Chris's blog

It was a big year at Chequamegon, Trail Genius had a lot going on, starting out with the expo on Friday.  This was the second year we have had a booth at the expo, and we found time to make some upgrades to our display.  Last year we have one LCD, this year we had three LCDs, and two iPads.  Plenty of screen space to show off Trail Genius maps.  The expo was super successful with TG making all kinds of new contacts.  Because we were in charge of mapping for the event, we got VIP passes, which meant free meals all weekend, starting with the spaghetti dinner at the expo.  As the afternoon turned to night, we finally had to pack it up so we could get some rest before the race the next day, but that didn't stop people from watching our video maps to the very end.

Chequamegon 2012

Trail Genius is not just for adults, my 6 year old daughter filmed her race this weekend at the Chain Drive Festival and made her first Trail Genius map.

Junior Chain Drive

It started with the idea, "Lets try filming a running race."  Then we said, "Lets not do any race, lets film a marathon!"  It sounded like a good idea at the time, but 18 miles into my first marathon, pushing a stroller with a bunch of camera strapped to it, temps in the 90s and the race officially called off because they were out of ambulances, I started to wonder if we were a little crazy.  The whole race is documented with Trail Genius maps avaiable on the event page.

GPS is a big part of what we do here at Trail Genius, so it goes without saying that we have a lot of different GPS devises.  Some of the cameras we use have GPS built into them, but for long events their shorter battery life can be limiting, plus the time it takes for the camera GPS to sync when you change a battery is frustrating.  In the end we typically use a second external GPS as a backup to the camera, or run a non-gps camera with and external GPS so we get maximum battery life.

Can you believe we got in our first group ride on the year on April 1st! The trail clearing crew was out all last week and it showed, the trails were is great shape. We started the ride by heading up Manganese Rd to Ma Maki where we started the climb to the Mountain Lodge. Didn't take far to realize the lungs and legs had a few cobwebs that needed to be worked out, but we slowly made our way to the top. So many choices on how to go down, but the group agreed on Red Trail to Mango then down Manganese Rd back to town.