Once I bought a cheap flight to Lisbon, I found the fuel canister I needed in a hostel FREE BOX. So I know they exist on the Canary Islands.
They MIGHT be for sale from either Leroy Merlin or Decathlon in Santa Cruz, Tenerife. Some have found them at petrol stations and ferreterias, hardware stores.
My goal in hiking is to ENJOY the experience as much as possible.
High altitude mountaineers suffer — the opposite.
I finally got around to watching Meru, the 2015 documentary film about climbing the Shark’s Fin route in the Indian Himalayas.
Mainly because I really admire Jimmy Chin, the best climber of all-time who can ALSO film his adventures.
In 2008 Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, and new guy Renan Ozturk almost made the first ascent of the infamous Shark’s Fin. It was harsh. They suffered physically and psychologically.
Before their next attempt in 2011, both Chin and Ozturk (separately) suffered horrific climbing falls. Somehow Jimmy popped out of a monster avalanche suffering barely a scratch.
Watching the movie, everyone agrees Renan should not be going back to Meru. He suffers a minor stroke during the second climb.
Jimmy’s master work was the Academy Award winning Free Solo. (2018)
This one is no Free Solo. But it did keep me gripped from start to finish.
“Meru is the anti-Everest,” says mountaineer and author Jon Krakauer. “This climb has seen more attempts and more failures than any peak in the Himalaya.”
Krakauer commentary throughout was a highlight for me.
When pandemic cancelled all my travel and Gymnastics coaching gigs, I took the time to improve my video editing. It’s become my main hobby.
Three phases (so far):
Learning the technology. Experimenting with different cameras. And acce$$ories.
Story. Story. Story.
My personal style.
After posting myFrench Creek tribute, I declared I was GOOD ENOUGH at video editingtechnology for my purposes. I could sit down at a table with a professional video editor and understand 75% of what they were talking about. 😀
Far more difficult is to decide on what story to tell. And to tell it effectively. Many super skillful editors struggle finding their next story.
I threw this short video together quickly as a teaser for my How to Survive theWest Coast Trail videos. But in some weird way, it’s evocative of that wild and challenging hike. It tells the story well
Putting these together is incredibly time consuming.
I kept trying to find ways to improve my efficiency. And that ended up evolving into my personal style of video — as of October 2022, at least. Who knows what’s next? 😀
I posted Valencia, Spain in January 2022. My edits today are all similar. But I’m adding more personal drone footage rather than drone stock video.
What is my style?
Music driven
Landscape, not vertical (portrait)
Cuts are mostly on the beats
Mostly hard cuts
Use transitions sparingly
Use gimmickry sparingly … though I do love speed ramps 😀
Lots of drone footage
Normally no voice over
No ads
Social media pestering only at the end.
Challenging for me is finding the right music for each story.
One of my best edits was Norway Highlights. I credit the song — Odesza Higher Ground — as once I decided on the soundtrack, it was easy to decide where to put each clip. In the example, below, the colours are music blocks to be filled with scenes I decide upon later.
Increasingly I’m picking music first, shooting the video later.
Odesza is my favourite band right now. Very popular for YouTube edits.
I’ve been studying Colour Grading through a course called … Color Grading Academy.
It’s a very complicated process.
Some of the best video editors online send out their final product for Colour experts to finish. An art, not a science.
Things I’ve decided NOT to use:
Tracking
Hue / Saturation curves
… more to be added
P.S.
I posted the Englishman River Falls hike in November 2020 and again in October 2022. I’ve definitely improved.
Click PLAY or watch the Nov 2020 edit on YouTube. I was quite happy with it. But NOW I’m wondering what weird colour grade I was experimenting with at that time. 😀
There are 3-4 different distances raced each year. Mine was shortest.
I signed up 2-days in advance of the race for the EASY 16km up and down.
It was more of a hike than a knife edge ridge.
I ended up 153rd, 1hr 44min behind the winner in the short race. My time 3hr 11min.
BUT I was happy with how I did. Running in I still felt great — avoiding muscle cramps which threatened throughout. I’d not really gone running in over a year before this day.
Louise finished ahead of me. We recovered with free vegetarian chile. So tasty, I bought some to take cycling.
In fact, at that point, Louise was wondering what happened to her brother Henry — turned out he had kept going at the short race turnaround. Henry ended up running an extra 7km or so.
Happily, his luck changed later — winning an official race hoody.
The magnetic phone clamp is the best feature. The one thing that makes it better FOR ME than competitors like the Zhiyun Smooth Q4. I hate balancing phones on a gimbal. With the OM 4 and 5 you don’t need to.
Rather than pay for a replacement magnetic phone clamp (CAD $35), it was smarter to simply buy the upgraded OM 5 (CAD $149) which includes the phone clamp. I can use the same phone and clamp on either gimbal.
I do feel the OM 5 is slightly better:
NEW built-in extension rod for “selfies”
lighter and more compact — but at the expense of much shorter battery life
ActiveTrack 4.0 and gesture control does seem more reliable. An important feature for me.
In “selfie” camera mode, it smoothly tracks your face by default
The MAIN downside is a shorter battery life than the OM 4. Only about 6 hours.
I used iPhone 13 on the OM 5 shooting in portrait orientation to keep the footage as SMOOTH as possible. I’d intended to upload it VERTICAL to Instagram and Facebook. Facebook worked. Instagram wouldn’t upload over multiple attempts.
I took the train to León where I’d be starting a week long cycling trip to Santiago de Compostela on the French Camino. A pilgrimage people have been doing for over 1000 years.
It’s very walkable, a small city with most of the attractions close together.
León’s Cathedral is one of the finest in Europe.
Panorama of Plaza de Regla and Leon Cathedral, Castile and Leon, SpainMe and the cops.
My official start is this Cathedral. I’ll finish at the Cathedral in Santiago.
Not Portugal. BUT I wanted to travel to Portugal for hiking and cycling in November. Also, it’s one of the most vaccinated large nations in the world during a pandemic.
I booked a FREE assessment appointment on my birthday:
November 2 ~ free assessment
November 4 ~ cleaning and measurement for ‘flipper‘ (temporary replacement tooth)
November 11 ~ implant surgery and placement of the flipper
November 15 ~ final checkout
The last 4 days in Lisbon were in case of complications. And that allows time to adjust the flipper, if needed.
Happily I had no infection nor swelling. And the flipper looks pretty good. Can you tell which top front tooth is now removable?
In fact, I’m as good looking as ever. … Ladies? 😀
I’ll return to Lisbon in 4-6 months to have the permanent fake screwed in.
The Institute of Implantology is not cheap. Price everything included for me will be about CAD $5000 (US$4000, EUR3490). Here are some of the major costs:
€160 CT Scan
€ 160 Extraction
€ 890 Implant placement
€ 650 Bone Graft
€ 280 Flipper
€ 695 Instillation of implant
The bonegraft encourages regeneration of bone and increases the odds that the tooth will stay in my skull for life.
My surgeon was Dr. GonçaloCaramês. Trained in Los Angeles, he married another dentist. They planned to set up practice in Seattle but he opted instead to return to Portugal because of the pandemic.
The facility itself is impressive. Chic. Very modern technology.
I’d originally planned to cycle from Porto, Portugal to Santiago. BUT there were no rental bikes available out of Porto. So I arrived (eventually) by bus.
YES I felt like a pretender. Tens of thousands of other visitors look legit — like this guy.
I stayed 3 nights in a magnificent building, Hostel Seminario Menor, one of the most important stops on the Camino.
I got some work done in my monks / College student private room. (19 Euros). And did a LOT of walking around the city.