The Union Cyclisme Internationale held its World Championships in Richmond recently, to the great delight of bike racing enthusiasts all over the east coast, but especially central Virginia.  This view is overlooks the crowds on Libby Hill, the next-to-last climb on the about ten miles around loop of city streets that the riders raced (but they raced something like 15 laps).  Ben King, a Charlottesville native, was in the race (he raced in the Tour De France last year as well), and many C-villains were there to cheer him on.

I shot my pictures of the event all at this basic location.  From the very bottom of the hill looking up, and also from halfway up, and then this view looking down.  You can make out the cobbled road snaking down left and right through the crowd.  This was a very difficult surface to ride on – keep in mind the road is ridiculously steep here, and the cobbles reduce traction on your tires.  Coming around these bends, most riders tried to stay in the gutter, which was made of poured concrete – much smoother.  But the gutter was only ten inches wide or so, right next to the crowd, thus also presented its own difficulties.

I shot a twinned set of GoPros from this location also, trying to capture the action in 3d video.  Alas, one of the cameras was malfunctioning (but I didn’t know it – GoPros will sometimes be failing and not let you know….  not good!), so all I got was the “flat” video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55ZElh8q-Ws

You’ll hear a lot of noise in the video which is me fiddling with the Sputnik – I was sharing the same tripod with both cameras.  A twin camera bar held the stereoscopic GoPro enclosure on one side and the Spud on the other.