GoPro Hero 2: Experiments in fatherhood and beyond

My dad died the weekend before my 38th birthday. I didn’t learn until a few days later that one of the last things he did was buy me a birthday gift. It was a fun little GoPro Hero 2 Camera, something I’d mentioned in passing that I wanted to mess around with on running adventures and otherwise. The cameras are made for extreme sports–surfing, snowboarding, motocross, etc. As a father of two boys, my extreme life is limited by the necessity of staying alive for a while (you’ll find me riding motorcycles and jumping out of planes when I’m 80).

Nonetheless, my dad and mom bought me the camera, my dad insisting I get it in time for the half marathon on my birthday. As it turned out, I was too emotionally wrecked to figure out how to use a camera for that. Since then, it’s been sitting here as a reminder.

With no crazy cliffs off which to jump or cars to drive fast, I turned to a couple things in my life that make for fun video: my kids and running. The effort is still a little raw, but I can see myself having fun with the camera, extreme or not.

Here’s an afternoon with my older boy in less than two minutes:

And here’s a bit from a race we rean this morning. Still working on a way to get the horizon line right on my head when running…