Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015, was such a beautiful day, cool morning but warming up to low 80s in the afternoon. I had planned to mow the lawn but due to the lack of rain, the ground is partially brown and the grass very crisp. The only thing needed was to mulch the leaves and clip the seed pods on the crabgrass. No rain, no water, no grass growing. So, since I'm delaying cutting the lawn, what should I do with the afternoon. Answer. Ride. And that I did.
I left the house about 1:45 p.m. after putting on my mesh jacket, helmet and gloves, putting the GoPro camera on it's pedestal and hanging my other camera around my neck. All is well with my part of the world. I thought.
Rode the three miles down Boyds Creek Hwy. to its intersection with Chapman Hwy. pulling in at the Weigle's convenience store/gas pumps. Topped out Sweet Thang, reset the odometer (no gas gauge so you have to learn how many miles per gallon you get at certain speeds), turned on the GoPro and headed towards Sevierville for a few miles until I turned off onto Wye Road.
I took a picture of Bluff Mountain shortly after I hit Chapman Hwy. Then started taking a few pictures along Wye Rd. It's a nice two laner and for the first few miles is pretty straight. Later I continued on to intersect a few other roads, make a few turns here and there an finally came to the Univ. of TN Ag Center. Made a left turn and ran along the edge of the farm on the left and the river on the right. Low water in the river this time of year. Eventually came into Walland area and made another turn continuing to follow the river. Lots of homes (cabins/huts/summer places) along this route. Still taking several pictures. Video was just rolling along.
Got to US 321, made a left turn and headed for Townsend. Population here is very low except during the summer vacation time and Fall color season. Not much traffic today. I stopped the video portion, rode on through Townsend and past River Stone Restaurant where I contemplated stopping for a bowl of peach cobbler with Vanilla ice cream. But I was a good boy and didn't.
Just past the River Stone you start to enter the Smoky Mtn. Nat. Park. I turned the video on again, took a couple of still pictures to continue my ride along the Little Pigeon River Road along the edge of the Park to the Sugarlands Visitor Center. Thought that would be part of a series of videos of the Park. Slow easy turns, nice foliage and such.
My intentions was to do these two shootings and then do one from Townsend to Cades Cove, do the loop around the Cove, and then do one from Sugarlands to Cherokee. And they are still good intentions.
I followed a couple of bikers and at the Sugarlands Visitor Center pulled in to refresh myself and have a bottle of water. I shut off the cameras, stuffed them into a saddlebag and headed out for the center. After meeting some folks from my hometown in MS, I got the still camera and headed out for Gatlinburg and the house. Entering Gatlinburg I decided to turn the camera on and take a picture or two but the lens didn't come out. I quickly glanced at the screen and it said CARD FULL. I said this can't be as I haven't shot that many pictures today.
Traffic wasn't too bad through Pigeon Forge so it didn't take long to make it across "touristville" to Sevierville and then on to the house via Chapman Hwy. After arriving at the house, I proceeded to download the pictures and realized, I didn't have any. But I did have a lot of videos. It seems that when I turned the camera on to check to make sure the disc was empty, I didn't move the little lever far enough which left it on the video setting. Unfortunately the first picture was okay but then the rest were pictures of my gas tank, leg, crotch, etc., until it shut itself off. This occurred several times until the card filled up.
And when I downloaded the videos from my GoPro camera, I opened one up to view it and it was upside down. Then I checked the others and they were also. What the heck? Then I checked the setting on the camera. You see, you can mount the camera upright and the pictures come out upright. You can mount the camera upside down but flip the pictures so they come out right. I had the camera mounted upright but the setting had the picture as if the camera was mounted upside down. Now ain't that a pickle.
So, I get on the computer, call up GoPro.com, get a telephone number and talk to a technician about what I can do to correct the videos. He tells me to go to their site and download photolab where I can then upload the videos to their program and then the program will flip them over and I can then download them back to my computer. Sounded easy enough.
I went to the site, and then found that my Lynux software was not compatible with their software. It had to be Microsoft or Mac. I dug through the box of electronic wires and found a long lead that had a USB on one end and the other fit my camera. Issue nearly solved. I thought. But nooooo. When I called up their program the Microsoft had to be 7 or higher. The desk top my son gave me to play games on is older than Microsoft 7 so it won't work. Now I'm back to zero. Have some good videos if you want to hold your screen upside down.
I have resolved myself to forget about flipping the videos but rather on the next pretty day, which won't be until late next week due to expected rain, make the same ride again, this time leaving earlier and stopping to get the cobbler with ice cream and finish riding through to Sugarlands. This time making sure the cameras are in the right mode to have pictures in the correct viewing position.
The ride was very nice and I did enjoy getting out a bit. Ride was 80 miles total, met some nice folks, and enjoyed the afternoon. Not great, but still good. So when you think everything is right, check it one more time just to make sure. But it does give me an excuse to ride some more.
Sweet Thang rolled over to the 100,000 mile mark on the way back from Louisiana. So now I have a new bike with only 560 miles on her. Well, she's not really new, just starting to accumulate another 100K again. Love that Phat Girl. She's a honey.
Until another Valkyrie Adventure comes along, have a great time enjoying life. It only comes by once.
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