Sitting at the ocean in Bar Harbor

It didn't feel real, sitting at the ocean in Bar Harbor, Maine - waiting for Larry to ride up and reach the end of his 4,300 mile experience. It has taken so long to get to this moment that I just felt... unable to put it into words.

This last three years was just the beginning - now the real hard work begins. And I'm looking forward to it - very much actually. Last night (four days after Bar Harbor) I walked around the streets of Ann Arbor by myself, stood on the top-floor of the parking garage behind the State Theater... thinking about all the days spent there running around with a camera in my hand. I think I've come a long way - and that feels good.

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last CNN post, I swear

I wanted to post these two videos with the actual interview - but it took me several days to find a connection strong enough to upload the full uncut interview phone-conversation with CNN.

Now, to be perfectly honest, the full uncut interview isn't something I would recommend watching: it's fairly long and awkward, due to poor cell phone reception. It's also super washed out because I adjusted the iris, sat down, and then, of course, the rain stop pouring and the sun came out behind us - completely washing us out and creating a blinding white light behind Larry and I.

Well, now that I've talked it up, here it is (you've been warned):



This second clip, however, is very short, and much less boring then the above one. This is the voice-mail that was left on my phone from CNN about their wanting to interview us for the project.

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now playing on vimeo

Just wanted to let people know that episodes one through four are now up on Vimeo - I always dug the way the player looked when watching Indy Mogul, so I checked out the site earlier today and had to create an account.

This doesn't mean I love Blip.tv any less :) It just makes me happy to see online video sharing done right.

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49 days on the road

I just attempted to ride after Larry through the busy streets of Cleavland, Ohio. I lost him after her ran a red light and dodged a slow moving car, I had a camera tied in one hand, and the other hand was gripping the front brake, I couldn't take turns and dodge cars quite as fast as he could. But I did try.

So instead I tore ass through town, heading towards the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, making my way there based off of what I remembered the last time I was in Cleavland - in high school. I managed to find Larry in front of the R&R Hall of Fame, talking to a few people - the place was unusually packed because of a major skate competition going on along the lake.

Larry opted not to go inside and walk around because a) the doors closed in only an hour, and b) he said he stunk too much to be around that many people... I assume c) had something to do with his wearing salt soaked spandex.

Anyway, we are on our way towards Geneva-On-The-Lake, yes, that's the town's full name. I don't have much time to update, but I wanted to post these three videos that Larry took, they've been collecting dust in my iPhoto library.


A curve in the road: North Dakota is flat, I don't think that's news to anyone, but it's also very, very, very straight. So much so that when Larry actually saw a curve a road... he just had to get it on camera.


"Let 'er ride, Larry": While Larry was at the local bar in Esmond, ND, he met Gary. He's escaped from Alcatraz, went head to head with Ali, was a tunnel rat in Nam', and knows everything there is to know about music. Just ask him. He's a legend.


Try sleeping through this: This was taken with Nokia, which sadly, the audio isn't working on it during video mode, but the video doesn't leave much for the imagination. This was the first night Larry had a tent - it also just happened to be a incredibly stormy and windy night. The wind was actually blowing so hard, it ripped up the stakes in Amanda's tent and pulled the floor up so fast it threw her MacBook into her face while she was typing on it. I don't think any of us slept very well that night.

Vlog from July 1st

riding with larry

two little things

Just wanted to mention two quick things that keep escaping me when I sit down to update. First off, I made a change to the "video & still" link in the menu to the left. Before it was a drop down that I had to go in and manual add/remove items from, now "video" is one link to Pedal's Blip.tv show-page, and the "& still" links back to my flickr collection of Pedal related pictures. These two sites (Blip & Flickr) are much better at social networking and connecting that I am - I think it's better to externalize those aspects of the this site.

Next is Pedal's Twitter log - on the main page of Project Pedal, before you get to the blog, there is a small'ish gray box with a short update in it.


That update is a "Twitter", what is Twitter? It's a great site that you can use to share "what you are doing" with your friends/family/strangers. For example, on June 25th, I wrote: Listening to 'Don't Stop Believing' at the park in Wolf Point, Mt. It's raining - the sky is pink/purple. Very hungry :)

You can receive updates through your IM, your cell phone, or just through the website (it's up to you how you are updated). Okay, back on the road for now.

tags: pedal, documentary, indie, vlog, blog, bicycle, coast-to-coast, community, flickr, blip.tv, twitter

update from the "command center"

"Command Center" is the new nickname given to the van by Larry. It's quickly becoming the "Command Center / Weather Tracker 3000 Plus" (or something close to that) because we have a 12ft crane bolted to the top of the roof-rack, and it's making all the locals do a double take as they drive by. I've been asked if I was doing amature radio.

My computer says it's 10:31pm, but I just realized it's after midnight here in Parshall, North Dakota. Which leaves me just enough time to microwave a cup of easymac and down a Dr. Pepper, post two rough interviews from earlier in the week, and finally: sleep.


This first clip is of Phil and Liz, who were the first people we've met riding east to west (aka: into the raging wind). The sound on the FX1 is just the shotgun, the wide had the boom, so this is pretty much un-listenable. But it looks nice. Every once in a while, when the wind calms, you can hear what they are they are saying. When I have more time, after we are back from the road, I'll be able to sync up the close and the wide for a second round of post.


This clip is of Hans and Elly, who, let me just say, I love. We've been on the road for 25-some days now, and we've met a lot of great people who are very cool, and fun to talk to. But it's been hard finding the "voices" I had in mind for Pedal. Perhaps many of the people we've talked to so far are too early on in their rides to really dig deep into their experience. Hans and Elly are on their 2nd bicycle trip - their first was 30 years, when they spent 9 months traveling by bicycle from Holland to New Zeland. Their stories are amazing - I can't wait to hear more. They really understand that trips like these are 99% mental. Amazing people.

Goodnight for now, world. Just for the record, I'm sporting a "Morgan Spurlock" at the moment - total 'fu manchu'.

tags: pedal, documentary, indie, vlog, blog, bicycle, coast-to-coast, community, funding

Day 17

The last post, which ended up not going through via crappy EVDO connection, was a bit scrambled and "ehh". So, I think it's time for a "proper" post.

[Update: I just found out it did get through before I lost single. But it was still is a crapy post, and I already wrote this one... so some things get covered twice.]

I'm sorry for the lack of updates, but we've been jetting from mountain range to mountain rage, and have had little connection. Not sure if that's Sprint's fault, or if it would be just as bad with a Verizon network.

I'm in the van right now, listening to "Learning to Fly" off the iPod, we're heading back from Glacier Park towards Whitefish. "Why?" you ask: well, for a few unexpected reasons.

A) first off, we backed up the rental van into a good sized rock, and it almost took the bumper clean off the back. Which sucked. This on top of a shitty night's sleep in tents that didn't quite hold up in the downpour from hell. Okay, it wasn't quite *that* bad, but it was bad enough to wake up every hour with a new part of the bag being wet.

Seeing as there is no phone or cell connection at the base of the glaciers, we are heading back into town to take care of the whole insurance/rental situation. Fingers crossed that it works out okay.

B) I broke my bike frame... that's a different story for a different time, but it's extremely un-rideable. And the last bike shop for a while is back in Whitefish, there was a used bike shop near the school.

C) I feel a bit awkward about this "aspect" of the project, awkward in the sense that I don't like to talk about money. On one hand, I don't want to sound like a sympathy-case... and on the other, I don't want to pretend or hide the financial difficulties that exist in a low-budget project like Pedal. Or every low budget project for that matter.

But we are about 8 days away from being rock-bottom broke. Which can be a slight distraction when trying to stay focused on the task at hand. But, fear not, there is someone who has said they can fund the remainder of the trip. Yes, we are cutting it close... uncomfortably close, but we don't have much choice.

Some of you might be curious as to how someone can go from winning $25,000 to broke in three months time. Especially considering the budget on the site is only $9,000. Well, almost a full $10,000 of the 25k went to personal debts and expenses that needed to be taken care of. Then there is equipment that I never put into the budget because I was just not expecting to be able to make a film with anything but the dinky camera I already had. And to be honest, with only 9k, I'd probably be stuck without a crew.

But winning the Network2.tv video contest allowed me to make the project I really wanted to make, not the one I could just get by making. So, I was encouraged to buy a camera that matched the one 'The Black Sheep' were bringing, a Z1U. There's 5 grand. I purchased a cheap 12 foot crane, that was about $900. I bought a glidecam system, which was around $1,800. Four long-life batteries for filming long hours on the road. Camping gear. UV Filters. XLR cables. Headphones. $1,000 in microphones, $600 wind-jammer. $760 in miniDV tapes (60 hours). Shipping fees. I had to take a month off from work in order to squeeze all the last minute planning in, there's 3 months rent. 3 months utilities. A laptop for editing on the road. 3 round trip tickets from Belgium to LA. $2,500 to rent a van for two months. Wide angle lens for $350. My own personal plane ticket and rental car cost for visiting Larry & Jay before the trip. Food. More food. Gas... almost four times the amount originally budgeted because the van is overloaded and gets poor mpg, plus we have to drive back to LA when done. And, of course, there's always "et cetera". Now add in all the problems and extra money here and there. I won't even go into that.

Not to mention the thousands and thousands of dollars in equipment that the crew brought along. 16mm film stock. A fluid-head tripod. An army of SLR lens and filters. A 35 kit. You name it - that came loaded.

All in all, I'd say the budget it pushing the $200,000 area. So that's the dark side of the low budget project... it's fun stuff to tackle with no financial backing (sarcasm). Not to mention the fear of putting all this time, energy and money into something that, now that you've started, might not make see to the end. It's enough to make a person sick.

I have to finish this project. It's started - and there is no turning back. I don't know how - but there's no turning back now.


Whew. Okay, that felt good to get off my chest. And please, don't feel like I'm pressuring you for a handout. Like I said, someone has said they'd help us finish the project. It's just a part of the project that I've been meaning/wanting to share for a while. It never feels like the "right" time, so what the hell, right?


It's now 11:20 at night, Amanda has called the insurance people and they were great about it. We'll even be able to still get up at 5, like planned, and head back into Glacier to get a shot of the mountains against Lake McDonald.

Afterward we plan to follow Larry to the peak of Logan's Pass, it's closed after the top because a huge section of the 'Going to the Sun Road' was washed away by glacier run off (yay, global warming). But Larry, being the monster that he is, wants to go to the top and then turn around just to "get it under his belt". Love that guy.

We also ran into Galan, who reminds me a lot of Lyon. We ate breakfast this morning at the restaurant in Apgar and talked for 3 hours. Sadly, none of it was one tape, but he's great, we'll talk to him tomorrow before he heads too far north.

Other than all that - we plan on spending the next few days around the Glacier area, there's so much great stuff to get, and it's basically biker-central for all the cyclist. We're wanting to head back down the road and talk to 3 women we met a few days ago, I think they have a great perspective on their trip - it's rare to run into a women only group. And it shouldn't be.

Also, before I forget, I didn't have much time to go through footage while we were in Eureka, but I did dump a few random clips of Larry riding his bike (not the smoothest of shots we've taken, but I still like the look on Larry's face climbing up that hill).


And a very pretty long shot we took of a broken down house/cabin/pile-of-wood, there's cars and junk in the frame that, if I used it later, I'd snip out. But you get the idea.


We'd love to hear from you - see you on the other side (of Glacier Park).

tags: pedal, documentary, indie, vlog, blog, bicycle, coast-to-coast, community, funding

Jack

It's 11:50 at night right now, I'm curled up in my tent, 3 miles outside of Republic, Washington. I'm pretty heavy-eyed at the moment, so this might be a somewhat short post.

I'm very excited to post the 1st sneak-peak raw interview of the trip. I met Jack Denson in Rockport and knew right away he was "one of those people" I'd love to talk with at several points during our way east (if he's willing, of course). He's got just a great personality, and he's very relaxed on camera.

We lost him for a day after Marblemount, but drove past the bike shop in Winthrop and spotted him talking outside. Turned out he was spending the day at the KOA down the street and was happy to talk to us.

One thing to keep in mind is we didn't have the "nice microphone" on the camera with the HDV35 kit, we ran the XLR into the wide, so this is a shot-gun mic mounted to the front of the FX1. We have the nice-nice sound on the other tape, which, if I had the time, I could have synced up the two. But I'm on the run, so that will have to wait.


I think the interview went great - I can't wait to talk with Jack more, further down the road. Take a moment to check out his 'Crazy Guy on a Bike' page, also he's helping to raise awareness for Wounded Warriors, so take a moment to support them in any way you can.

I would love to hear your thoughts or questions! Goodnight.

tags: pedal, documentary, indie, vlog, blog, bicycle, coast-to-coast, community, funding, wounded warriors, hdv35

Day Six...

No EVDO connection. No cell phone single. We've set up camp where the Skagit River runs into the Cascade River, surrounded on all sides by mountains ranging from 4,000 to 8,900 feet in elevation. It's very beautiful. People in town (Marblemount) say that we are "in for a treat" tomorrow - I'm looking forward to it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself - I mentioned in my last post I was excited about uploading the first few "official" shots (I say "official" because we've been capturing tons with the two mp4 cameras and our Nokia), yesterday we stopped at a laundry mat in Concrete where I managed to import a few minutes here and there, and export them straight to quicktime-movies.

This 1st clip is one of the many takes we captured with the sun setting behind the camp-site. It was very cloudy and grey all day but around 8:30 the sun came down under the clouds enough to just light everything up.


I'm so happy with this 2nd clip - we had set up in the morning to get their "taking off" moment, and on the 35 kit (HDV35), the guys had their zoom-lens (200). But Amanda had packed her SLR camera and one of the lens she has for it is a very long lens (a 300), we swapped it out and it looks just amazing.


Unbelievably sharp depth of field. We stopped by a field yesterday to shoot some tall grass with the mountains in the background - and I couldn't believe how many "layers" of field we could shift through.

The great news is it's turned out to be much, much easier to film on-the-fly with the 35 kit mounted to the FX1. At first we were planning to only break it out for interviews. But Olivier is finding it very simple to focus and move at the same time - which I love, it's just one more "look" we can play with for the film.

I also can't believe how much I'm loving the mp4 and Nokia footage, it gives a less "cinematic / grandiose" feel to the shot and makes it more personal. I've uploading some of it here, here and here... and one more here. We've been slowly and carefully breaking out our 16mm, we only have 30 minutes of stock for the entire two months (if anyone has any 100 foot daylight spools they'd like to donate, please let me know, we could use it).


But... *deep breath* I do have some bad news. It was news that, I could tell, was very hard for Jay to come talk to us about. Amanda was curled up in her tent, and the four of us guys were at the picnic table looking at rushes and talking about whatever, when Jay let us know the situation with his knee. I've never actually talked about it here on the site, so this will require a quick catch-up: Jay is a snowboarder, actually a very good one.

In the 2005 he took the bronze in the world championship. Yea, I know, he's good. But he's had knee trouble for years, gone through 5 major surgeries, and at the moment is actually completely missing his ACL.

Both Larry & Jay have been training, in the mountains, a great deal - so it's hard to say if it's the added weight to the bike that caused the problem, or if it just finally caught up with him. But only 10 miles into the ride this morning and his knee almost brought him to tears, and Jay's a tough enough guy to know that's a problem... especially on a flat day like they had this morning. So, Jay is going to stay behind - Larry is pressing on... alone. He's, understandably, a bit terrified about the following 4,200 miles - but he's also a bit excited about the solitude. It changes things for us, not in a bad way, but we'll adapt with it.

As a crew we are still trying to find the best balance for what we are doing - I know it will take some time in this kind of on-the-move environment. For example, Jeff and I had a hell of time today with a simple crane shot - not too sure if any of that footage actually worked out.

But I am very sad to see Jay go - I know he was very excited and ready for this ride, I know he's sad to watch Larry ride on without him. But I understand and encourage him not to push himself to the point of ruining his snowboarding career, or even just simply ruining his knee.

It's going to be a hard good bye tomorrow morning. Well, it's after midnight, I need to get some sleep. Goodnight for now.

(PS) I found out that a lot of the videos I uploaded with Transmit on the road didn't get transfered correctly and have been bouncing out bad files through the feed, sorry for this, I'll only try to upload from now on with a more reliable connection.

tags: pedal, documentary, indie, vlog, blog, bicycle, coast-to-coast, community, funding

Anacortes or bust...

We pulled into camp last night around 1 in the morning - overall, I think we drove a total of 14 hours from Leggett to Anacortes. We watched the sun set as Jeff played us songs in French.


Amanda and I woke up around 8 to head back to Seattle to pick up Larry and Jay from the airport. We expected it to take us around an hour and twenty minutes to head back into town - it took over two and a half hours, the whole time the crew is waiting here at camp with no way of knowing what is taking us so long.


There's plenty more to share - but that will have to do for now. It's midnight and everyone is planning to get up around 5 to head out. We shot our first "official" shots for Pedal today - I can't wait to upload them to the blog. We'll see how it goes tomorrow.

Also, don't forget to wish my Mom a happy birthday (on the 6th)!

tags: pedal, documentary, indie, vlog, blog, bicycle, coast-to-coast, community, funding

Episode Four: This is it, Two months left...

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The idea of Project Pedal came about, thanks to Amanda, almost exactly four years ago - and for the last three years, I've been pouring myself into it with my fair share of difficulties along the way.

But thanks to the encouragement of close friends, family and the readers/viewers of this site - I've always picked myself up and kept trying when things dead-ended with Pedal.

I can't imagine where I would be without this site and without everything it has directly been instrumental in sending my way. My amazing crew, the Black Sheep... the professional advice and support of Matt... the much needed and much appreciated relationships with total strangers who've stumbled onto this site in there own ways.

I've learned so much in the last three years, and if I had any advice to pass on to people reading - it would be, whatever your passion or personal project may be, don't go it alone. Start a blog, and be as transparent and inclusive as possible.

I'm excited about these last two months and the two that will follow - I can't wait for the trip to come. I'm nervous. I'm excited. "Breath in pink, exhale blue". There's a lot of details to get into place - but... this is it, two months left. Here we go.

Pedal's 'Episode One' is a finalist in the Flux iPod Film Festival! Please take a moment to vote here. Thanks!

tags: pedal, documentary, indie, vlog, blog, bicycle, coast-to-coast, community, network2, blip.tv, the black sheep, the flux, von 2007

Pedal hearts Blip

I bumped into Dina Kaplan, the wonderful co-founder and COO of Blip.tv, at the VON (Video on the Net) conference in San Jose. She glanced down at the admittance badge hanging around my neck and said, "Oh! You're Project Pedal, I just added you to the featured list on Blip". I felt very honored.


I think Blip is one of the best video hosting sites out there... I could go into why but the post would just end up being so long no one would bother reading it.

tags: pedal, documentary, indie, vlog, blog, bicycle, blip.tv, von

Prepare to be updated

I have a feeling, as I sit down at my desk to write, that this post is going to end up a bit on the lengthy side. Which is entirely my fault, there has been *plenty* to update people on in the last few months, but for the wrong reasons I didn't want to add any post to the site. That wrong reason being: I didn't want to bump the most recent video-post off the main page - I know, I know, that's silly. So I've added the above yellow banner that many of you have probably noticed, which is going to help me get over my obsessives nature.

So let's get started:

Meeting with Matt. I'll start here because this meeting lead to much of the following news. The last week of February I had a quick lunch with Matt at Universal, the same Matt that this time last year was producing Pedal. On one hand he expressed how much he loved the project and the recent work I had been putting into it, on the other, he was concerned / confused / worried about the lack of attention it was getting - both real-world and online.

This has a lot to do with my long-time reluctancy to talk about things I'm "doing", as opposed to things I've done. It's hard to bring up to people that I'm working on a "project"... because in LA, *everyone* is working on something. I guess I just feel like every other "up & coming director" when and if I talk about Pedal to people... but on some levels I'm going to have to get over that uncomfortableness in order to have "this" work.

Which in many ways has to lead to the next five things.

Nokia Rocks. Although some of the motivation factor can be contributed to my meeting with Matt, this idea's credit goes to Jan, from the Faux Press, who has been an amazing help... in many ways that I can't yet talk about. Sorry for the secrecy, but I promise, it's not for long. But Jan suggested I look into getting a video-phone for the project, and after watching Steve Garfield's "How I watch InternetTV" submission for the NetWork2 contest, I was sold on the video-phone idea.

A huge deciding factor was the more I looked at the numbers in the budget, the more it became obvious that I had very limited hours of tape to be filming behind the scenes updates whenever I wanted. Not to mention the lack of hard-drive space and rendering / exporting time. So, the video-phone became both the obvious choice and a necessity.

I contacted Steve Garfield, who put me in touch with some great people in the UK who work with Nokia through WOM World. Long story short, they loved the project, they wanted to help. An oversees conference call later and it appears Nokia will be donating a N95-like phone to Pedal for the road. And on-top of this, they'll be following along on their official website. I'm very excited about this, it's going to allow many, many more video updates from the road.

Why Pedal hearts Adventure Cycling. The other night I contacted ACA about promoting Pedal's "Casting Call" in exchange for video post-roll advertisement. The great thing was; a few days prior to Aaron receiving my email, he had caught wind of the project and forwarded it on to their eNews letter team. Rumor has it those of you subscribed (all 27,000 of you) to ACA's Bike Bits might find a mention of Project Pedal! This is an amazing help in getting the word out to people who will most likely respond to the project.

On top of that, ACA was happy to promote us in their "Companions Wanted" section.

And they aren't the only bike-related association helping spread the word.

Hug a bike! Some of you may have noticed a new (and cool) sponsor logo in our sidebar. The people over at Bike Hugger wrote a great post about Pedal, offered to promote Pedal in their "brought to you by" section, *and* even throw in a few styling t-shirts.

Veoh digs Project Pedal! Hopefully a lot of you new readers came from Veoh, who were great enough to out-of-the-blue offer to feature Pedal's episodes on their main page... and even on their main player!


It brought on a flood of views and traffic. Now if only Blip.tv, Revver, YouTube, MySpace, iFilm, etc would follow suit.

Postcards! Postcards! Postcards! Recently I ordered 1,000 postcards from ClubFlyers - they turned out fantastic and I've been placing them everywhere. A special thanks to Leslie who asked for a few hundred to hand out in Chicago!


If you've come to this site because of a postcard you stumbled across - be sure to leave a comment and let me know (it wasn't a total waste of money)!

The VGKids are the best. Before living in Los Angeles, I lived in "Ypsi", or Ypsilanti, Michigan for those of you not "in the know". Ypsi sits in the "shadows" of Ann Arbor - which leads to the fitting name for Ypsi's 1st bi-annual art festival: the Shadow Art Fair, where I met James from the VGKids. I knew of the VGKids both because their workshop is in Ypsi and because they handled the designing & printing of the very cool Democracy Player t-shirts (pictured below).


Recently I wrote James and asked about some stickers for Pedal - James wrote back saying the project seemed "rad" (I was very flattered... I don't think it's ever been referred to as "rad" before) and that he would see what he could do. It's going to be very exciting for me to have VGKids involved with Pedal - I think they are *very* cool.

Film Festivals!? Already? Yes, I actually just this morning sent out my second package in under a week to a film festival. The 1st was to the 2007 iPod Film Fest from The Flux (thanks to Tiff from The Fem Geek for this one). The 2nd was to the Bike Film Festival, the deadline for entries has already passed, but Brendt was nice enough to say "send your stuff anyways". So, we'll have to wait and see if it gets squeezed in anywhere.

And now for the little things.

Del.icio.us links. If you click on the 'dig deeper' menu to the left, you'll find the five most recent Pedal related Del.icio.us bookmarks. There's a lot of great finds in there, so please, check it out. And if you click the little icon it will take you to all the (old) links related to bicycling.

Interactive map coming soon! I really love Platial.com, their Google Map mash-up is one of the best I've found. And hopefully, very soon, I'll have a full-screen interactive map inter-graded into Pedal's site. This will be a great way for readers to suggest locations for us while we are out on the road filming. It will also be a nice to way for visually post entries.

Full res versions of Pedal Episodes! I've gone back through and re-exported Episodes 1, 2 & 3 at full res. I did it for a number of reasons, the biggest being I kept needing full res versions for DVDs and decided I (and anyone else) should have access to these from anywhere at all times. From now on, clicking on the "share this" link under each episode will take you to the video's Blip.tv page, where you can, of course, share the video, or download the high-res version. Enjoy. And please, feel free to spread them around in anyway you'd like.


Okay. Whew. That's it for now - there's more to tell, but I think I've rambled on for long enough. For those of you still reading - get away from your computers and go enjoy this beautiful day.

tags: pedal, documentary, indie, vlog, blog, bicycle, coast-to-coast, community, funding, vgkids, platial, aca, funding,nokia, del.icio.us, veoh