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An american friend of mine once told me he'd like to retire to a place where his US dollars are worth more. Well, biased as I am, I said: " Hey! Romania might be that place, you know!" or something like that.
So if you're looking for a place to retire, why not come to Romania for at least one year, just to experience what it has to offer.
If you love outdoor activities like trekking, mountaineering, climbing, paragliding and mountain biking there might be no better place to live in Romania than Brasov. The city is situated in the middle of the country and you're equally distant to all the other nice sites of Romania. Like Baile Herculane for instance.
Imagine that Romania is the size of a medium US state and has everything:
high mountains with ski resorts (watch the video above - Postavaru Mountain & Poiana Brasov)
and Danube Delta - the second largest river delta in Europe, after the Volga Delta, and is the best preserved on the continent
The climate is temperate continental with hot summers (30 °C / 86°F) and heavy winters with snow and frost (-15 °C / -22 °F).
And if you're into culture then Brasov has a lot to offer as it's a medieval city with citadel walls and towers, the first Romanian school, fortified Germanic churches (made by Saxons), etc.
However my focus is on the outdoorsy beauties of Romania, hence my collection of outdoor adventure videos you can watch below. Also there's a sweet spot for snorkeling, cliff jumping and DWS climbing in Bulgaria, not very far from the Romanian border so that's a perk! :-)
What's the cost of living in Romania
Let me tell you this: with anything starting from $ 600 a couple can easily live in Brasov. Take $ 200 for rent (fully equipped studio apartment) and if you don't splash around too hard (clubbing and fancy restaurants) the rest should be enough for your monthly expenses.
PS - I forgot to mention that Brasov was voted the Most Beautiful City in Romania (by the readers of a national paper) and The Green Capital of Romania.
Enjoy the videos!
Winter Mountaineering in Fgaras Mountains - Vistea Mare Ridge
Multi Picth Climbing with Two Students in Postavaru Mountain (Itvig Cliff - Animals Wall)
Multi Pitch Climbing in Piatra Craiului Mountain (Königstein)
Update:This contest has reached its deadline. Thanks to all who entered.
If you're an adventurer that needs to get things done:
on time (time & date, alarms, countdown timer and stopwatch)
at a certain altitude (altimeter)
in a certain geographical area (compass)
in good weather (barometer, storm alarm, temperature)
then here's your chance to win a Suunto Core Watch ($299). As you may know, Suunto is known to manufacture excellent (rugged and smart) adventure watches for all types of outdoor atheltes: mountaineers, climbers, paragliding addicts, divers, trekkers, etc.
Whether you almost died during your last ascent or you just soared with eagles with your para glider - you tell the story and Tactical Gear will give you the watch.
This contest is open to U.S. residents only. The contest ends at noon on July 1 and the winner will be announced on July 6.
Did you cut your waterproof winter pants with your crampons while mountaineering? I did...
The funny thing about Gore Tex jackets and pants is that they cost a ton of money and you're supposed to wear them in the harshest places and conditions.
So you pay big bucks for your North Face or Mammut jacket and then you have to crawl through a chimney while climbing a gully - your jacket scratched and ripped from all that pushing against the rock face. Yeah, bring it on! It doesn't matter - you'll pay another $300 for a new jacket, right?
Or NOT!
Repair your waterproof jackets, pants, tent or other gear with Tenacious Sealing & Repair tape
It really makes no sense in buying new gear with every small puncture. In the end, each piece of outdoor clothing / shell (and even your tent's flysheet) is susceptible to cuts and tears so you might as well accept it and be prepared to fix it.
I used to invest emotionally in my brand name clothing but I realized it's plain silly and now I don't give a crap if what I'm wearing has a logo or not. As long as it's functional, keeps me warm and dry, that's all that matters. And I advise you to do the same. Repair what can be repaired and go on with your climbing, trekking or whatever.
The McNett Tenacious tape seems to be the best of it's kind. I've read a few reviews and people seem to love it.
The salesperson in the mountain shop told me he used it to seal his inflatable sleeping mat and it still holds. It seems the bond is pretty strong.
The tape is transparent and comes in a 50 cm long roll. That's enough for you to patch a dozen jackets.
How to use it
Cut a patch and make its corners round
Make sure the area you're placing the patch on is clean and dry (trim loose threads in the cut)
Peel off the paper
Apply the tape on the cut and press hard
Leave it 24 hours as for the bond to reach its full strength
Where to buy it
The Tenacious repair tape (also called ripstop repair tape or seam sealing tape - you can seal the sewings in your waterproof shells) can be found in most of the specialized mountain stores.
If there's no such shop in your area, here's a list of direct links where you can buy online your waterproof repair tape:
And here are some pictures showing you what the product looks like:
Instructions
Hole in tent's flysheet
Flysheet repaired
Stay dry and be safe!
Disclaimer: This is no sponsored post. I bought the tape myself and I'm happy with what it does. If your jacket is leaking it's worth trying to patch it with Tenacious tape. It's not expensive and you can fix all sorts of gear or other items (backpacks, synthetic upholstery, gaiters, etc.)
This is a new color variation of the formerly published tailwhip bike T-shirt design. I hope you like it better this way. Download it and print on on your shirts or buy it in the Highball T shirt store if you want to support Highball Blog. Thanks!
Here's my latest bike stunts video that I shot. I got lots of respect for these guys - I've seen them training and I know about the tons of sweat they put in to pull those tricks. Thumbs up for them!
Update: There's a new article where you can learn how to build a GoPro steadicam - it works with compacts and DSLRs as well. Watch the videos below to see my new glidecam design.
The pictures below and the above construction scheme show you how to make a gimbal for your DIY camera stabilizer. But as simple as it may look, the reality is it's a painstaking work that needs lots of attention to details if you want to get that smooth video footage.
Why am I saying this? Well, I wasn't able to get the steadicam to work properly with this gimbal design (which was inspired by YouTube user realbugger - watch his clip below). What I mean is this: I didn't execute the work perfectly and I accumulated small errors here and there that ultimately made it impossible for me to balance the glidecam...
I'm currently working on another design (I dropped the cube idea) which includes some machinery work (also a two piece top plate for placing the camera on - sliding in two directions for fine tune balancing). The point isthe cube and ball bearings gimbal work fine if you execute it right. Just as realbugger shows you in his clip - even though he admits he went through trial and error before reaching the final version.
How to make the gimbal
You need a wooden cube and a drill with a spade drill bit and a regular bit: the spade to drill holes for the bearings and the regular one to drill the gaps for the bolt heads and the hole for the threaded bar that goes through the cube.
I had the cube made by a friend of mine who runs a furniture business (he has the proper machinery for this kind of work, lathe and all). And I recommend you do the same - look for a local workshop that can do it for you. They have special drilling machines where the piece is being held in a vise and the boring is much more precise. A specialized shop can usually do it better than you and as long as the cost is not prohibitive, you should give it a shot.
The cube has to be perfect in all aspects:
each set of faces have to be parallel
respect the 90 degree angle on each corner
each hole must be perfectly centered on the face
each pair of holes must perfectly aligned so that the skate bearings will be parallel and centered on an imaginary line that passes through them (see the infographic above)
Pass a bolt through each of the bearings on which the gimbal handle will be attached. In my case, the gap wasn't large enough to accommodate the bolt head so I cut it off with a hack saw, leaving just a thin piece (see pic above).
Add a self locking nut on the bolt and tighten it. Now the bearing spins on the bolt. Add some resin glue on the bearing and inside the hole and slide the bearing in the cube. Use a ruler to make sure the bearing is aligned with the surface of the cube.
Do the same with the rest of the bearings. One pair of bearings shouldn't have any bolts in - those will hold the main shaft of the whole rig. Let the glue harden over night.
Make a frame out of flat stock for the handle. Drill it accordingly on the lateral ends to be placed on the gimbal. Also drill a hole for the handle.
Take a PVC 90 degree elbow and heat it above an open flame. Force the bearing in while the pipe is still malleable. Bent the margins as to hold the bearing inside - let it cool down and you're done! Don't forget to prepare the bearing beforehand (slide in on a bolt and add a locking nut).
Assemble the gimbal and you're good to go.
Now just add the main shaft along with the upper and lower weight plates and you've got yourself a new stabilizer. That's the easy part - the hard part is shooting and editing interesting videos. :-)
Add duct tape on the bar for a close fit. I used 8 mm thick threadedbar (50 cm long) and bearings with 22 mm exterior diameter and 8 mm interior diameter.
You don't wanna tighten the bearings too much on the threaded rod. Actually leave a tiny gap between the bearing and the two nuts tighten against each other that act as a stopper. This grants a free spin of the bearing.
You can also use locking nuts to hold the gimbal in place but the thing is it's hard to thread a locking nut 20 cm on the bar. If you want to move the gimbal higher or lower on your rig (depending on the camera you're using) it's easier to loosen the nuts and then spin then by hand (you need pliers to hold the rod if you wanna do that with the locking nut).
Notice my previous DIY gimbal in the background. The main advantage with it is that it "auto" adjusts since it has 3 concentric PVC rings - you can't go wrong with it.
However, professional camera stabilizers have a 3 axis gimbal where the movement on each axis is done via a ball bearing which means everything is much smoother. That's the goal you want to accomplish with this design (and with the one I'll be releasing soon).
And there you have it - a DIY glidecam to shoot movie like scenes that'll impress your friends. You'll also get tons of attention whenever you're out shooting videos (people coming to you asking What's that?) :-)
See the full batch of pictures with my project here.
Why this didn't work for me
Firstly, I didn't ask my friend to drill the wooden cube as I show you in the infographic above (see top of this post). So each hole was deeper than it should have been.
Because of that, my bearings weren't exactly resting on anything. They were only touching the lateral walls of the bore so my only solution for fixing them was to add the resin glue.
I tried to have them parallel with the faces of the cube but what if each set of faces weren't parallel?Or what if each pair of holes wasn't perfectly aligned nor diametrically opposed? Maybe there were small imperfections in the cube itself which led to other minor imperfections in placing the bearings which also cumulated with...
Bad placement of bearing in PVC pipe handle. The bolt sticking out of the bearing was sightly tilted, which means the bearing was tilted within the PVC handle, etc.
I should mention the metal frame of the handle was imperfect as well. There was more weight on one arm which also caused imbalance and the bends were incorrect: one arm was lower than the other. The two arms weren't within the same mathematical plane.
The funny part was I only became aware of all these issues after I assembled the stabilizer and tried to balance it for more than two hours without any success.
Conclusion
At this point I'm pursuing another design but I may come back to the cube since it's kinda cute and easy to implement. And now I know what I did wrong so that's a valuable lesson about physics and the principles behind this type of gimbal.
I'll be experimenting with custom manufactured pieces coz I want to achieve the best performance possible. Mostly I'm curious if that's the key to perfect balance and optimal work flow when actually shooting video.
Over to you
Did you build a camera stabilizer?
Do you think it's worth the effort?
What other tips can you suggest for a minimalist DIY steadicam design with maximum functionality?http://www.highballblog.com/2011/07/how-to-edit-gopro.html
No matter what you do outdoors, there's always something you need to have: water.
Of course some can resist longer without it but depending on the level of your physical exertion you will need to drink water sooner or later. Weather conditions, the nature of your activity (hiking, trekking, cycling, trail running) and your metabolism will dictate how often and how much water you'll drink.
So, how do you carry your water?
Well, the modern outdoor athlete has what's called a hydration pack, also known as a camel bag.
The guys at Outside PR asked me if I want some outdoor gear to use and abuse and in exchange to write some reviews on Highball Blog. To which I said: Hell, yeah!
