GMR 12/20/12

I had a chance to ride today so I did ha ha! But one of them day you get out there and after a mile up GMR you ask yourself, what the heck am I doing up here?". Well, as tough as it can be at times those are the times you have to tell yourself, If I can make it today, I can make it anytime, well mostly ha ha! Did help that the 3 riders I saw up there were freaky fast and blew by me like like I was standing still.

The first guy that passed me blew by like he was on his way to fight a fire. Wow! But I would have to say he was cool and offered up a hello. One thing I have to give to GMR riders, they are almost always encouraging and motivating to other riders up there. Even when they kick your arse they are still friendly about it ha ha! This guy flew by fast, sort of made me wonder why I was up there. But after he passed I kind of sort of thought he looked like that guy holding the number one position on Strava. If it was him, I can see why he's number one! After thinking he was the dude, I felt a little better knowing that he should kick my arse  anyway so it made it easier to keep on ha ha!

I did different mounts to try out. I used the Go Pro bar mount on the way up and the first section down. Tough trying to figure out how it really worked as the road was pretty torn up, lots of cracks and bumps. A couple of the views I got to the side were taken while holding the Go Pro on a small tripod. Actually works pretty good. But it was windy up there today so I kept my hand held shots to a minimum. Then the seat post shot, I really like this one but I'm using the roll bar mount rather than the handle bar mount so the width and the frame design of the Madone keeps me from pedaling. This shot looks a bit slow cause I couldn't pedal the to get up any kind of speed on the section of GMR where I tried it out. I think my Cannondale will work but the slope of the Madone made it impossible and I ain't clamping on the carbon tubes. The lower part I tried a "fotopro" mount I got online a couple years back for $5. Worked OK but again, seems the entire road of GMR was pretty torn up so it all came out a bit bumpy. Maybe I should have brought the helmet mount but I wasn't expecting the road to be that thrashed.

But the high definition looks pretty cool in the video! Oh yeah, and always, always stay on your side of the road when descending the switchbacks. Big green forest trucks are pretty darn "BIG"!

So it turns out the dude that passed me is a bike forum member by the name of AntonioRossi. Man, the dude is fast!