this one's for teri

The other day we received all the 'adventure cycling' maps in the mail - Teri, the sales and marketing director, was even kind enough to throw in a handful of stickers and a short letter wishing our film the best of luck...



It's the least I can do, but I wanted to take a moment and dedicate a post for Teri & adventure cycling - their involvement and generosity made a world of difference, and of course I can't forget that they were the first to put any stock into the project. I'm truly proud to be associated with them in any way, shape or form. For those of you who don't already know who they are and what they do, here's a cut & paste from their 'about':

"Our mission is to inspire people of all ages to travel by bicycle. We help cyclists explore the landscapes and history of America for fitness, fun, and self-discovery".

Everyone understands fun and fitness, but what about self-discovery? Well, all we can say is, judging by what we hear from cross-country cyclotourists stopping in at Adventure Cycling headquarters, traveling by bike is a truly life-changing experience. A common observation is that crossing our nation by bike is a way to see it at its best.

So, I know this is short, but in closing - I most of all want to thank Teri for all she has done. During my first trip I rode right past the adventure-headquarters in Montana without stopping... I think this time I'll swing by and shake her hand. Until then.

anxious

I have a splitting headache at the moment, but all the same I have a few things I wanted to update. My brother, Nick, bought his one-way plane ticket for L.A., he flies out the 25th of May - we're still trying to decide if we should take a train up the coast and ride down or vice versa – rumor has it the wind in the summer blows from north to south. Either way, we should be gone by the first week of June, I can’t help but smile just thinking about it. It’s been a long time since I’ve cut myself off from everything… I’m anxious to clear my head a bit, give myself a few weeks to think without routine or daily distractions.


I’ve yet to figure out the perfect way of packing the GL2 for the trip, the goal is to have it as protected as humanly possible, but quickly and easily accessible – even while I’m riding. I’ll probably have to rig a special kind of handlebar bag. Also, I’m not so sure I’ll be able to share the video footage while we are gone – for the full-scale bike trip next summer the crew will be packing a handful of laptops and it should be fairly easy to pull in and upload raw footage at the end of the day… but in this case, I’m just planning on taking lots and lots of digital pictures to post whenever we stop by a local library.

Okay, I made a short list of several things I wanted to write about, and so far I’ve covered only one… sort of. But I think if I don’t get up now and take five, maybe six, aspirins with a tall glass of ice-cold water – the front & left top of my brain is going to explode through my skull. So, ‘till next time.

"...a plan is just a list of things that don't happen"

I feel exhausted. For the last two nights I've been helping with a short film from 5 in the afternoon until 5 the next morning. The problem though is I can't seem to get myself to really sleep in. The first night, I crashed around 5:30 and drifted awake at 11'ish, then I just laid there with my eyes closed for another hour and a half - which was frustrating. I'm sure tomorrow morning I'll be fully adjusted - and not to mention, done with the short - so then it will be a week of getting myself back on a decent schedule.

Unfortunately, nothing has actually been shot over the last 24 hrs of set-time, there is probably 15-20 people helping with this short at any given time, and basically everyone has been knee-deep in set construction, lighting, sound-prepping, etc... Hopefully we'll walk onto the set tonight, flip a switch, and be good-to-go. But with the way things have been going, a few minor bumps in the road could delay us half way into the night. On the plus-side [since they've lost two days of scheduled shooting] the short is one continuous 25 minute long steadicam shot, so there is hope. There's always hope.

Speaking of hope; I had a dream this morning that the 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' were chasing me in a giant pirate ship, but they were the turtles from the first movie, not the cartoony' turtles from the second one ... actually that has nothing to do with 'hope'. I just felt like sharing.

inner dialogue

[In my best Ben Stiller impersonation] "People who don't leave comments on this blog make... me... F U R I O U S"! Okay, that is all.

sequoia task force

Riding for a 'cause' has been something Amanda and I have debated for as long as we've been planning this trip. I guess we just never made the time while preparing for this film, and during the last few weeks especially, I've regretted this. Now that the film is being pushed back until next summer, I see this as a second-chance to do the right thing.

Amanda's Mom, who is an outstanding english teacher at EMU, helped put the final touches on our fundraising letter, and with it, she sent back a packet of 'Sierra Club' information - most notably; a few fliers on their efforts to save the 'Sequoias', which read:

The Giant Sequoia trees of California are the largest living trees in the world... some are as ancient as 3,500 years old, with a diameter of greater than 35 feet and reach taller than a 25-story building. The Giant Sequoias were here before our nation was founded, quietly witnessing the evolution of our society. Their rings outline some of mankind's most notable achievements. Now our "progress" is the greatest threat to their continued survival. Without your help today, we will lose them forever... don't let it end here. Please respond right away.

Then it had one of those side diagrams of the Sequoia's rings: 1500 BC - Oldest living Sequoia "Grizzly Giant" sprouts, 1323 BC - King tut is entombed, 775 BC - Greeks develop modern alphabet, 221 BC - Great Wall of China started, 331 AD - Roman Empire falls, 1595 - Shakespeare writes 'Romeo & Juliet', 1776 - Declaration of Independence signed, etc... I've always been a sucker for those, it reminds me of the scene in '12 monkeys' where Bruce Willis and Madeleine Stowe are laying-low in the movie theatre watching the scene from 'Vertigo' where Kim Novak says, "Here I was born, and there I died. It was only a moment for you; you took no notice". All this makes me want to go and watch '12 monkeys', anyways:

Long story short, Amanda and I have been to California's 'Sequoia National Park', and during our mini-trip coming up this May, actually even on our next big-trip next May, we'll be riding through the northern Redwoods. Here's a few quick pic's:


I'm actually in mid-fall in this picture, I had to set the camera's automatic timer and then prop a small rock under the lens to get Amanda in frame, then I had to duck under the wooden fence, and jump up next to Amanda, which was really difficult wearing flip-flops considering the hollow in the fallen Sequoia was above my head.


I was 90% sure I knew which tree this was, but then I started thinking more about it and now I'm not sure at all... all I know is Amanda snapped this one and it was somewhere inside the 'Sequoia Park', that narrows it down...


For some reason, I love the way the black & white washed out the fence in the lower-left corner of this picture.


For those of you who haven't been lucky enough to see either forest - they are simply amazing... awe-inspiring... overwhelmingly beautiful... I can't think of the perfect combination of words to describe them... maybe "Cellar Door"? I guess you'd have to see 'Donnie Darko' to get that joke, okay, the point I was getting to was: having been to these places; I would have never thought that any one person or group of persons would ever think to destroy these forest... they're just too unique. But, I suppose that's not the opinion of everyone - now, even the 'Sequoias' with in the National Monument's boundaries, aren't safe from commercial logging.

So, I've been emailing the 'Sequoia Task Force' branch of the 'Sierra Club' - I'm hoping that we can talk local businesses in and around L.A. to pledge x-amount of money per mile [probably just a penny] that we ride...

But I think I should take a moment to stress that this film isn't meant to be geared towards 'environmental activists', I actually would prefer that our efforts didn't get any mention in the documentary, I wouldn't want it to be incorrectly labeled as an 'environmental-documentary'. Now, if we cross paths with another rider who is raising funds or awareness for an environmental cause, then that's okay to put into the film, it would simply add another layer to the narrative.

Okay, I've rambled on about this long enough - I'd love to hear what people think about this choice... and I will keep you all posted on our progress/ involvement with the 'Sierra Club'.

big news & the black sheep

A part of me worries that the "big news" has built up for too long, and now that I can finally share it with you, it's not going to live up to it's anticipation, but all the same: there are two producers “highly” interested in executively producing the film.

Now, whether or not, in the end, this actually plays out is one thing, but what I find most flattering is the consideration. To explain: I live in a town that is overflowing with talent and for every one “nobody” that gets an opportunity to prove themselves, there are a thousand who don’t. And when I think about this film’s very humble beginnings and how it’s taken, almost without notice, huge leaps and bounds in a direction that would have – in the beginning – seemed completely unattainable… it’s just amazing and very, very flattering to receive this professional-level of attention and it’s a great compliment to the film.


Also, some other very big news, the crew has their new website up & running: “The Black Sheep”, which has their new music video they just finished shooting with the new HDV35-kit that we’ll be using for the documentary. It looks amazing.

change of plans...

So much has been happening here behind the scenes over the last two weeks, and I wish I could share every last bit of it with you, but unfortunately now is not the time... I don't mean to be so secretive - and I swear I really do have a big announcement to make - but I've been asked to keep quiet about it for the time being.

But what I can tell you [without giving too much away] is that there is a major change of plans in the production schedule, 'project pedal' will now be filming during June-July of '06 not '05.

Does this mean the blog will be another year of boring 'preproduction' rambling? Well, yes and no, to explain: There is far, far too much built up & moving forward to just wait another year - the crest of this wave is about to break and 'something' has to come out of it. The three of us [riders] will still leave at the end of May [this year] and [most likely] travel north along the Pacific coastline for 30-some days. We'll be packing a Canon GL2 and some sound equipment - the plan is to capture a very home-movie'ish presentation of project pedal's idea, which will allow us to work out any unforeseen kinks in advance. We'll make a rough edit of the film and build a more specific narrative for the story around it, this should serve as an excellent foundation for the film.

Is this good news, or bad news? To be perfectly honest, the only part of me that feels negative about this shift; is the part of me that is anxious. But I can't forget that the 'type' of documentary I'm setting out to make - is a very ambitious one, and the more planning I'm able to do prior to production the better the end result will be.

If all goes as planned the documentary should stand alone both visually and narrative’ly - what exactly do I mean by that? Well, on one hand, when the film is all said and done, my goal is to be able to play the documentary with the video turned off, and through only the narrative/ stories of other travelers - weaved into the score of the film, completely fascinate an audience. On the other hand, I want to be able to play the documentary with the audio turned off, and through only the visual's - the movement, the pacing & mood, the scenery, the travelers - completely fascinate and inspire an audience. That's the true test...

I know there’s more that I’m forgetting to cover, but I seem to be drawing a blank – I have comments now, please leave your questions/ concerns and I’ll do my best to fill everyone in on the details.

'arctic quest' & the inspiration behind 'project pedal'

I received more info from Andrew [the "environment guy"] on the 'beach-cruiser' guy I mentioned in my last post, his name is Jeff Barrie and his first film is titled, "Arctic Quest", here is an excerpt from the synopsis:

At the Youth Environmental Summit, 300 environmentally concerned high school students vote to restrict oil drilling in the Alaskan national wilderness. Five of them then raise the money to travel to Alaska "in search for the truth." Accompanied by videographer Jeff Barrie, they interview residents of large towns and small indigenous villages, governmental employees, and environmentalists. Cont'd...

Anyways, I'm writing more about this because I want to stress that Jeff is exactly the kind of person we are hoping to cross paths with during the trip. This got me thinking about some of the people from my first trip that - through their actions, their stories, and their reasons for riding - inspired this documentary. So the following is a very short list of travelers I made note of in my bike-trip-journal, in no order of importance:

Lyon - Tim & I ran into Lyon at Applebee's just before leaving Stanly, North Dakota, he was one of our favorite travelers to hang out with. Lyon worked a desk job at the Ford plant in Detroit - now I'm not sure exactly how the events played out, but I do know that there was an 'ultimate-frisbee tournament' in Washington that he wanted to compete in and [from what I remember] he decided to quit his desk-job and began riding solo from Detroit to Washington...

Lyon told Tim & I a riddle that went something like this: "There is a king and he has 50 horsemen, and each horseman has 50 bags of coins, each containing 50 coins. One of the horsemen is a thief and has removed one coin from each of his own bags and hidden them somewhere safe. Now... the king has a giant scale - so big he could weight anything he wanted on it, but he only gets one number. So, the riddle is, how does the king find the thief by using only the scale from the one number he gets?" Unfortunately Tim & I never found out the answer...

The Pittsburg Six - Early on in our trip Tim & I ran into a group of six riders from Pittsburg [Jeremy, Steevo, Sean, Cy, Jim & Kevin], actually the first day we crossed paths they ended up leaving us in the dust... but we didn't mind, shortly after they disappeared into the distance we stumbled across a cave and spent the next few hours exploring [we took the picture below].



But over the next few weeks we met up with the six almost every other day, we finally said our heart-felt goodbyes while leaving Montana's Glacier Park, they headed north-west to Washington and we headed soust-west towards Coos Bay, Oregon. I vaguely remember Jim singing "It's hard to say goodbye (to yesterday)"...

Hale - "While on our way to Minot, North Dakota, we ran into an older guy - probably in his 60's - we got to talking on the side of hwy. 2, he was from the west coast and was walking/ hiking his way to the east coast. Interesting man - it was his 57th day into his trip. He said that back in '88 he biked cross-country, but he did it [I quote] like a bat-outta' hell in 30 days, he always wished he had slowed down, enjoyed it more.

Anyways, he was out of food and the next town [that we had just come from] was basically closed-down for the night, I gave him all the snacks I had left - just some peanut-butter crackers, but he seemed very thankful. I hope that he made it to the east coast... "

Terry - This was the very first traveler we met, we must have only been 5 or 6 days into the trip. The three of us [Tim, Chuck & myself] had just finished eating at some small-town bar when he pulled up - this was during the whole 'hurricane Alice' and it was absolute crap outside, the first two weeks of our trip were constant rain and wind with a few tornadoes thrown in the mix. Anyways, he decided to continue with us to the next town [Ashkum, IL]. Here's what I wrote about him in my journal:

"He's a funny guy - about in his mid-70's - and strong as an ox. He started riding out with a guy from the east coast but weeks into it they stopped getting along so he went his own way. He's gone about 1,500 miles in the past month..."


Of course there were many, many more people worth noting but I'll have to save that for a later time.

sat & sun ride

Amanda and I made it back in one piece from our two day adventure up and down the Pacific, we left out of Santa Monica and headed up to Leo Carrillo state park - for those of you who are familiar with the coast, yes, I know it's not the longest ride, but in our defense we had a late start on Saturday. Anyways, not considering the 'mad-house' traffic in-between Santa Monica and Malibu, the ride was great; a very relaxing get-away, I only wish it was longer.

I managed to squeeze the GL2 in my front bike pannier […I don't know why they don't just call them bags either], and Amanda packed up her camera, but for whatever reason neither one of us seemed to use them quite as much as we would have liked to. For me I think it was because I'm paranoid: I packed the Canon with giant bubble wrap and a fleece zip-up, so it wasn't the most convenient item to get to. Not to mention when I imported all the footage I found that my 'heads' desperately need to be cleaned, so the little footage I did take has digital 'junk' all over it.

Here’s a short list of things I didn't get on tape:

"No sleeping on the beach" – As the sun was setting Amanda and I went over to buy a pass for the Leo Carrillo campgrounds [this was after we snuck around and found a great place to lay down for the night], but the guy in the booth said all the empty spots were all reserved for the night. By this time, it was pitch black out; we hurried back into the campgrounds to buy a $3 can of spaghetti & meatballs and a $4 can of clam chowder… we still weren’t sure how we were going to heat it up.

We carried our bikes over our shoulders down the steps to the beach and decided to make a small fire under a small roof of rock - luckily we found a massive pile of deadwood, so I didn’t have to scrounge the beach for kindling. Long story short; we ate by the fire and then fell asleep on the beach by 8 pm.

Two hours later we are awoken by a flashlight in the face – a cop gave us two options: [one] you can leave the beach or [two], I can arrest you. So, it’s late, the wind coming off the beach is freezing, our bikes have no lights on them, the campground is booked for the night… and the only suggestion the cop has is to ride in the pitch black up the coast ten more miles to another campground that might/ might not also be booked for the night. Ten minutes later we are dressed again and all packed up, wondering what the hell to do, we decide to go use the campground bathrooms and then decide, on our way back we run into the cop again who this time is somewhat realistic to our situation, he gives us the go ahead to camp anywhere we like in the park. But a combination of the rocky ground and the fact that we only had one sleeping bag to share made for one of the most uncomfortable, sleepless nights of our lives…

"Taking a spill" – Due to some construction on the PCH, Amanda and I had two lanes of highway all to ourselves for a few miles, but I still managed to somehow find the only spot with a streak of mud and since my tires are on the bald side, my bike [loaded up with 60-some pounds of gear] slowly began to slip from beneath me. I managed to catch myself but only after two construction workers on their lunch break started to laugh at my clumsiness…

"Environment guy" – With less than two miles left of our ride back into Santa Monica; a guy pushing a baby-stroller enthusiastically asked where we were from, we laughed and said, “just North Hollywood, we’re just practicing…”. But then we got to talking about what we were practicing for, I gave him a ‘project pedal’ sticker, he told us how he worked for the Santa Monica environmental agency and about a friend of his that rode a beach-cruiser [if I remember correctly] coast to coast, unfortunately he blew his knee out in Tennessee, but rather than give up he took off that pedal and continued, all the way to D.C., with one leg… the whole event was made into a documentary.

[If you’re reading this, ‘Environment guy’, please send me an email; after we talked I started thinking more and more about riding for a ‘cause’ like you mentioned, I have a lot of questions for you.]

communique'

Thanks to help of blogger the comments are up and working as they should be, just look for the tiny "coversation bubble" symbol at the footer of each post - at this very moment they are enabled for every last post within the site, but as soon as I get a chance I'll probably be hiding them from the 'menu links' [the synopsis, the trailers, the contact page, etc...].

I have so, so much to share with everyone but I'm afraid I'll have to wait just a bit longer, now is not the best time to put everything out there in the open.

I've mentioned it here before, but Amanda and I will be leaving on a mini-bike trip this saturday and sunday, so I'll be posting about that as soon as we get back. Sorry so short but today is a busy day.