We were on our way from Los Angeles to Vancouver, BC and, with a fairly low budget, had agreed to buy a tent and camp for much of the journey. Leaving Los Angeles and heading north through Malibu, we soon encountered the California State Park system.  There are a number of variations but all tend to offer decent camping facilities which range from basic/primitive (just toilets) to developed/family (showers, wash blocks etc).  The first stop we made was at a place called Pismo Beach which is at the southern end of the area known as Big Sur. 

This is a beautiful part of the world where US Highway 1 runs along the Pacific coast.  The beaches are fabulous and the scenery breathtaking. What a place to camp!

We arrived at Pismo to be greeted by a friendly park warden who told us to grab some wood so we could have a fire and then head onto the beach. "Just stick to the side of the beach nearest the sea when you rive up there" she said, eyeing our front wheel drive Chevrolet Aveo which we had rented in Los Angeles the previous week. I was at the wheel and got stuck in, zooming down the ramp onto the sand. It was brilliant. There were hardly any people around as we zoomed up the beach, right by the waves. 

Soon we saw a few campers, mainly in large trailer caravans and RVs, dotted along the beach away from the water in Mad Max style groups.  This is a popular area for off road dune buggy riding and almost everyone is in a truck, and a big truck at that.

We were aware that the tide had been high about 4pm and now it was getting toward 6pm. I don't know about you but I'm not the best at judging tides. How far WILL the water come up the beach? Well, best to use local knowledge and do what everyone else is doing. So, after exploring up and down the coastline for a short while we chose our spot and pointed up the beach towards land to park. 

That's when the problems started. I spotted a suitable spot for camp and aimed the car up the beach. About 10 yards off the damp sand it became abundantly clear we were going to have difficulty going any further. The car stopped and the wheels span. We were totally stuck. I got out and moved some of the bone dry sand away from the front wheels and had another go at getting out. No luck. Nich then tried and I pushed but we just dug ourselves in deeper and deeper. A couple of our fellow campers wandered over and pointed out that we should have backed up the beach, but even then though we probably would have had trouble. Then a friendly chap called Roger headed over to us in his truck and offered us some advice. "You won't get that out of there" he said, "I can lend you a shovel if you like". Meanwhile the beach patrol had been over and offered their services to drag the car out for $50. 

By now it was getting dark. We hadn't set up our tent yet, but, being northern, there was no way I was going to pay a guy to drag us out when I could dig out for free. So we decided to leave the car there for the night and set up camp. It was now dark and a swarm of king-sized mosquitoes had come out to play. We madly tried to set the tent up as quickly as possible but the first time setting up a new tent is never easy. Eventually it went up and I started digging whilst Nich got the dinner on. Throughout the evening we dug all of the sand out around the car. A hole of around three feet deep was eventually excavated around the entire car and we went to bed, totally exhausted.

The next morning, we emerged from the tent at first light to see Roger heading over in his truck. He hopped out and congratulated us on our efforts. Then he let our tyres down to 15psi and offered to help push. I got in the drivers seat while Nich and Roger pushed and we got out at the second attempt. Whoops and high fives all around as well as some valuable lessons about camping on beaches. 

As if to congratulate us further, a huge migrating flock of sea birds swept passed us as we were packing up our tent, It was utterly spectacular and the end to one of the best experiences of the trip.  Sometimes you have to get into a bit of trouble to enjoy yourself. i think Nich calls it type 2 fun. 

We started back in Vancouver to see our friends and remember why we loved the place so much. One of these loves was the mountains and how easy it was to access the best places in the world for outdoor activity. So, two days in, off we went to Whistler for a days mountain biking. Nich came along this time too after a weekend training course in the Welsh hills. It was an amazing day. Great weather, great riding and great for Nich to finally have a go on a full Downhill rig! 

This time around, and after my week in Les Arcs in the French Alps, I attempted some of the more tricky runs. But the super fast, jump heavy highways like 'A-line' and 'Crank It Up' are still my favourite experiences on a bike. I knocked together a short video with the help of some music from 'Clutch'. 

The BBC in Birmingham is housed in the Mailbox, a shopping centre in the heart of the city. It didn't take long for us to meet up with our security guard and get across to where trouble had started. We joined a line of riot police as a group of masked youths began smashing the windows of Marks and Spencer a hundred yards up the road.  The police charged and we followed, but the kids ran leaving broken windows and the objects which they'd used to break them, bottles of spirits.  

A short while later we wandered around to Moor Street station to find a burning car. There were a lot of kids around but the atmosphere wasn't threatening and I started filming. Within a couple of minutes I got a tap on my shoulder from our security guard who suggested we get out of there. I looked round to see that the kids had been replaced mainly by masked youths. The kids, in hindsight, probably were the masked youths. We got out as quickly as possible to see that the police line had moved back and we had suddenly, briefly, found ourselves right in the thick of it. As we headed back toward the police line the officers shouted at us to get back. The big camera came in useful (along with a press pass) to wave at them to say that we were press. As we approached the line we realised that there were bottles flying from around the corner they were ensconced at.

I got a shout of 'Bottle!' as a Smirnoff Vodka bottle, complete with optics, came flying over our heads, landing just behind the police line we were approaching. We ran through the line and retreated out of throwing distance before commencing filming. The kids were now turning their attention toward the police so we decided it best to retreat back to the safety of the Mailbox.

BBC Ten o'clock news lead story, Birmingham riots

The next day I was awoken by a phone call to get to Winsom Green, a segment of the Birmingham metropolitan sprawl. Overnight, three men had been hit by a car as they stood on the street to defend of their neighbourhood from looters. Sadly, they had all died that night, and now the police had opened a murder investigation. When I arrived the scene, the forecourt of petrol station on a usually busy street, was quiet. A few members of the community stood outside shops, but the majority of people there were police and press. The forensic teams examined the scene and gathered evidence. People started laying flowers and gradually, throughout the day, the community gathered, many of them had been up all night outside the local hospital waiting for news. The father of one of the dead men spoke to the press. He spoke for everything that was wrong with the events of the past few days, and brought it back into reality. I believe that his words had more effect in ending the riots than anything else. As much as the media had it's part to play in spreading the troubles across England, this event demonstrated the power of the media in spreading the message to stop.

I eventually returned home late that night having worked somewhere close to 35 hours in 2 days. My work had led the national news bulletins for nights and the experience is something I won't forget quickly.

There were plenty of Olympic related faces around. IOC president Jacques Rogge turned up and I managed to film the amusing spectacle of Seb Coe, Boris Johnson and Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt all lined up together to greet him as he stepped off a little bus. Boris Johnson was great. I filmed three separate interviews with him and he was different and engaging in each. Such a difference to the media robot politicians we have running the place at the moment. It's a damn shame he's totally bonkers.

Other faces interviewed/spotted included former triple jump gold medallist turned TV presenter Jonathan Edwards, former javelin thrower Steve Backley, sprinter Linford Christie, rower Matthew Pinsent and world cup winning England rugby coach Sir Clive Woodward.  A good day!

 

We had not anticipated, however, that the relations between the UK biking community and the locals had become as strained as it seemed to be when, on the Friday morning we awoke to the news that virtually all of the UK plated vehicles had had their tyres slashed.  Although there was talk of various reasons why it had happened, the fact that the main targets were outside British run mountain bike chalets spoke volumes. 

Amazingly, our car had not been affected as it was right on the end of the line of vehicles on the main road and the perpetrator seemed to have been disturbed. Still, it put a big downer on what had been a fantastic week and something I'd love to do again. Perhaps on a bike with rear suspension though!

Unfortunately I haven't seen much tennis as I'm often running down to edit and send pictures for various regional bulletins across the UK. It's part of the job and you can easily lose track of what is happening in all of the games as they run simultaneously. Luckily the reporter I'm working with (Heidi) is a tennis freak and is well across all of the scores as soon as they change.

On the celeb front I've managed to spot, in no particular order, Boris Becker, John Inverdale, Richard Bacon, John Mcenroe and some puppet dog of CBBC. 

Andy Murray is on court tomorrow to try and reach the semis. Here's hoping he gets there.

So, last Friday I picked up a newly built Santa Cruz Chameleon from a great little shop near Nottingham, and on Saturday took it down to Chicksands bike park in Bedfordshire and spent the day racing down the Four X track. Great fun! 

My plan was to mount one camera on the bike as close to the track as possible, another on the handlebars looking back at the rider, and then to do a quick pitstop to switch one of the cameras onto the riders helmet. When I saw the bike I realised that there were going to be problems! Being a road bike, there was no space on the bars for any standard mounts. However, we were stood in the factory that built it. So, a bit of head scratching/genius on the spot ideas/engineering from the team at Norton and we had knocked up a brand new GOPRO mount... I'll christen it the 'Norton Indicator replacement mount' I think.

It sat in the spot where the front indicator should be (you don't need them on a high speed lap around Donington when you have exclusive access!) and gave a great shot of the riders helmet clad face.

The second camera was the VIO Pov cam. Its tiny tubular camera is on the end of a wire and so you can get it into some pretty out of the way places. We managed to mount it on the rear portion of the bikes frame and get a shot pointing out of the back of the bike. It was literally 2 inches above the rear tyre but managed to get both the tyre and rear fairing in shot so that you could see the suspension working around the track.  The VIO camera then connects to a quite bulky box which we managed to mount to the frame right above the riders left foot and basically on top of the engine block. The beauty of this was that the microphone on the VIO block would pick up the sound of the engine as if you had you ear pressed against it.

All that was left was the riders helmet. That rider was to be former World Superbikes star Chris 'Stalker' Walker. His signature helmet wasn't going to take kindly to glueing a GOPRO mount to it so we had to think of something else. There is no open venting to tie into but Chris himself suggested we strap the vent mount around the chin guard on his helmet. Effectively we were mounting a camera on Chris' chin!

We were only given 10 minutes circuit time as the busy preparation for the World Superbikes meeting was on, but Chris managed two laps with the GOPRO on the bars and then, after a quick pit stop, two more with the helmet mount. The results are below, all shot and edited in a day... it's been down converted from 1080HD to SD to match the broadcast cameras used, and for airing on BBC East Midlands Today on Friday 25th March. Thanks to the guys at Norton Motorcycles including Chris Walker, the guys at Donington Park, and Ross Fletcher at the BBC for making it happen!

I entered a short film into the Sheffield Adventure Film Festival's Jagged Globe shorts competition. We went down to the festival last night and watched all the entries, including mine. I didn't win but it was great to see something like that happening in the UK. The winning film was great (Nich and I actually preferred the runner up though!). Judge and jury and fellow Hull-man Andy Kirkpatrick was entertaining as always and in many ways his intermission chat at the competition was better than his lecture, which we had seen just prior.  My mountain biking mate Vine was amused that Kirkpatrick gave the first prize to his mate Ben! 

The other great thing that Kirkpatrick did was spend ages in his lecture telling us how he couldn't reveal the name of one of his climbing partners because said climbing partner had requested he wasn't mentioned. "I'll refer to him as 'him'" he said and ploughed on with a reading from his upcoming latest book. The first time he seemingly accidentally said the name, I threw a knowing glance at the wife. Next time I started chuckling to myself, but when he put up a picture of the guy's face and said his name three times in one sentence I was a bit bemused. I fully expected a gag about it at the end of the lecture but there was nothing. So, Andy - you might want to work on that!

In other news, I've been doing the usual work for East Midlands Today, here's an example - Jeremy Nicholas' piece about a rocking piano. I make a convincing body double; Jem can't play the piano.

Also, I helped out my friend Brady Haran with his attempt at recreating the famous Elements Song by Tom Lehrer. That's the one in which Lehrer sings all the elements in the periodic table to music. A classic. Brady makes videos about science and has created a Periodic Table of Videos with the help of some scientists at the University of Nottingham. Since he's finished all of them, he thought it would be a great idea to have his scientists singing the song.  He got me in to do the music and help construct the film, which was fun. The result is here...