This is both a fun and torturing video stream. It’s great to hear the kids when they are getting along and having fun and not so great to hear them screaming, arguing and complaining. If you want to skip right to the part where Wesley screams out “Oh S#*&!” before narrowly trampling a snake – go ahead and click HERE.
Video Stream – Day 11
This may be the most entertaining of the videos depending on your point of view. The guys and I chatted about all kinds of topics from the mundane to the unique. And occasionally, we just enjoyed the quiet of the forest.
Video Stream – Day 10
Foiled again by my iPhone bodycam – so the video was split into two parts and we missed some of the funnier moments of when I got us turned around and confused.
Video Stream – Day 6, 7, 8, and 9
At this point I’m not entirely sure why I’m still recording these videos. At some point I may have the time to go through the videos and edit them into a highlight reel or do some high-speed condensed version. But for now they are just an embarrassingly bad record of how heavy my breathing is as I drag my out-of-shape butt up and down the trails. Enjoy.
Video Stream – Day 5
I still managed to hit the wrong button half-way through the hike so the video got split into two chunks again. I could fix it, but I don’t want to. For the few people who may actually watch these videos, please note that the soundtrack features that classic hit, “Out-of-Breath” by Overweight Dad. If you want to get a look at the fire damage from the May 1st brush fire, check out Part 1 at about 13:55. That covers the East edge of the fire. For the North, West and South edge, check out Part 2 at about 49:11. Lastly if you want a first-person view of me stumbling on rocks, falling forward, scraping my shin, launching my water bottle, uttering an expletive, smashing my phone on the rocks, then muttering not one, but two delayed exclamations of “Ow”, you can skip right to 1:02:45 of Part 2. It’s quite amusing.
Video Stream – Day 4
If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m really trying to avoid any post-production video editing because it’s the ultimate time suck. However, as long as I’m using an old iPhone as my bodycam it seems I’m destined to capture the video in a few different parts and I really don’t want to bother stitching the files together at the end of the day. So these post are going to continue as a series of videos until I come up with a solution. I did upgrade my camera mount to an actual purpose-made mount delivered via Amazon Prime just in time for the day’s hike. It was much easier to point and align and also to check on the video occasionally without much effort. You’ll notice when the camera suddenly points straight down and then backup without explanation, that was a progress check.
Video Stream – Day 3
The video streams for the first two days of my hiking were bad. Really really bad. I’m not striving for National Geographic levels of adventure video here, but the camera (an old iPhone 6s Plus) should at least be pointed in the right direction. I ditched my original phone mount which was frugally and hastily crafted from a Ziploc bag and some gaff tape. I proceeded to come up with a more complex but hacked solution using an old phone car mount, some plastic carved from the back of an old phone case, and more gaff tape. An extra elastic strap from a bike mount for my phone was co-opted to secure the phone in the mount. I now had the ability to actually point my camera in roughly the right direction AND orient the phone in landscape mode like a proper video. What I did not have was the ability to easily check the screen of the phone while hiking. This resulted in the video getting stopped somehow and me not noticing for about an hour so I lost some footage of our walk along the Neponset River. The video gets resumed later in the hike but then again I accidentally stop the video but this time I noticed right away so I was able to restart it and continue.
The first video from the day covers the Burma Road Trail from start to finish with Patricia and Wesley joining me and it goes on to cover us backtracking until we find where the trail splits and heads North-West as it traces along the Neponset River. Shortly after we take the turn, the video cuts out.
The second video picks up about an hour later. So it missed some really nice footage from our hike along the Neponset and my first crossing of the Swamp Trail. it also missed when Patricia and Wesley split off to head home while continued on to finish my planned hike for the day. I stopped for some water and a granola bar and that’s when I noticed the video was stopped. I restarted when I was somewhere along the Green Hill Path and it recorded the rest of my hike, but with one more start/stop that split the video into two chunks along the way. At least I got some nice shots of me leap-frogging through back through the Swamp Trail and it also recorded a brief encounter with a first time hike where I shared my map to help him get oriented.
DIY Bodycam
There are all kinds of very cool action cams that come with fancy mounts or ones that are nice and compact but still have a three axis balancer and I think those would take amazing videos of my hikes. However, i’m just starting out on this project so for now I’m going the DIY route. I grabbed an old iPhone 6s Plus I had sitting in a drawer and fashioned a holster out of a cut-up ziploc bag and some gaffers tape. Not the most elegant solution but it should suffice for now.
