Motorcycle Videos

After a wild fire destroyed a significant portion of one of our more difficult trails, trying to locate the trail by foot was becoming too difficult so I took to the air. This, along with Google Earth and some saved GPS tracks from previous rides helped a great deal in recovering the trail.

After a wild fire destroyed a significant portion of one of our more difficult trails, trying to locate the trail by foot was becoming too difficult so I took to the air. This, along with Google Earth and some saved GPS tracks from previous rides helped a great deal in recovering the trail.

3 Trials Bikes on the way to open a tree choked trail... somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Featuring a cooperative effort between rival helmet cam companies.. A Go Pro for Sam and a Contour for me. Featuring some knee cam action for a different perspective.. Sept 2011 Music by Jesse Cook from my CD Collection. http://jessecook.com/#/home/

The second in a 2 part video of my introductory ride on the Slick Rock Park loop trail. The previous video went from the parking lot to the first view point with the camera mounted on the bottom of the right fork leg. This video picks up as I am leaving the first view point on my way to the second and then back to parking to finish the 3 hour ride. This time the Contour camera is mounted to the center of my right knee. I found that the center of the knee joint doesn't change the camera angle as my legs do their suspension job. The purpose of this ride was to take my time, practice balance and control while testing the uncommon traction available for my sticky Trials Tires at 4 PSI. Music Sound Track by SizzleBird and Tipper Music by prior permission.

My first day at Slick Rock Park in May of 2012 exploring Solo and experimenting with different camera positions on the bike and on me. This first part was shot with the Contour camera mounted at the bottom of the right fork leg. I tried to keep some bicycles in view when possible but pacing them made some of them nervous. Most of them were very curious and could see the similarities as I crawled up and down just about anything I could legally find. Part #2 will include the camera mounted at the center of my knee.

A "Preview" of my first ride on the Five Miles of Hell Trail in the San Rafael Swell area west of Moab, Utah with Barca on his Yamaha 250. I met Barca in Moab at Slick rock Park where he wanted to tag along to see what Trials Motorcycles were all about. This was probably his 4th or 5th time riding the trail so he became my guide. We used a pair of Scala Rider Helmet communicators and to get his voice into the video, I took the right helmet speaker and taped it to the outside of the helmet directly under the microphone hole on my Contour Sports Cam. Others call this 5MOH or Five Miles of Hell but on a Trials Motorcycle, this is exactly what we are always looking for so I say 5MOH stands for "Five Miles of Heaven". Due to a sore neck, I took it a little slower than normal to ease the bumps and because watching for the paint marks AND look for the best or most fun line takes a little extra concentration. Even so, I missed the turn up the Stair Step section. I also missed the left turn at the top. Maybe on my next ride, I'll take some time to walk the more difficult features and try to for a clean ride. Barca took a few videos on his pocket camera so where possible, I'll be including the second video in a window as I did at the end. This video review was taken from the first 2 video files out of 48 taken on the almost 4 hour ride. The non-4x4 section of the trail is actually 8 miles with two "Escape" windows that can take you to the 4x4 road that runs on both sides of the trail. I used my Garmin Oregon GPS to record the track and then overlaid the track on Google Earth.

Treading Lightly on a primitive Deer Trail, I get a surprise... And quickly learn that batting at a spider on your face with your left hand, leaves your right hand on the throttle with little directional control... Spider was on the opposite side of the helmet from the Contour Helmet Cam.

An example of how to clear trees from a primitive trail without actually removing them so that riders of various levels can have a challenge suitable to their level. Again, this was a primitive trail that can't support every caliber of rider so why clear-cut it? This video shot with my Canon 890 IS ELF pocket Camera at 640 X 480 30 FPS Part 2 includes the test rides of some of the routes using a Contour Sports Cam on my knee.

Continuing from Part 1, this is the test ride, with my Helmet Cam strapped to my knee. This part shows several examples of the various routes possible using me as an example. On the third up hill route, jumping the diagonal log at an acute angle, I was expecting good tire grip on the bark. What I didn't know was that the bark was old and the rain from the previous night and maybe years before had soaked the log under the bark. When my rear tire gripped the log, the bark peeled off and exposed a super slick surface. On a repeat ride, I used more body un-weighting and less dependency on the tire traction.. See Part 1 for the reason I left these logs in the trail.

Arrival and test ride at Cougar Rocks. (several slight revisions from the original) This ride was to introduce this unique Trials area to Sam and Russ. Russ with only 5 months total motorcycle experience on a borrowed Gas Gas Trials motorcycle was a little over his head but did extremely well. The limited time and threat of rain limited our time on the rocks so any further video of the many fun challenges there will have to wait. Music by David Lanz & Paul Speer. "Allegro/985" from the album Natural States

September 17, 2011. Brothers Sam and Russ take a chance and allow me to take them to one of my favorite Trials Fun areas. It has no name but I call it Cougar Rocks and I've been riding there for over 17 years. This first 10 plus minutes covers the 5 mile climb from 2,100 feet to 6,400 feet of elevation with a lunch break. Note that Brother Russ only started riding motorcycles 5 months ago and this ride is one of the more difficult ones in the area. At 4:15 through 4:30 minutes in the video, there are some puffs of dust in front of me. You can't see it from the camera, but there is a Grouse (Ruffed Grouse I think) flying and running down the trail in front of me... Hahaha And there was another one near the beginning of the video first visible at 00:59 seconds. Music by Northwest Artist Tom Grant: "Aerobics in Space" from the Album Night Charade

This was just amateur Instructor (Me) trying to demonstrate neutral foot peg position with a light grip on the grips. To help, I raised my clutch hand for a few feet to show that I could still remain on the bike and that I was not using the handle bars to keep myself attached. Note the knees and feet on the pegs and how close the waist is to the bars, not bent over at the waist. Then three log jumps trying to lift the rear wheel to the log and get it to stick with no bounce. Each jump shows a little different amount of front wheel impact trying to find what worked the best. The choice of music is a tongue-in-cheek joke... no Rap, Hip Hop or Heavy Metal sound track that seems so common today.. Something different.. ;-)

Some common questions from beginner riders of Observed Trials Competition Motorcycles pertaining to the handle bar position and the controls on them. Though this is primarily for Trials Competition Motorcycles, some of the lever position portion and throttle routing can apply to all dirt-bikes.

A short ride from the Entiat Valley to the North Tommy Creek Trail to check on the annual trail clearing progress and a chance to practice more Helmet cam work. Shot with a Contour HD 1080 helmet cam at 720 60FPS mode and edited with Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 The bike is a 2007 Gas Gas 300cc Trials Bike from Spain. On the return road ride I put the camera on my knee for a different perspective. The camera was in the optional sports protection case so sound was very muted and therefore the need for music fill. First 2 songs by Joe Satriani followed by one from Marc Broussard from my CD Collection.

I have written about this hazard to new riders too many times and it's a difficult one to describe in 100 words or less, so I decided to make this video to help. Feel free to pass it on to any new riders you know. And if you didn't know, the electrical tape on the end of the grip was to help see the rotation of the throttle.

Robert Schwenke shows us how to float that rear wheel all the way to the top of our favorite test log at "The 40 Acre Ranch". Starting out a little rusty, he works at putting all of the components together until he gets one of the best jumps I've seen on this log.. As in Aviation Lingo, He "Greased" that rear tire on to the log... no bounce! Shot in February 2011 near Hobart, WA using my Canon HF-11 HD Camcorder. Edited with Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10. Music from my Jesse Cook collection: "Matisse the Cat"

June 18 2011 on the Eastern slopes of the Cascades in Washington. An early season Solo Ride and check of a primitive trail in hopes of getting a head start on clearing the Winter Dead-fall and a chance to exercise my healing shoulder... Also still experimenting with the Contour Helmet Cam. A 2 mile choked dirt road to the trail-head and a tip toe ride on the lower part of this primitive volunteer maintained trail. Me as "volunteer" only cleared to the first creek. What looked like dirt along the edge of the creek was really 8 feet of snow covered with forest debris and a 5 foot drop into the creek... Na, not this time Music from my collection: Angelo Pizarro of Seattle, Album: Serendipity, song: Ecstasy Jesse Cook, Album: Narada Guitar Collection, Song: Breeze from Saintes Maries

An unfortunate crash ended with some humor as Adrian's Gas Gas buried its tail pipe into the dirt forming an exhaust plug. Watch as the plug is cleared narrowly missing the person standing at the rear. Moments before the shot, that same guy was directly behind the exhaust before getting a little warning that something might be flying his direction. And what is Stan doing kicking that rock around... LOL

One good ride followed by a ridiculous one. I went from feeling like I knew what I was doing to feeling like an over-turned turtle... Longer legs might have saved the day, but then what fun would that be?! I figured if I was going to post other people's crashes, it would only be fair to include some of my own... drats!! Taken with my Canon HF-11 HD Camcorder but edited for lower quality output.

While clearing downed trees from a trail, Tom and I came across one very clogged switch-back with not enough time to cut every tree so we kicked in a fresh 'S-Turn' alternate and decided to use the pocket camera video to see if we could ride it without tearing up the new ground. Tom graciously volunteered to play the part of the "Newbie" ;-) while I tried to demonstrate a fundamental turn with open legs to lean the bike while remaining as upright as possible and with a light grip on the bars. This was a quick and dirty editing job at 640x480 resolution from a Canon SD 890 IS Powershot camera.

The 4 of us just generally having a good time riding everything on the 40 acres while trying to remember the lessons. About 83 Megabytes. All movies shot using a Canon Pocket Digital ELF 890 IS Camera.

Still day #1 for Tim (Frostbite) Moving on to one of the more difficult logs on the property. It's elevated, smaller diameter and sloped to one side with inclined landing on the other side. Second part was back to the beginning log to work on details. First jump was to use the body only exercise from a moving platform by skipping the second power blip. Then, timing and target work by marking the launch line on the ground and a 'Target' stick placed on the face of the log.

This is the fist ever attempt at jumping a log with the Trials Bike for Tim ("Frostbite"). 5 minutes later he was looking really good and after some more detail instruction into the mechanics of the jump, he was on his way! As Tim said, he had never jumped a log because in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada, there ARE no Trees! The next day, he jumped every big log we had on the property, much bigger than this first one!

June 27, 2009. While Trail Clearing on the West Fork of the Teanaway River, we took a little example video of two of us riding up this short, rocky climb. The rocks were regular river rocks in the creek and the typical square and loose volcanic rocks on the climb. The point of this video was to look for differences in leg work to look for flaws in either myself or my friend. My friend does not have a Trials bike so doesn't get much actual practice. this video will help explain a basic flaw I was seeing. The thing to look for here is the action or lack of action of the legs, primarily from the knees down. A typical problem for many riders is that they hold the boots and lower legs still and against the bike with the knees always about the same distance apart. A key point in the video is where my friend slips and ends up bending over at the waist to correct instead of opening the legs to let the bike make the slip. From that point on, his upper body is no longer aligned with the background trees. Compare with my upper body alignment through the entire ride. With leg suspension working correctly, the bike almost seems to float over the rocks. See if you can pick out the differences.. many times they are so subtle that you can't see it at regular speed. Oh yes, the big back pack I'm wearing?? There is a Stihl 020T Chain Saw in there!

An attempt to demonstrate a Kick-turn in limited space on a hillside. Not perfect, but close enough. Two turns into the hill and one away. 54 Megabytes June 14, 2009 Shot with a Canon HF-11 HD Camcorder.