Squiggles

 

Stony Brook at Old Mill Road

11 January 2026

GoPro batteries suck.

I mounted my new camera on Fozzie last Saturday. Pete had talked a few of us into a short ride from Pennington. The route was called "Squiggles." It was a good way to get 34 miles in without really going anywhere or climbing any big hills.

The roads were white with salt and occasional ice. We were all on our gravel bikes because we weren't sure what we'd have to dodge or ride over.

We spent the first handful of miles on a real estate tour of upper-class housing clusters on the western end of Hopewell. Then we went south through the edge of Lawrence and up towards the exurbs. This is when my GoPro battery conked out, not even an hour into the ride, right when things were getting scenic.

Okay, so it was barely 30 degress. But still, an hour? I bought this camera to record long rides and upload them to Rouvy. They no longer accept videos like ones from my Fly12 because it's not GPS-tagged. I get it. My videos never perfectly synced to the GPS route I fed the software.

I want good recordings of Acadia National Park, both the paved and carriage roads, to train on in the winter. With the meager juice from a GoPro battery, my annual trip from downtown Bar Harbor to Acadia National Park and up Cadillac Mountain would take me a whole fistful of batteries. 

Pete signaled a stop on Old Mill where the road crosses the Stony Brook. We all took out our phones. Martin recorded a deer crossing the stream.

Toward the end, when we turned onto Van Kirk, it was my turn to signal a picture stop. The Hendrickson Farm cattle herd was grazing in the field nearest the road.

This poor cow was trailing snot as if there were a faucet up her nose. I managed a waterfall-free photo. Martin went in for the boogers.

When I got home, I ordered 2 more GoPro batteries. When they arrived mid-week, I realized I'd been stupid. The only way to charge my batteries was to put them into the camera and connect the camera to a cable. That was no good. I went back to the GoPro site to find that, had I scrolled down a little more, I would have found an external charger. Which comes with two more batteries. I ordered the thing because I figured I might need four hours and it helps to have a spare.

Today, Tom led a short, off-the-books ride out of Cranbury. I mounted the GoPro on Janice and put the two spare batteries in my jacket pocket to keep them warm. It was in the 40s today, not warm, but much warmer than last week. I was hoping the warmer air would help.

It didn't. An hour into the ride, the first battery crapped out. We were a few miles from the rest stop, where I swapped batteries and started the camera again as we left.

As we turned onto Main Street in Cranbury, the second battery died. It had been an hour.

I went back to the GoPro website to figure out what settings I could change to extend the battery life. Dropping the video quality to the lowest setting will apparently give me an extra half hour. I'll test that next time. If the video is bad, I'll have enough batteries for high-quality recordings. Good thing there's room in my top tube pack for a baggie full of rattling crap.