Track Pete

On April 9, 2008, my life was irrevocably changed. Every risk I’ve taken in the last two years has been a direct result of almost a single moment in time. I remember looking at one of my best friends, Brad, and saying “I am going to quit my job and travel the world.” To hear Brad describe this moment is somewhat shocking, because he could see in my eyes how real this was, and he knew it would happen. It started out, as it always does, with a small risk. Brad wanted to do European Delivery on a new BMW and spend a couple weeks driving around Europe – for me to join him would require taking the longest amount of consecutive vacation from a job I had ever taken in my life, an entire two weeks . Our trip would end in Amsterdam, where some of the guys on my team worked, so I was able to justify it by finishing up with a week working out of our Amsterdam office. Brad’s brother Adam joined us for what would turn out to be a whirlwind tour across most of Western Europe and a defining experien

A huge part of my traveling is sharing my experiences with friends and while I enjoy my writing, nothing beats photos and videos for simple, pure sharing. Over the last two years I have slowly tweaked the hardware, software, and technologies I use for this, always trying to find a balance between cost, usability, and quality. In July I took a couple major steps, adding a DSLR and a high definition audio recorder to address what I felt were major gaps in the video of my ContourHD (audio and low-light performance). As I prepare for my next adventure, I’m taking the knowledge gained over the last year and changing things up again. First of all, the Zoom H2 is out – the audio quality was amazing, but it is simply too big, too bulky and (most importantly) too much of a hassle to use. I am currently looking for a smaller, much simpler device that I can activate with the touch of a button/slider through a jacket pocket. I plan to equip this two small external microphones including a shotgun