If You Were Riding the Bicycle #1

The way some drivers love to hate cyclists and the way some cyclists love to hate them back really puzzles me. Its like a kind of bigotry, really, as we take turns making ridiculous sweeping generalizations about each other. I am sick and tired of cyclists who characterize any driver that criticizes them as a selfish, dangerous, gas-guzzling destroyer of the earth.

I am equally fed up with motorists who complain that cyclists are all road-hogging, rule-breaking moronic hippies or Lance Armstrong wannabes.



The truth, of course, is that as with all people, there will be selfish, stupid fools who obviously don't understand anything at all sprinkled through both of these groups.

When I'm riding with cars, I do my best to make good time while being as considerate of drivers as I can and ensuring my own safety. I drive a car too, and I know how worrisome and sometimes annoying certain people riding bikes can be. On the other hand, I have zero problem with a cyclist who slows me down for little while as they make their way along safely and predictably. When I'm riding, I try to put myself in the motorist's shoes, and this approach has served me well over years and years of bicycle commuting.

What I'm asking for in this post (and hopefully others if they present themselves) is that motorists do the same for me in specific road situations that I will illustrate with real video shot from my bike. Please don't jump to the conclusion that other cyclists would agree with or approve of my decisions; I fully expect to get called out by some practitioners of the very safest and best types of cycling too.

So, here we go:

What would you do if you were the riding the bicycle? Until next time,

R A N T W I C K

I Am Very Very Sorry. Please Don't Hate Me.

Ever since I first heard of "sharrows", I've had this stupid image knocking around in my head, like an earworm. I guess this is an "image worm", or perhaps a "mind's eyeworm". Anyway, it's been bothering me for some time, and I need to get it out, and I think posting it here might be the only way. I am very very sorry. Please don't hate me.

I Hope to God Something Like This Never Happens Again,

R A N T W I C K

Deshake It, Baby, Deshake It

As you may be aware, I've got a digital camera attached to the handlebars of my bike that I use to take video. Most of the time nothing interesting happens, but sometimes there's good stuff I can work with. Now, I have seen good video shot from bicycles, usually mountain riders for some reason. Fat Cyclist has started making videos of some rides, and they look great. When I look at my own stuff or on youtube for commuting / street footage, however, it is often very shaky, and sometimes bad enough to give one a headache, especially with "first person" perspectives using cameras mounted on the bike.

Here are a couple of representative examples:

I think better cameras and helmet mount systems can remove a lot of shake... but I don't have any expensive gear. I also think there is a reason that the best cycling videos are not shot from the first person perspective. There are, however, FREE (I am incapable of typing the word 'FREE' without capitalizing it... hmmm...) after-the-fact remedies for all the shake and vibration inherent to inexpensive setups like mine (and theirs). The remedies I speak of are two bits of FREE software; VirtualDub and a plugin for it called Deshaker. I forget where I got them, but just google 'em up, they weren't hard to find. What was hard to find was a mix of deshaker settings that worked well with the moving camera on my bike, which I finally found after much trial and error. This stuff isn't perfect. The edges of the video get weird. The improvement, however, is remarkable. I'm going to show you some before and after video now, of course! Watch the whole thing... there's a 'happening' near the end that's kind of funny.

First, the bad:

Please know that when I was riding by, that kid was laughing her head off over something, so no worries on the shove. Now, the deshaked version:

Crummy wind-noise and camera-rattle audio on both, I know. Normally I would replace that with some music, but didn't bother for this quick demo.

I don't want to bore everybody with the details of setting up deshaker. If you have an interest, email me and I will send you screenshots of the deshaker configuration screens and try to explain the process.

Shake It Only When You Should,

R A N T W I C K