. I got to see how solidly I could hold the camera attempting to take 1/2 second exposures with the IS on. Some worked better then most.

WTF?

So my Mercedes blew a head gasket. I overheated it pretty badly due to an unfortunate set of circumstances so it wasn't too surprising. What is surprising is somehow one of the cylinder sleeves is too low. No one I've talked to has seen such a thing before, and the options for dealing with it aren't particularly appealing. The two I'm considering are a totally new engine and selling the good parts of this one or having a steel spacer made to fill the gap. It's a tricky fix due to the high pressures inside the cylinder, but it seems likely that it was working up until the overheat with the cylinder low like this anyway.

Stupid cars. . .

Nitro's camera

 

From the chewed up camera. The screen and all controls are messed up. I don't think the autofocus works at all any more and I don't know what mode it's in. Still takes pictures though.

beating the pumps?

There is bike commuting, walking and public transportation. And riding your horse.

Biking

It will be a while still before trails are dry in Bozeman, but we went to Helena on Saturday and there is tons of riding to do there. It was hot too, around 90.

a couple more

splitboard crampons. They go under your feet and dig into hard snow/ice on either side of the board when it's in ski mode.

Product photography?

Spark R&D's Ignition 2 splitboard binding. Spark R&D is my friend Will and the photos I took are part of a trade for some bindings of my own. This image involved around 1,500 watts of halogen lighting.

Spring weekend

I went skiing on Saturday morning at Bridger Bowl. I had a polarizing filter that Jesse got me for Christmas on the camera and got some pretty intensely blue skies in all the photos I took.


Then there was some camping and biking at Pipestone and in Helena

Revenue Flats

Did some camping over the weekend at Revenue Flats west of Bozeman. There was some excellent climbing on the rock right next to our campsite. It was nice to get out of town for a couple of days.

A couple more

The saddle on saddle

It was fully winter there. We couldn't see anything, and partially resulting from that had a less then stellar descent. The weird lighting up top was really something though.

Seasons

It was a pretty successful showing, we sold around 400 tickets. Profits will go to the Montana Mountain Bike Alliance If you are reading this and haven't written to the forest service about bike access in the beaverhead-deerlodge national forest please do. The MMBA website linked above will explain the issue in more detail. The comment period has recently been extended till the 30th so you don't have much time left.



Photographer/advocate Bob Allen explaining the dire state of Montana MTB trail access.

Product Testing?

I made the snowbaord and my friend Will made the bindings. They worked really well for a trip to Beehive Peak early last friday. The forecast for the weekend was pretty bleak so we went out a day early.

As soon as the sun rose the peak was looming ahead.


Patrick in the couloir visible in the middle of the previous photo.


The descent down the north side was on excellent snow. It was too high and sheltered to have been affected by the sun.


The second run back down the basin wasn't so hot though. Breakable crust about an inch thick would put considerable effort into trying to steer your snowboard. It was challenging to make turns. About half way down the basin the sun popped out and things got nice and warm. Spring skiing is fun.

That last ones a link

Seasons in a week

Here's the real poster.

Last day at Moonlight

It started with a ride on the tram


Then hanging out on top waiting for a few minutes


admiring the views of cedar mountain


Then we got to ski real powder for quite a while




Alan and I managed to find something a little sketchier to sneak down


We went right down the middle. This ends at the top of the lifts, so it's a long run all the way back down.


Then we got first tracks in one of the whitewater chutes



Right down the middle, you can see 1 set of snowboard tracks and two tele tracks.

"Seasons"

"Seasons" Mountain Bike Film Premier April 24th at

The Emerson Cultural Center in Bozeman

Salad Days Productions presents "Seasons", the new mountain biking film by the Collective. The premier event will take place on Thursday April 24th at the Emerson Cultural Center at 6:30pm. Tickets will be available at the door for $8. Proceeds will go towards the Montana Mountain Bike Alliance's efforts to keep Montana's trails open to mountain biking.

Seasons is the Third release from the group of filmmakers, photographers and mountain bikers known as "The Collective". Their second film "Roam" was released two years ago to rave reviews and has since collected numerous awards. Seasons is the story of several of the world's best and most interesting mountain bikers, told through the course of four seasons of one year. The film starts in the winter and shows the activities of the riders during the off season. Some are training, some are building trails and stunts. Spring rolls around and all the pent up energy of the winter is released on the trails as their riding sets the tone for the rest of the year. As summer rolls around some riders are racing and competing in competitions. Others are off in the woods on their custom built lines. As fall rolls around those that are still standing have reached the peak of their form. Tricks have been perfected. For the grand finale, the stories of all the riders come together as one.

Salad Days Productions is proud to bring another creative masterpiece by the Collective to the Emerson in Bozeman. This years premier promises to be bigger and better then Roam was two years ago. Proceeds will benefit the Montana Mountain Bike Alliance whose goal is "To preserve, protect, and promote mountain bike access and diverse riding opportunities on Montana's public lands through education, communication, and unified action." For those who don't know, hundreds of miles of trails in this great state are in danger of being closed to mountain bikes and these hard working and passionate riders are working together to protect them. The premier event will include head to head roller racing courtesy of the Bozeman Fix, a Live DJ and an expo of local bike related businesses and organizations. There will be tons of raffle prizes from many of our gracious sponsors including helmets, Camelbaks, coffee and gift certificates. When the show is over there will be an after-party with bike videos playing all night long to stoke the fire for the season. Don't miss it.


More information on the film is available here:
On the web: http://www.thecollectivefilm.com/
Email: Info@thecollectivefilm.com

More information on the event:
Email: saladdaysproductions@gmail.com
John Parker (406)370-5048

Montana Mountain Bike Alliance
On the web: http://www.montanamountainbikealliance.com/
Greg Beardslee (406)586-8357

Building a Snowboard

I finished with most of the work on the snowboard i've been building off and on for the last year or so. All that's left is mounting hardware. Here's a link to the picasa album with all the photos.


Core. Maple and Doug fir. The wide center strip will be the inner sidewalls for the splitboard. The core is 1/4" wider then the board so there will be 1/4 inch that needs to be cut out of the board after lamination.


Cutting out the base. There is a template underneath and a folliwing router bit was used.


Edges bent by hand and tacked in place with superglue. Epoxy during layup will more firmly attach them to the base and the layers above them.


Router Bridge for thickness profiling the core. The core goes from 2mm at the front to 7.7 in the middle then back to 2mm at the tail. The bridge worked ok but next time I will use a planer jig instead.



Core with sidewall. There are a lot of insert holes that need to be cut in a splitboard.



Dowels were used to align the core with the base during layup. The two base pieces were spaced at 1/4" with pieces of basswood from the hobby shop. The dowel system worked very well. I had to cut holes through the fiberglass and VDS before laminating too.


rubber vibration damping strips that go over the edges and some kevlar veil. Kevlar is very hard to cut so hopefully it will deflect some core shots in it's life.


Me fixing a leak in the bag. No pictures from the layup unfortunately.


My high tech heating system. Kmart heating blanket with a space blanket on top. Got it pretty warm inside, no idea how warm. Epoxy cures much faster and stronger with heat. The weights make sure that everything lays flat on the camber mold.



Out of the mold. Lots of flashing that needs to be trimmed.


Finished board. Cotton cloth graphics and a couple of carbon tows for show.

More pictures of the finished board in picasa. I'm mounting hardware now, hopefully take it out for a test ride tomorrow morning or this evening.