But I'll Hurt Myself
October 8, 2010 9:52 AM   Subscribe

Bike Jump — Four straight minutes of dudes ramping bikes and their bodies 35 feet into the air and splashing down into a small pond. [1080p slyt]
posted by netbros (42 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
A joke concerning "fish needing bicycles" is left as an exercise to the viewer.
posted by rouftop at 9:59 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


That totally gave me a warm fuzzy. Back in West Virginia swimmin' hole jackassery was just about the most fun you could have. I love the city I'm in now, but there are definitely things I miss.
posted by poe at 10:12 AM on October 8, 2010


Fun people are having fun.
posted by 3.2.3 at 10:13 AM on October 8, 2010


I'm jealous of the kids of the future who will have perpetually recording high speed cameras mounted inside their retinas, which will automatically edit together the most rad moments of their formative years and upload it to their iGoogle LifeDrive such that they will be able to recall any point of their life as an early 80's Juicy Fruit commercial.
posted by hanoixan at 10:16 AM on October 8, 2010 [10 favorites]


Back in West Virginia swimmin' hole jackassery was just about the most fun you could can have.

It is one of the finest forms of jackassery.
posted by louche mustachio at 10:17 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


The taste the taste the taste is gonna mo ooove ya!
posted by dirtdirt at 10:19 AM on October 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


I love the fact that the bikes wear more safety gear than the riders.
posted by Mister_A at 10:19 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


Man, those kids are going to have to repack their hubs AND their bottom brackets. Drag.
posted by GuyZero at 10:20 AM on October 8, 2010


Maybe they're using sealed cartridge BBs?
posted by Mister_A at 10:22 AM on October 8, 2010


Some of those dudes are ladies. Or is that a gender-neutral term now?
posted by echo target at 10:25 AM on October 8, 2010


nah Mister_A, those "sealed" cartridge units are actually worse. They form a sort of super hydraulic worm pump/seal action kind of deal that pumps water/grit INTO the BB shell as you torque the cranks...where it then sits and forms a species of grinding paste for the other moving parts.

ask me how I know this.

/rides road bikes in the mud, has replaced far too many FSA bearings
posted by lonefrontranger at 10:26 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


I recognize this ramp from a video where some girl does a nasty faceplant.

My co-worker sends these "fail" videos out all the time.
posted by orme at 10:29 AM on October 8, 2010


lonefrontranger, your first mistake was using FSA stuff. riding your road bike in the mud only nearly redeemed you.

that video just makes me long for summer with a beautiful heartache. i know. it's only October. I just had a summer. But i can't wait for the next one after seeing that.

I'm keeping that bookmarked to make me happy-sad during the MPLS winter.
posted by entropone at 10:43 AM on October 8, 2010


That was amazingly well shot. The video was as wonderful as the "music" was awful.
posted by cccorlew at 10:48 AM on October 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


That video was great. The quality was so high I scarcely believed it was shot by all those young attractive people!
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 10:51 AM on October 8, 2010 [3 favorites]


That was surprisingly watchable for the entire length. (this is high praise I normally watch just like 30 secs of mefi posted videos)
posted by oddman at 10:54 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


Now that is how you use technology to make solid memories, and they even got permission to use the song. Good to see the kids are still all right.

note to OP: at least two women did the jumps, too
posted by davejay at 10:55 AM on October 8, 2010


Seems like fun, but it's weird that only two girls (by my count) go up & over. Makes it feel like a douchebag bro-fest with various giggling trophy-girlfriends.
posted by Marquis at 11:03 AM on October 8, 2010


When I saw the guy wearing a helmet I thought "Well, at least one of them isn't suicidal." Then I realized they were probably just using the helmet because it's the easiest way to mount a helmet cam.

Then I felt impossibly old.
posted by contraption at 11:03 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


Which one is pb?
posted by cjorgensen at 11:03 AM on October 8, 2010


Mountain Dew is a hell of a drug.

You win.
posted by davebush at 11:18 AM on October 8, 2010


You know, that video could have been a bit crap. But it wasn't.
posted by MuffinMan at 11:20 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


beautiful
posted by bottlebrushtree at 11:25 AM on October 8, 2010


A lot of fun to watch.

I've just added riding a bike off a ramp into a pond to my Things-I-Like-To-Think-I-Would-Totally-Be-Able-To-Do-But-Who-Am-I-Fucking-Kidding List.
posted by jontyjago at 11:35 AM on October 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


I'm wondering how they managed to keep their cameras dry for the helmet cam shots. Anyone who knows anything about cameras have an idea?

Also,
Metafilter: swimmin' hole jackassery

posted by axiom at 11:36 AM on October 8, 2010


axiom: "I'm wondering how they managed to keep their cameras dry for the helmet cam shots."

I think the milk bottle might have been some sort of floating aid for the cameras.

That, or they just dropped the coin on an underwater rig (which are often as expensive as the camera).
posted by notsnot at 11:43 AM on October 8, 2010


Right up there on the Mother's Nightmares list. And totally Yeeeeeeeeha inspiring.
posted by nickyskye at 11:43 AM on October 8, 2010


axiom: "I'm wondering how they managed to keep their cameras dry for the helmet cam shots."

"For the shots with the camera on the biker, we used an HD Surf GoPro. It was my first time working with a GoPro, and I was super skeptical at first, but with it's slomo, and easiness to use after you spend a little of time with it, it worked great. And I was surprised how well it cut with the footage from our Canon cameras. No disappointments. All the GoPro footage was shot at 60fps as well, and 720p."
posted by phirleh at 11:53 AM on October 8, 2010


I think the milk bottle might have been some sort of floating aid for the cameras.


The milk jug was to help find the bike underwater. Same with the foam tubing and the lifejackets tied to it.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 11:53 AM on October 8, 2010


"I'm wondering how they managed to keep their cameras dry for the helmet cam shots."

In the video description, he mentions they used the GoPro HD Surf: "Waterproof to 180’ / 60m and protected from rocks and other hazards thanks to its removable polycarbonate housing."
posted by inigo2 at 11:53 AM on October 8, 2010


the first time that I saw something like this was in the Seasons DVD from The Collective, a group of British Columbia based pro mountain bikers who shoot some slick documentaries (previously) and they used the pool as a way to figure out stunts and trick sequences.

This take seems a lot more stupidly fun though.
posted by bl1nk at 11:55 AM on October 8, 2010


Seems like fun, but it's weird that only two girls (by my count) go up & over. Makes it feel like a douchebag bro-fest with various giggling trophy-girlfriends.

I think the other girls may have heard about what happened to another of their number during a previous trip to this lake.
posted by saladin at 12:11 PM on October 8, 2010


i wonder if the foam on the bike was for padding or flotation - would be a pain to dive down and haul your bike out each time.
posted by loggy23 at 12:44 PM on October 8, 2010


That made me smile. I certainly wouldn't do that today, and I don't know if I would have done when I was the age of the folks who shot this video, but I'd totally have done it when I was about 12. Hell, we did pretty close to the same thing only without video cameras or a nice swimming hole to land in.
posted by marxchivist at 1:12 PM on October 8, 2010


i wonder if the foam on the bike was for padding or flotation

The bikes are padded in case the rider lands on them. In some of the shots you can see a life jacket strapped to the bike for flotation.
posted by dobbs at 1:31 PM on October 8, 2010


I smiled the whole way through.
posted by OmieWise at 1:48 PM on October 8, 2010


one hell of a video and a most enjoyable song.
posted by krautland at 2:10 PM on October 8, 2010


I feel sorry for the wankers who chicken out at the last minute. How embarrassing.
posted by elder18 at 2:45 PM on October 8, 2010


Are you guys really surprised that there were only a few girls/women, or are you feigning surprise? Because I am surprised at your surprise.
posted by Mister_A at 2:59 PM on October 8, 2010


nice work! definitely entertaining!
posted by iamthetrend at 7:04 PM on October 8, 2010


This is fun and all, but it looks professionally produced. I can't help but feeling like they're selling me something and all those people are actors.
posted by chairface at 9:37 AM on October 9, 2010


chairface, if you check out the rest of the youtube page, you'll notice that it belong to a professional director of photography, no doubt part of a portfolio that he's building. Indeed, if you compare this film to a lot of the other amateur bike trick films that you'll find on youtube, there's certainly a 'prosumer' level of thought that went into setting up the camera angles and lighting. If anything, the fact that these folks are playing around at what looks like late afternoon to get that nice sunset light at least speaks to some sort of background in photography and deliberate choice about how to compose this film.

With that said, I'm equally willing to believe that these really are a bunch of kids of who have been doing this stuff all summer long for the past three or four years and one of them happened to know a guy who knows a guy who knows a budding film producer who thought that this would be a great idea for a film to send on the adventure\adrenaline film festival circuit. The cost of digital video equipment and editing software is so cheap nowadays that even without commericial sponsors; you can just build a career out of making documentaries that sell nothing more than 15 minutes slices of inspirational awesomeness.

Aside from the musician credits it doesn't have any obvious product placement -- it's not like there were any lingering shots on the downtube labels of the bikes or the bottles that the kids were drinking, so I'd just enjoy it for what it is.
posted by bl1nk at 10:58 AM on October 9, 2010 [1 favorite]


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