Swan Hill - Melbourne Day 1

This was a mini tour with an ambitious itinerary, not much time, and cobbled together at the last minute when a relatively forgiving weather forecast emerged! The plan: get a train to Swan Hill after work on Friday, start peddling south Saturday morning, travel light, and emerge on the Western edge of Melbourne on Sunday afternoon before a strong Southerly change and thus tricky headwind was forecast.

'Bianca' configured for speed touring

So on Friday I zipped down to Melbourne's Southern Cross Station on 'Bianca' straight out of the office & grabbing the only vaguely "carb heavy" looking food on offer at the railway station to eat on the train. This was a fairly grim tasting pesto pasta salad. It was at least filling...but next time I'll take a packed dinner!!

The train north to Swan hill takes about 4.5 hours and bikes can go in the rear of the train.  Frustratingly, you can't book the bike and there is limited space. Its luck of the draw..but only an idiot would take a bike out to Swan Hill....right? I'd arranged a late arrival at a budget hotel conveniently on the main road south out of town in Swan Hill, and they were wonderfully accommodating with the bike and an early breakfast as well.

A beautiful morning dawned with the deafening squawks of local parrots ensuring everyone was up. I was rolling south nice and early with a very long day on the cards and an eagerness to make an early dent in the kilometers before the sun reached its full power.

For the first leg, it was a flat 55 km run down to Kerang passing a series of lakes on the way, that promised both motorised water sports, and bird life in the wetlands, as their prime attractions...

This reminded me of the great classic Aussie movie "Castle..."

Feel the serenity

The shoulder on this section of road is a bit patchy in places and the traffic fast with a few trucks...but most drivers were really courteous and overtook nice and wide. Winds were light and I made great ground here! After Kerang the volume of traffic eased off a lot as well...but the sun was beating down and there was no hiding from it (see below). In the flat and barren land there were odd moments of beauty to be seen. At one point 2 very large eagles soared down to land on a fence line close to where I went past - they looked very well fed!  The midday heat resulted in mirages from all directions, and farmers tall stacks of hay looked like a distorted scene from a low budget sci -fi film! Or maybe I just hadn't had enough water...

I'd set my new helmet camera to take a picture every 4 seconds, and in bright conditions, the pictures aren't bad. The really cool thing for touring with this is having a photo journal taken for you "in the moment" without you having to stop all the time. Here are some sample pictures from the cam:

Not quite the outback, but hot and exposed nonetheless

Not much of a shoulder here.
 It's worth noting in still mode, you can sometimes pick up the license plate no. 

Forgetting I had a camera running already...

I passed my mid point for the day along here somewhere but wanted to stop out of the sun so pushed on to Serpentine for lunch. When I supplied at Kerang I'd checked with some locals when the next water point was and was told there was a truck stop here that would have to do. This turned out to be good advice, it was a welcome relief to be under air con and even more so to wash the sun block out my eyes! Being a truck stop, food choices were poor and yet I somehow still spent $27 on lunch in there...what?! I was also an alien to them...they just could't fathom why anyone would cycle from Swan Hill. I half expected then to start throwing salt over one shoulder and cross their chests! But jokes aside the banter was fun and it was welcoming place that was hard to leave.

But leave I did. South of Serpentine I was on a smaller still road and saw a lot less traffic, enjoying taking up as much space as I wanted. Around the 160km mark I started feeling most unwell, a sort of queasy exhaustion. I'd drunk a lot of water, I think it was more the bad food options at lunch and the sun. At this point, the demons of self doubt started creeping in as to whether I could make it. After this carried on a while, and pace kept falling, I found a tree that offered a bit of shade and pulled over for a carb gel. I keep these only really for emergencies and they work wonders if not overdone. I was back in the game half an hour later and the road entered a more forested area...shade, bliss...awesome!

This section south of Bridgewater was a highlight of the day. The land took on more variety with increasing patches of hills and patches of trees teeming with life.Finally, at the top of a final hill section the cute "frontier" town of Maldon merged in the trees...and oh what a relief!

So it was 210 km for the day, only the third time for me I've cracked a double ton and the first in hot weather. The ride profile says it all:

Special mention to the Rendevous B&B in Maldon. What a great place! French couple Marie & Didier clearly love people and love their job and gave a very warm welcome. The bike was no problem and they mentioned they get plenty of cyclists. Didier also used to ride. They cook outstanding french food and have a well stocked bar. A great place to treat yourself if you can swing it. I was a wreck when I got here and left nicely refreshed.

Some further info for anyone else riding this route - water:

Between Swan Hill and Kerang there were only 2 places you could buy water and basic supplies. Beyond Kerang...there was nothing definite I saw. Make sure you are well stocked before leaving town south, its a long (80km) dry, hot and very exposed section of road with not much shade or relief from wind. The only definite water points I saw from there were at the next town Serpentine where there is a truck stop and a small service station. Between Serpentine and Maldon you could get water at Bridgewater or Newbridge.

I carried 4-5 litres...probably not enough in summer. I emptied that twice.

A brief point about my route choice:

I planned to enter Melbourne from the Western side and this route choice leads up to that. Its a fairly direct route, and uses mostly minor sealed roads. I did not focus on avoiding hills.

Day 1 route and .gpx is available here.

Contour Plus 2 - Review Part 2 - The device config file

In my last post I mentioned that the Contour "Storyteller" software isn't available anymore from the Contour website. Well you don't really need it, and there are a few nifty tricks you can do with the camera configuration just by editing the camera's configuration file.

Backup

Before you start, make a backup of the file:

• Plug your camera into your computer, and browse to the contour drive that appears
• In the root folder, you should see a file called "FW_RTC.txt" which is the configuration file. 
• Make a copy of this file on your computer

Ensure file is not "Read only"

Now, going back to the contour drive on your computer, right click on the file and make sure it's not "read only" - uncheck this box if its checked before you start.

Explore the file

Open up  "FW_RTC.txt" on your device. This first part of the file, tells you what you have configured the programmable switch buttons 1 & 2 on, when you open up the back of the camera :

And this part of the file, defines what parameters you can enter, for each of the options in the settings above:

For example, if I wanted to change program otpion 1 from "A" - 1920x1080 30fps (NTSC)/25fps (PAL) to "G" 848x480  120fps (NTSC)/100fps (PAL) I simply change it to:

You'll notice I also change the 2 update settings to "Y" - this ensures the device firmware gets updated next time you power on the camera. If you leave it on "N" nothing will change.

To save your changes, just save the notepad file. Make sure you eject the device properly from windows before you unplug it. And you do this at your own risk! Make sure you test it before you need it....

Option for travelling

A good option if you are travelling,could be to make a couple of copies of the configuration file with the various settings you prefer, then just copy the one you want to have active onto the device whenever you need it. For example, have a couple of different microSD cards with you, and use one for HD video in low light, and a different microSD with different settings for other shooting conditions.

Contour Plus 2 Camera Review - Part 1 - Out of the Box

I recently purchased a Contour 2+ helmet camera, and thought I'd review impartially, and in detail how it fares. I'm going to do this in a couple of parts, first of all talking about what you get for your money, and then in part 2 after a bit more use, I'll look at the software, and some results from using it.

First of all, you need to know that Contour have gone bust. This is a great shame, and its probably bad news for anyone who brought a camera recently, and needs support. Parts of their website  are still up, but there are no official links available to download the "storyteller" software (which does not come with the device in it's packaging - more on that in a  minute) and there is also no support available on their website.

Contour devices are still being sold however! And consumers need to be aware that there some risk with buying one of these - if it breaks, you'll have to negotiate with the store you brought it from with regards to a refund. On the plus side, these camera's have dropped in price if you shop around, and you can get a quality product for a bargain. So first of all, here's what you get for your money.

Opening the box

It's an impressively tidy package, and the build quality of everything seems pretty good:

The Contour 2+ Comes with:

• Waterproof case: Looks solid & genuinely waterproof with a good seal - though I haven't tested it underwater yet. The case adds quite a bit of weight and if you were mounting it on the side of a cycle helmet, I think it would pull your head to the side too much. I'm not going to use this on my helmet.
• USB 2.0 cable
• Rubber lens cap
• Gigastone 4gb MircoSD card + SD Adaptor. It;s worth mentioning 4GB won't last you long (maybe 1 hour of full HD video recording). I purchased an additional 32GB micro SD separately.
• 2 adhesive mounting points + 1 spare adhesive pad for the rotating mount (see below)
• 1 Safety cord
• The Camera

Mounting

Out of the box you only get 2 mounts. The mounts are basically just rubber sliders with an adhesive back (made by 3M) that you stick to your helmet. I'm not sure I totally trust the adhesive backing to hold for long, and especially not if the the camera is in the waterproof case. The problem is that bike helmets don't actually have any fully flat surfaces on them. The mount does flex a bit, but I can still see a few small air pockets after attaching mine (and waiting overnight before use to let the seal form, as recommended).

The mount pictured above rotates so you can adjust the camera angle, and so far this rotation hasn't "slipped" on me. The Safety strap however, is not long enough to attach to the helmet (It's designed for goggles) but I'll make my own which will be easy. Note also the safety strap that comes "out of the box" only fits the adjustable mount pictured above. On its own, it looks like this:

Although its an additional $AUD 65-100, it's probably worth buying the bike mount kit. I cant see the mounts that come out of the box lasting forever, and if its wet, I'd mount the camera on the handlebars in the heavier case. Here's what you get with the separate bike mount kit:

Finally, a few useful links.

To the owners of contour, if you want these removed I will do so immediately on request. But it seems unfair to consumers, that the products are still on sale, yet your can't download the software. or even read the instruction manual, from your own support web site. The software (Contour Storyteller) is essential for configuring the device. For video editing, you can use either contour software, or any other video editing software. I will post more information about the software soon...

You can download both the instruction manual, and windows installer for Contour Storyteller from dropbox here .This is not my own link...it was found with a search engine and I take no responsibility for the content on there!

All in all, I'm enjoying using this so far. I immediately have noticed a difference in driver behaviour as well...if a motorist notices the camera, they tend to be more likely to behave with their driving.

I'll follow up with "Part 2" soon.