Why I'm Here: Examining my Pinkbike Motives

I came, I saw, I got really freakin' inspired.I joined pinkbike.com on August 2, 2010 for one reason: to buy a 2009 Rockshox Revelation from a kid in California who was selling it for way too low of a price so i could throw it on my new stumpjumper frame. While waiting for that person to reply to my numerous messages and send me a tracking number after I bought the fork, I started casually browsing the site. What I discovered amazed me.

I had seen bootleg clips from huge-budget films like "Seasons" and "Kranked" on youtube, but nothing like the user-submitted videos on this site. Pinkbike is a breeding ground for creative, insightful, breathtaking mountain bike media. The types of videos that would be simply overlooked if posted elsewhere are VOD-quality when posted on Pinkbike. Don't take that the wrong way, it's just that to be interested in mountain bike videos, you generally have to be a mountain biker. The majority of youtube members aren't mountain bikers. The entirety of Pinkbike members are. The videos I watched on this site inspired me to start filming mountain biking.

A question that still confuses me to this day hit me right away. How do I be a videographer and a rider at the same time? I was a rider first and foremost, but I also wanted to express my creativity behind the camera. I found a quick solution: wear the camera.

I bought a GoPro HD so that I could selfishly film myself ride some better-than-average trails at a slightly faster pace than my friends. It wasn't my first helmet camera, just the first one I used more than twice and didn't sell on ebay after 2 weeks. The GoPro is great and I love using it, but helmet cameras are very one-dimensional. They are along for the ride, so you better do cool shit on your ride or it will be a very boring video.
I tried to be creative and use the downtown of my city as the backdrop for this one.

The Red Bull Night Shift was a way to see if I was capable being a trail-side filmer and not just a rider with a GoPro on his head. I think it went pretty well, judging by the positive feedback from the locals/racers.


In 2011, one of my goals is to film more from the side of the trail, but also ride my bike more. These seem like two conflicting goals, but no one ever said I couldn't shred til I'm heaving, take my bike back to the car, grab the camera and tripod, and start filming one of my buddies. I think it's possible. Who knows, a VOD might even be the result if I work hard enough. Hopefully I'll be getting a Macbook Pro for my birthday in May, and eventually get Final Cut or some comparable program to help with editing. Right now I'm on a iMac G4 PowerPC with iMovie. Not exactly a professional setup.


So in a nutshell, I'm on Pinkbike to view the creativity expressed through the videos and share my own videos. The videos I watch daily on this site influence the way I ride, the way I film and the way I listen to music (My thought process: "This song would be great in this type of video on this type of trail with this rider."). I have a "Riding Video Music" playlist in iTunes for those songs. Right now its' 16 deep. That's a lot of edits.