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Georgetown Racing

It was a beautiful day at Gerogetown Lake this week. Sunny, warm and the wind was only intermittent. We’ve actually had some really nice race days up there even if the first days were hovering around-50 with the wind chill!

www.thesuicidaleggroll.com

This week I talked my co-worker, Szady, into coming up to race. He has an Audi S4 and we talked about winter tires for a while until he decided to go with the Bizzak’s. So what better way to test them out than to come up and race on Ice! He ended up winning his class!

I had the good fortune of winning one of my two classes this week. We had a subaru studs race and a Pro Street race on a big long track with lots of speed. I got a bit hesitant with the speed on some of my laps. Wow it sure seems different when you are hauling at 45+mph on a glaring sheet of ice into a hairpin turn. It is a LOT of fun though and I really didn’t get to comfortable with it until my victory lap… which seems a bit funny now that I say it.

Jon got 3rd in pro street studs, which is a solid accomplishment as well. I went out in the first round!

This time however we added more cars to the video. More jeeps, bronco’s subaru’s audi’s. Everything! Mix all that together with a bit of rocket man and tada! You have a cool Our Gang Ice Racin’ video.

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Georgetown Ice Racing

Another weekend in Georgetown and another fun time. We headed up there to compete on the ice with the Our Gang Ice Racing club and had a blast!

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I always feel as though I finally have the course dialed about 2 hours after my race. But I love going out there and doing lap after lap to go play on the ice. I am also glad that I haven’t gone out in the first round yet this year which at least gets me a second run. Hopefully at some point I will have some familiarity with their course setup and be able to start visualizing the fast way a bit sooner so I can be more competitive!

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It has been great getting to know these guys too. It is a bunch of people who are basically just looking to have fun. I can appreciate that because that is my whole motivation for going out there. I just want to have fun! Sideways action and “fast” speeds always bring a smile to my face!

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This time I made another video. I am fortunate to have a friend in the film world. I chatted with him last week and he gave me a few process ideas, pointers from a guy who uses Final Cut Pro for his job. “Naw, don’t use that format, use this format,” was how the conversation went. Use this format, do it like this, it will turn out awesome. So I did and I did a bit more research in color correction in FCP and a few other things and I am really psyched with the progress. I love making these videos because they all help me learn the program and the motivate me because I am so excited to actually work with this video. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy this weeks installment on Youtube.

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New Years on Ice

Yeah, ice is cold. Maybe too cold… But wow is it fun!

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New years day we headed out to Georgetown to go racin’! The Canadian Conti Ice tires we have spec’d out to fit into the mens pro street class and we were able to race with the big boys. The day wasn’t without controversy, but Jon and I were, eh, less than impressive on the ice this time out. Maybe it was the recorded -20 degrees, maybe it was all the hairpin… Maybe it was the pressure. Who knows, but I ended up with 5th place and Jon, well I don’t know what he got. I did win $5 though with my certificate of AWESOME.

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The day was very cold, we were able to get out and race however and unfortunately there were no practice runs on the course. It was a fun course however and definitely challenged me. The course was what they refer to as a “coke bottle” which should describe the shape well. At each end there was a hairpin and this was pretty tough. Without using the handbrake we had to rotate the car around this pin and I can honestly say that this isn’t something I have tried to do before. My first round I was doing horribly, but the guy I was racing hit a cone so I won by default. My second round I did fantastically, my turns were perfect and as I crossed the line I let the back end get away from me… and I hit a cone! My racing day was over, but we waited around and once the Pro Street class was done everyone moved to the Cheaters course. Jon and I spent another hour and a half driving the course. We got lap after lap on the course and had an amazing time. We are a bit competitive, but we mainly just want to go have fun, go sideways and just play! Of course, as you are aware, we will take a GoPro everywhere we go…

Another fun day on the ice, we are looking forward to more races soon!

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The Video Action

It has been probably 8 years since I have really done anything big with video. I have been tinkering a bit more recently however with POV cameras mainly and basically just having fun learning Final Cut Pro. It is quite different from the Media 100 system that I used in the past, but I am beginning to figure out some of the quirks and getting a bit more comfortable with the system. In addition to that, in 2005 YouTube came out. I missed the early years of figuring out the proper compressions, file types and workflows that are optimized for online streaming so I am catching up now as well. Trust me on one thing. I have been making a bunch of mistakes. One right after the other typically. But I am getting a bit more comfortable and working out a workflow that is getting a bit better to deal with these things.

In the next year I am hoping to get some more of this stuff dialed in. I like having the ability to make videos that are more professional in quality. Hopefully with a bit more tinkering in my “free time” I will be able to get prepared for a few more projects I have in mind.

This year I am playing with the GoPro’s at the Kart track and using the video to tinker with more and more settings, export options and all kinds of other things that the programs have to offer. I am hoping to make a short Ice Racing video from this season as well to show off how awesome it is to race on the Ice and I would love to try to do a bigger and better Pikes Peak video this year too.

Over the past two years or so I have shot a bunch of smaller videos, just quick edits and rough things that I threw together with music or just threw together in an afternoon. I was doing short videos for our SoapBox teams too. They were all done at some ridiculous hour and squeezed in before I fell asleep.

Here are some videos from over the years from some of the adventures we have been on.

Feb 2009

July 2009

September 2009

January 2010

March 2010

March 2009

July 2010

September 2010

December 2010