Its been about a month or so for me up in western North Carolina now. The focus, as far as filming, ended up being kayaking, in its different forms. I eventually whittled down the hours of filming at the Nantahala store wave into a little piece I called, “Tommy and Joe Try to Cross the River, Episode 2″. It’s a solid 25 minutes of sick play boating footage, “comically” narrated by yours truly. As soon as I figure out where to post that big boy, I’ll release here on the blog. In the meantime, here is a nice look at the Green River Narrows.
Joe Barkley was also kind enough to strap on a headcam on a recent run down the Raven’s Fork to capture some of the intense rapids there. I tried to hike in to get some shots of my own, but I thought I was lost, had no water, and found some fresh bear tracks – so I did not make it. I hope to put some of that footage together at some point.
Other than filming and editing I’ve also had the chance to meet some real good people and learn new things. For example, I pulled and replaced my first well pump 200 feet under the pumphouse at Joe’s cabin way up in the mountains. Only took us 12 hours. Finishing at 2 AM, the joy brought upon by the return of running water was palpable. The well-pulling team below:
That same night, I also had another first. Got to watch Cicada emerge from its slumber and crawl out of it’s old shell.
Ridiculous amounts of footage of ridiculous kayakers. There are days of editing ahead of me, and thankfully the good people known as Alex’s family have been kind enough to let me hunker down in their cabin for a while so that I can cull through this footage. Last week I put up a gallery of some of the stills from the Nantahala store wave – take a look (click on it).
If you’ve never seen the Smokey Mountains, this be what they look like.
Before heading to the cabin I spent a weekend biking over at Tsali with a couple friends, to get warmed up for the hours ahead of me, I cranked out this little video this morning. It’s laughable.
Prior to my excursion to western North Carolina, I had lived near a van down by the ocean, and even a couple times in a van in my friends’ driveways (once in suburbia, once on top of a mountain). Now I am finally living in a van down by the river. This is my third night in the cackalacks and my second river. Technically it’s a stream I hear tonight, as I am parked just off the side of the road at a trailhead to the Pulliam Creek Trail that will lead me down to the Green River Narrows early tomorrow AM. Tomorrow night then will take me to a third river, the Nolichucky, in eastern Tennessee. It’s whirlwind tour of the Great Smokey Mountains, with many more stops to come, and many more adventures to film.
Catching up a bit – I have come up to this area to grab some footage of some serious kayakers, pointed out to me by good friend Alex Tate, and then hopefully some serious mountain bikers, whom I will have to find on my own. The NOC has become and will most likely remain my home base for this region, as that their facilities are awesome, people are great and they unknowingly and graciously let me freeload in their parking lots. The first day there we were able to run the Nantahala on some single duckies, with a little 2-man and 3-man surfing in a single duckie mid way through. After that we rode the Flint Trail up above the NOC, which it turns out starts out with a brutal 32,000 mile climb followed by some seriously worth it downhills.
My location tonight (as of the time I’m writing this, not posting it) is just south of Asheville in Hendersonville just off the side of Big Hungry Rd. I’ll get up at dawn and hike down to a section of the Green River called the Narrows – a world renowned extreme whitewater spot. I’ll be filming at rapids with names like Go Left or Die and the Gorilla, and my ultimate goal is to catch the guys I know coming down sometime between 7:00 am and 12:00 pm – the times that the river is turned on. If I miss them somehow, there are surely to be other kayakers to capture. Also, if this post never sees the light of day, its either because of a fail on the treacherous hike in, I fell in the river, or bears, of course.
During my time here I’ve already received a rapid education on river kayaking, much like my rapid education on surfing down in Florida. The similarities between the cultures have continually caught my attention. While each have their own lingo, they both exist with the same types of cliques, the same types of attitudes, the same types of characters, and really just a very similar day-to-day. They both also provide a great damn time, which makes sense when you hang out with folks who are doing what they love all day, every day.
As for filming, I’m stockpiling footage in droves, but have had little time to watch, let alone, edit any of the footage or images yet. As soon I great a break from having a blast, I’ll find somewhere to hunker down for a while and work through this backlog of film, so keep them eyes peeled.
Update:
Since writing the above portion of this post, I have hiked in/out of the Green River, and caught plenty of sick footage of some kayaking there. The hike wasn’t as treacherous as I had read – a fall here would not remove you from the this earth, but would remove some skin from your appendages. After the Green, I hung out at Team Scumbag’s shop for a bit then made my way up to the Nolichucky and did an afternoon rafting trip with some friends. A nice river with a good outfitter, USA Raft, who were also courteous enough to let me spend a couple nights in their parking lot. Last night ended with a special treat, my special friend Marcus and I commandeered an inflatable queen bed and floated it down the Nolichucky around 2:00 AM. A solid adventure and a spectacular way to view the stars. Deciding to run back barefoot, was probably not the best idea, however. The queen is now mine and I hope to run it down the Nantahala later this week. At this current moment I’m sitting in a McDonald’s enjoying their AC and typing this to you. Now all I need to do is figure out where I am going tonight.
I have also added three new galleries to the portfolio from these three rivers, check ‘em out:
I’ve been filming with Matt Bender in New Smyrna Beach for a few weeks, but we just weren’t getting the kind of waves that he wanted or the kind of surfing that he is capable of. Anxious to produce a real story, we set out on creating a greatest wipeout segment to submit to Surflinefor their greatest wipeouts series. Matt had a few old clips from the wipeout, so we sat down and did some interview work and stitched this whole guy together. We will submit to Surfline soon, and possibly some other sites. Enjoy.
AS you know I am currently down in New Smyrna Beach, Florida – and besides just enjoying the crap out of this place I’ve been filming with a couple surfers. We were going through some footage today one of the guys I’m filming with, Matt Bender, spotted a couple clips of some locals that he thought I should share with them – so I put together a mini-overly-dramatic clip for them:
Soon I’ll be finishing up a big wave wipe out segment for Bender with some footage he had from Hawaii – stay tuned!
At this point I have completely abandoned the rental cam business idea.. anybody surprised? I mean it’s not like that – after extensive investigation into the idea, the financials, and probably most important of all, my interests, I am now going full force into filming and production of all of your action and adventure interests. I’m rocking a new Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH2 – one sweet piece of machinery – to complement my set of Point-of-view devices. And, to turn all of those captured clips into cinematic goodness, I’m getting pretty handy at Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects.
I currently reside in New Smyrna Beach, Florida and have been working with a couple local surfers to get them setup up with some nice segments highlighting their talents. Just to, let’s say, rub it in I guess, I put together a little clip of my current “commute” to “work.”
There are some pretty solid rippers down here. Which is not surprising being that New Smyrna Beach’s Ponce Inlet provides one of the most consistent breaks on the entire eastern seaboard. The waves haven’t been all that stellar since we started filming, but we are slowly getting some usable stuff together. Take a look below at just a couple samples.
I should be wrapping up here in about 2-3 weeks and will then head up to the Carolina mountains to do some filming with a couple kayakers and possibly some kayakers and mountain bikers. Stay tuned!
After some extensive research, both online and in person (with potential users of our services), it has been decided to refocus the direction of the XPerspective brand/site and, in turn, focus on the site itself, putting the rental program on hold. While there is a clear interest in the rental concept from businesses and individuals, the initial investments in both time and monies (mostly time) are prohibitive to the full-on mobile assault of nation in it’s entirety made possible by the XVan. We may return to the rental idea when the time is right.
There are some great benefits to this evolution of the XPerspective business model. Having the capability to solely focus on the site itself will give us an opportunity to make sure we are building the right thing, and for the right people. There are some great ideas being flushed out right now to accomplish just this. We be innovatin’. A second, and very exciting, benefit is that the time freed up from no longer having to manage and push rentals on the road means I can put on my filmer/producer hat and crank out some rad m’f'n videos from some of the gnarliest actioneers I can find – so keep them eyes peeled. I’ve already added some more equipment to my arsenal and have some ideas for some custom made pieces to help me capture some unique surf shots while still down here on the coast.
Apple and Yelp
Now, onto a slightly different topic. The two companies above, who I am a fervent supporter and user of, have gone a little too far. When Apple announced its new line of iPhones for mosquitos at this years CES, it received very little attention, except maybe from a few sharp investors who saw the potential opening up a market to 3500 new species containing billions of possible new customers. A shrewd move indeed now that Apple has an average of 2.3 devices in the hand of every human on the planet.*
Now you may be thinking, “ok, Apple is pretty damn smart, what’s the problem?” Well, I felt the same way until our old friend Yelp released an updated version of their app for the new mosquitiPhone. For those of you who aren’t aware, I am currently residing in Florida, and Florida is known for two thing and two things only – old people, and mosquitos. Well, as with the old people down here, the mosquitos have a lot of disposable income and have flocked to the mosquitiPhone like, well, mosquitos flocking to anything with a heartbeat. And now it seems that one of these little buggers, no pun intended, has put a review of my delicious blood up on mosquitiYelp. Apparently I have a very distinct and exceptional flavor, a now every mosquito from Macon to Timbuktu knows.
Long story short, I have decided to cancel the Everglades as my starting point for the Third Circle/XPerspective/XVan world tour. Thanks Apple and Yelp, ya jerks.
