Monday, January 25

Alone Across Alaska: 1,000 Miles of Wilderness

"A solo journey across northern Alaska. Features grizzlies, caribou, moose, wolves, Dall sheep, as well as spectacular scenery."

Alone Across Alaska: 1,000 Miles of Wilderness from bucktrack.com on Vimeo.

Stumbled on this while doing some research on packrafting. What I loved most about this was the original route planning which combined hiking and rafting (though technically not packrafting) to follow the Brooks Range divide in Alaska. I haven't seen or heard of anyone else attempting this and Bruce did it solo.

George Christensen, Earn Local, Ride Global


George Nov. 2009 near Zhengzhou China

From the Chicago Reader.
George Christensen, a 55-year-old bike messenger, likes to set challenges for himself. In 1975 he sat through every inning of every game in the bleachers at Wrigley Field. In 1991 he made 73 deliveries in one day, a record for Chicago bike messengers at the time. Last spring he attended 70 movies in 12 days.

But of all his serial obsessions, one stands out. Any bicycling enthusiast might take one long trip of 5,000 or more miles. Some take two or three. Christensen has taken 15. He's also done at least one 1,000-mile tour every year since 1977 and more 300-to-500-mile trips than he can count. At this point, he says, "It takes several days of jogging the memory to shake them all out."

Since 1989 he's been a messenger with Cannonball, now called Dynamex. He works only in the winter--he says there are fewer pedestrians to contend with and the money's better because fewer messengers are working--and the rest of the year he tours. He says sometimes on a frigid January morning a downtown office worker will ask sympathetically if he's all right. He isn't insulted. He knows you don't see many white-haired bicycle messengers, especially in the winter. "If I tell them a little bit about myself," he says, "they're relieved." Then it's his turn to feel sorry for them. "I feel like I'm out there riding around the Loop asserting my freedom, going by buses with all these people that are comatose and people sleepwalking down the sidewalks. And I'm intensely alive out there, alert and sensitive to every little stimuli.

You can read the rest at the rest of the article at chicagoreader.com or check out George's blog at georgethecyclist.blogspot.com

The Third & The Seventh, an architectural video

Is still find this hard to believe but apparently this amazing video was done 100% with computer graphics. CGI has come a long way since I was in school.

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

.Fullscreen it, please.

A FULL-CG animated piece that tries to illustrate architecture art across a photographic point of view where main subjects
are already-built spaces. Sometimes in an abstract way. Sometimes surreal.

Credits:

CG

|Modelling - Texturing - Illumination - Rendering| Alex Roman

POST

|Postproduction & Editing| Alex Roman

MUSIC

Sequenced, Orchestrated & Mixed by Alex Roman (Sonar & EWQLSO Gold Pro XP)

Sound Design by Alex Roman

Based on original scores by:

.Michael Laurence Edward Nyman. (The Departure)
.Charles-Camille Saint-Saƫns. (Le Carnaval des animaux)

Directed by Alex Roman

Done with 3dsmax, Vray, AfterEffects and Premiere.

EDIT: Original MP4 torrent if you're interested. Thanks to Brennan ;)

http://www.temporarygate.com/TheThird&TheSeventh.mp4.torrent


http://www.thirdseventh.com/

third.seventh@gmail.com

Thursday, January 7

A six minute view Trans American bike route

The possibilities of ultralight touring are affecting me in strange ways since I finished putting together my new frame bag system.

let's call this the "sub 34lb touring machine"

I can only describe it as an itch that I haven't been able to scratch due a nasty cold made all that much worse by the fact that it's snowing heavily out today and I soooo love to ride in the snow.

In fact there's a little voice in my head saying, "to hell with it you're almost over it anyway, it's time to go out and play!" I shall not be able to resist this voice much longer and I suspect I will find myself on deserted back roads riding my Surly Cross Check in gently falling snow by the moonlight (or LED) sometime this evening.

Is it so wrong that I was watching this video by Bret Taylor composited from photos taken every five minutes of his entire TransAm ride (via Bike Bits) and all I can think is "look at how beautiful those roads are... you could definitely ride that entire route with some 25mm skinnies, a composite frame and ten pounds of base gear".



A million thanks to Bret. I can think of absolutely no better or faster way to get a complete overview of the road conditions along the entire TransAm route then Bret's video. Scratch that... without Brett's video there's absolutely no other way to get a sense of road conditions.

Other then Bret's video there's only instinctual "map sense" based off of years of reading maps, planning and riding routes in different areas of the country and perhaps google maps.

I can't imagine how long it'd take to overview the entire route in Google's "street view", even if the entire route were entirely covered by street view. Google Earth is cool for a terrain overview but not road conditions. The only thing that can give you a sense of road conditions is to see the actual road.

4000 miles of road condensed to just over six minutes and set to some good music. Good stuff.