I love to ride.  I love to take pictures (I’m Asian, it’s part of our DNA).  I really have been struggling to blend the two.

As a safety precaution, I always ride with my phone, which takes great photos.  My hurdle is that I always wear full fingered gloves when I mountain bike and it was a bit of a pain to

1. reach in my pocket
2. take off glove
3. snap photo
4. struggle to put on glove on sweaty hand
5. place back in pocket & zip up

My handy GoPro wasn’t doing the trick either; the last thing I need to do it hit the shutter button when going downhill.  That just spells skinned knees, bumps and bruises.

And then I was tinkering around on GoPro’s website.  GoPro5 has voice activation.  Wow!  That solves my above listed problems.  Now to figure out where to mount it.

• Handlebars: Too much on there already w Garmin, bell, potential light.
• Top of my helmet: No!  I refuse to that person.
• Chesty:  Although pretty great at taking shots, it’s – umm – as a lady, it’s already a bit crowed there.

I finally settled on a backpack strap mount from DaKine.  For $20 I figured I’d give it a shot and so far – love it.  I got the set up in time for the Sedona trip.  

Here’s the run down:

Pros:

• Relatively small mount that doesn’t get in the way
• Mounts great on my camelback (I was worried that it would only fit DeKine backpacks)
• Close enough to my mouth so that it hear commands (although note Cons below)
• Super easy to attach GoPro with no extra tools.

Cons:

• When I’m cruising downhill, the sound my hub makes is loud and the GoPro doesn’t hear my voice commands (maybe I need a new bike? 🙂 )  Going uphill is fine.
• I need to by a cover for the GoPro.  I tend to whip my back back off as soon as the ride is done and the camera has ended up face down in the back of the truck.
• All photos are slightly to the left.

  

So that’s the skinny for now!  I’m charging up for today’s ride and hoping to show you more photos of my rides in the future.