My Return from the Special World

Our initial Hero’s Journey ends where Lewis & Clark’s began

Five weeks traveling the country can feel simultaneously like a year and a blink of an eye. My final day of this pilot journey ended in greater St. Louis, Missouri, where the Lewis & Clark expedition to travel up the Missouri River began and ended.

I know it might sound egomaniacal but it felt like was I returning from the Special World portion of the Hero’s Journey (see The Hero's Journey according to Joseph Campbell ). But, I believe the Hero’s Journey resonates inside us all because we are each capable of experiencing Hero’s Journeys multiple times in our lives.

Tick Tock of the Final Day of Interviews

After a comfortable night sleep at producer Shane Reiser’s family home, I stopped at St. Charles, Missouri, which is where Lewis & Clark finished their last minute preparations before striking off up river. Then two years, this is where they returned triumphantly having only lost one member of the expedition and gathered significant amounts of research on the people, resources, and routes to the Pacific Ocean.

I then headed over to the St. Louis Children’s Hospital to interview Dr. Cadence Kuklinski, pediatric pulmonologist specializing in the lung transplants. Following this 36 and final interview of this season, I hit Ted Drewe’s frozen custard stand on the famous Route 66 and an Italian sausage sandwich from Joe Fassi’s in The Hill neighborhood.

To finish the day, I went downtown to shoot b-roll of some iconic scenes (City Museum and the Gateway Arch) then on to Bellefontaine Cemetery to pay respects at Willam Clark’s grave and then over to the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers to capture some drone footage.

Integrating and Growing

Now, I have made my way east and will reunite with my son on Sunday. This phase about the Hero’s Journey is returning from the Special World to find resolutions in the Ordinary World that lead to integration of the experience. I’ll be heads down in Blue Ridge at producer Kurt Ronn’s work studio until I finish episodes 2-6.

I’m excited to debut episode 1 on Sunday. You’re about to meet some amazing people adjusting and overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic.

What part of the Hero’s Journey are you on now?

Where’s Ep 1? aka Rolling Hills of the Osage

Missouri River near Rocheport, MO just west of Columbia

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Episode 1 is ready and will debut this Sunday. I chose to wait till the end of the weekend, so I can assemble the show notes and the full-length rough cut interviews. It’ll be worth the wait.

Ever wonder why Jefferson City is the capital of Missouri? Just pull out a map and see that it sits about middle of the state on the Missouri River. This stretch of the Missouri has rolling hills and joins with the Osage River just to the east. River travel was the fastest choice before the railroad era.

Like many of the place names in America, the Osage River is named after the indigenous people who were here when the European settlers arrives. You’ll also find a healthy number of French place names thanks to this once being under the French Empire’s influence.

Paying Homage

I made a stop on my way from Kansas City to St. Louis in Columbia, home of the University of Missouri. It gave me a chance to catch up with a college fraternity brother, Jay Thelen PhD, who is a research professor there. But the deeper reason revealed to me was to pay homage to William Least Heat Moon, author of Blue Highways, which was part of the inspiration for this trip.

He had just lost a teaching position and his marriage had been in trouble. Taking off in his van, which he named Ghost Dancing, he spent the better part of year in the 1980s traveling almost exclusively on state highways documenting his interactions with people in every region. His van is preserved and held at the Anthropology Museum on campus.

Overcoming

My arrival in St. Louis gave me the chance to interview Sandra Eidel, a pre-school teacher at a nonprofit bilingual center, and Mayor Ella Jones, who is 37 days into her term as mayor of Ferguson, MO. Both women have suffered loss during the pandemic (but not due to COVID), Sandra her father and Mayor Jones her sister.

Their stories are filled with insights and encouragement for how to stay resilient no matter the challenges. I then spent the evening in the guest suite of the parents of producer and friend, Shane Reiser. What a fun, hospitable couple.

How do you keep moving forward even in the face of challenges?

Being Open to Opportunity

Being flexible is important when taking a journey like this one. I originally planned to be in Kansas City for just one night but I stretched it to two when Dr. Mike Greenfield agreed to share his story.

His family is just coming to the end of a COVID quarantine. While he treated one of the first COVID patients in the state of Kansas and has seen patients at his family practice, they contracted it from elsewhere.

This extra time gave me the time to squeeze in a visit to Independence, Missouri after I interviewed Adam Arredondo of STARTLAND. He shared what it has been like for his wife and he to welcome their child into the world during a pandemic, while helping lead community building activities.

Independence was the jumping off point for folks taking the Sante Fe, California, and Oregon Trails until about the 1850s. You can still drive from the main town square south along the same route. President Harry S. Truman called it home and his presidential library. It felt like a fitting way to weave the past five weeks together.

This flexibility paid off with the chance to walk in the same landscape as thousands of westward travelers while documenting three important perspectives. I’m headed into the last two days of this journey. Can’t wait to see what the road brings us.

When has flexibility given you opportunity?

Old Patterns Seen Anew

My trip south along I-29 from the Metro Omaha area to Kansas City kicked up memories of many childhood and adult trips on that same road. Growing up, I thought it was because we wanted to go to the bigger city for tasty eats and shopping at the Crown Plaza and Country Club Plaza.

Those were attractions, but we made that trip so many times because of the generational migratory pattern caused by family visits to see my grandmother’s mother who came from and returned to this part of the world. And, here I thought it was because Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun were rad.

With my Lewis & Clark travels in mind, I stopped near St. Joseph, Missouri to get up close and personal with the muddy Missouri River. Then, I finished the drive into Kansas City in time to interview Jannae Gammage, CEO of The Market Base.

We met in J. C. Nichols Park adjacent to the Country Club Plaza. It has an iconic fountain and has served as the de facto downtown for locals. It was the site of the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests and many artifacts from those recent days still are on display.

I picked up some barbecue and local craft brew before retiring to my hotel for the night. Three more full days of interviews and travels before I complete this pilot journey.

What routes and patterns have you seen in new lights recently?

Entering the Home Stretch

I’m currently typing as I race the checkout time at my hotel in Omaha so I can hit the road for Missouri for stops in and between Kansas City and St. Louis. I have decided to conclude the sixth episode of Project Tumbleweed in the state where Lewis & Clark ended their expedition.

The continued growth of COVID-19 cases throughout the South and the sheer volume of interviews gives me confidence this is the right time and place to hit pause. We will have 36 total interviews conducted in 13 states over five weeks. That’s quite the initial snapshot of life in America during a pandemic.

What’s most exciting is that VidLoft and I are putting the final polishes on Episode 1 for its world premier while I’m still on the road (as promised). You get to experience the beginning of this journey for yourself before I arrive at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.

On Friday, I plan to head to Georgia to reunite with my son, Ethan, and deliver his possessions. Then, I will hunker down to edit and publish the other five episodes. Now that we have the episode format figured out, I feel like we’ll get into a rhythm and chunk through terabytes of footage I have captured.

What can you do to help in the home stretch?

You have been a great help in growing the audience for my content and many of you have provided funds. That’s exactly what I need more of in the coming days and weeks.

1. Share this website and our social media accounts with your friends and colleagues. Here are some suggested ways to promote.

2. Contribute money to support the production, even if you already have. I hope you see the value your contributions are creating. Donate here.

I sincerely believe this real-time documentary will become more and more important as this pandemic continues to unfold. My sense is that these six episodes are just the start of an ongoing journey to document what’s happening around us.

Thank you to everyone who has helped me to date and welcome to those of you who join them!

Farmers Market and Family

Phew, I am rested up after a much needed weekend filled with downtime. I spent yesterday enjoying the Aksarben Farmers Market near my hotel in Omaha. Aksarben is Nebraska spelled backwards and is a name derived from a high society group that owned the horse racetrack turned mixed-use district which includes part of the University of Nebraska at Omaha campus.

I spent the rest of the day re-recording my narrations of episode 1 and capturing some relevant b-roll and drone shots for episode 2. To thank my aunt and uncle for the short notice use of their deck to launch my drone, I invited them over to my parent’s for some Farmers Market improvisations.

After yet another full night of sleep and no late hour driving, I woke up and banged out the edits for episode 1. Hope to have to have the final version back this week and debut it before the weekend. Fingers crossed.

What have you done recently to recharge your batteries?

Unexpected Discoveries

View from atop Spirit Mound looking toward the Missouri River

I woke up after a second night of not driving past midnight AND getting 8+ hours of sleep. My hope of a rescheduled interview washed away and I decided to take my time getting to Omaha by checking out two spots along the Lewis & Clark expedition.

As I drove to Spirit Mound, I came across a fascinating place called Hub City. It stands at the intersection of two roads and sprung up thanks to an ice house and service station (which Lawrence Welk and his polka band would frequent). There’s an abandoned Swedish town just north which is why Hub City has served a social gathering spot since its origins.

Spirit Mound is a restored prairie with a natural conical uprising of chalk, which many Native American tribes have treated as a sacred spot. Lewis & Clark expedition walked the 8-9 miles distance from the Missouri River at present day Vermillion to see this unusual feature for themselves.

I recorded a binaural five minute video and flew my drone to get some Midwest footage, since it was bound by a corn field, grasslands, and soybeans. Three shots with one stone.

Heading south, I drove through Vermillion, SD and then crossed one of only two sections of the Missouri River that is still in its natural wild state. As I shot more drone footage atop Mulberry Point just across the Nebraska border, I ran into a college fraternity brother and his family.

We all packed up after some social distanced catching up before I made the final portion of the day’s driving to feast on barbecue with my parent’s on their front porch. Four weeks since I last saw them and it felt surreal to think of all the miles I had driven since then that brought me to amazing places meeting fascinating people.

What unexpected discoveries have you made this summer?

Play during a Pandemic

What a joyful place the Children’s Museum of South Dakota is even during a pandemic. While things are restricted to the outside prairie (as they call their facility), it felt good to be around the random laughter of kids - of all ages - splashing in the water and oohing over a mechanical dinosaur.

I had fun meeting and interviewing Kerrie Vilhauer, who leads the team’s marketing and communications. She shared how they were tracking on their counterparts in Hong Kong and what they were doing to reopen. Kinda funny to think how unusual it was to consider masks and temperature checks was in January. But, here we are.

Their team has pivoted from in-person experiences to creating kits and packages for parents to share with their children and periodic virtual events. For a place that already had a strict cleaning regime in place, they have increased it even further. It is a wonderful operation that sparks imagination and encourages play.

After a cup of coffee, I hit the road south to Sioux Falls where I checked in and took a much needed afternoon nap. I woke up and headed to the downtown area where the namesake Sioux Falls inspired awe of its own. Of course, I followed Kerrie’s food recommendation and feasted on a Vietnamese Fried Chicken at Bread & Circus before strolling the downtown streets.

I did some laundry and washed my car of the thick wool blanket of dead insects that dedicated their lives to this documentary. That’s natural in the prairies. It was great to get to bed without driving late into the night.

What are you doing to encourage play in your life?

Fatigue Sets in

Four weeks on the road. Four weeks since I moved out of my apartment in Indiana. Four weeks and I’m feeling fatigued today.

Maybe it was the two nights in a row of 1am check-ins that followed a full 8+ hours of driving. Maybe it was seeing the first full draft of Episode 1 and realizing there’s so many more decisions to be made. I hope to have the final version ready for its debut next week.

More Press, This Time in Missoula

Thanks to Mark Sullivan, one of our 118 producers, for connecting me to his family friend, Megan Mannering. She’s a television reporter for KPAX and filed this news report on my visit to Missoula.

Five press hits in four different towns, so far. This one had candid shots of me walking/running to get equipment and then scout out the riverside location. Sadly, she left out the Boy Scout-esque improvisational stick camera tripod.

Hunkering Down Tonight in Sioux Falls

My original plan was to drive to Omaha and spend the full weekend there. But I just had no mental gas in the tank after today’s interview, so I booked a hotel room in Sioux Falls and will stay here for the night.

I just woke up from a shorter than desired nap. Maybe once I get these thoughts out of my head, I’ll fall back to sleep. Or maybe I’ll just stare out the window and wonder why this is the first state I’ve traveled to where the hotel staff aren’t behind acrylic protective shields nor are they wearing masks.

Don’t even get me started on how the gym and pool are open with no restrictions. WTF?

Objects Larger Than They Appear

I remember moving to the Boston area and having my mind blown that you could drive an hour or two and hit 3-4 different states. That’s because I grew up on the Plains where states are traversed in half and full day increments.

Punch up a map on your phone and look at Montana and both Dakotas. Judging time and distance for traveling across them is on the same confusing plane as walking the Las Vegas strip and saying to yourself “We can walk. That doesn’t look too far.” Even though you know from past experience that it is WAY longer than it looks.

Back into the Prairie Midwest

Traveling to the eastern sides of the Dakotas, you run into the Midwest culture again. Everyone here is North Dakota Nice or South Dakota Nice. But I am shocked to find how politicized the COVID-19 precautions are here in these two states.

This pandemic has exposed the pandemic we’ve been in when it comes to the hyper polarization of seemingly everything. Those themes were reinforced when I spoke back-to-back with two makers/creators in Bismarck, Ashton Hauff and Shelly Sayler. I can’t wait to share them with you.

I enjoyed my two interviews yesterday in Bismarck, ND and my drive along the Missouri River through a portion of the Standing Rock Reservation. My third interview is in limbo because of a family emergency and I hope it comes together, since Jen Martell is of the Standing Rock nation and has a firsthand view into the impact COVID-19 is having on the elders of her community.

Okay, that’s enough jabbering. Time for more sleep and rest. These final edits will go quicker with a clearer, non-caffeine addled brain.

How are your energy levels? Are you rested or fatigued?

Road Time

This “little road trip” as producer Hugh Forrest jokingly called it yesterday in an email conversation requires large amounts of solo driving across wide open territory. It begs the question another producer Brad J. Ward posted as a comment to yesterday’s Daily Journal entry:

I want to know more about what ScottyHendo does during an 8.5 hour road stretch. What does your windshield time look like? Playlists? Podcasts? Would a phone call from a Producer help fill some of the gaps or help you stay awake?

Yesterday it was simple. I hit shuffle play on my Apple Music and just drove all day. What began as an 8.5 hour session became 10 hours thanks to a reroute through Billings and surprise stories at the iconic Pompeys Pillar. That sandstone monolith along the Yellowstone River still has William Clark’s signature etched into it.

I find long road trips to be meditative, just like I find solo hiking excursions. Both are about discovery novelty and seeing the world from new vistas. As long as the music has a healthy mix of songs and artists, I can stay focused for solid bursts.

When I need a break from the thinking and ruminating, I will load up an audiobook from Audible.com and listen at 2.5-3x speed. The human mind can process way faster than the human mouth can speak. It’s quite a way to absorb very thick books in a relatively short time period.

Back in the 1990s when I drove the summer across Nebraska, I would read my fair share of books and magazines. No, it was not safe but then again the roads were arrow straight with not many folks coming from either direction. Yes, I will cheat death from time to time for a periodic social media scroll. It’s about keeping the mind moving not falling into a lull.

I was in such a groove yesterday I didn’t think to question Waze when it rerouted me from Eddie’s Corner, MT away from the due east road to the southeast fork. Not sure if it was a glitch or there was a major road issue on the original route, but I only noticed the extra hour of drive time the new route brought once I was on top of a ridge looking down into the Yellowstone River valley at Billings, MT.

Making lemonade out of lemons, I seized the opportunity to stop at the iconic Pompeys Pillar national monument. I set up the Mavic Pro and captured some flyby imagery of the landmark, since I arrived after the gates had closed. Needing to get to Bismarck, I chose not to walk the extra mile(s) to see the signature firsthand.

Now I’m back in the Central Time Zone and have two interviews today with two more scheduled tomorrow here both Dakotas. Gotta hit the road again.

What other behind the scenes questions do you have for me?

Following Contours

Downtown Missoula, MT

Missoula yielded a great interview with Barbara Neilan, who heads Destination Missoula and spoke to the impact COVID-19 has had on the tourism industry.

Barbara is a native Montana and offered up a number of recommendations and historical gems. One such gem was how Missoula once sat at the bottom of an ancient sea. But glacier melt led to three massive floods that shaped everything in its way. Hundreds of thousands of years ago.

It helps to have the University of Montana in town. I really enjoyed the creative vibe of the downtown area.

The drive from Missoula to Great Falls basically followed the contours shaped hundreds of thousands year ago. It was gorgeous as you would suspect. The Big Sky Country nickname didn’t come from thin air. Now I have 8.5 more hours of driving to complete before I arrive in Bismarck, ND.

What contours shaped in the ancient past shows up in your daily life?

Origin Stories

The Heart of the Monster on the Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) Reservation

What started as a day to trace the Lewis & Clark Route became an exploration of the Nez Perce Trail, which chronicles this sovereign nation’s culture and history. It was an unexpected but welcome turn of events.

The day gave me an important reminder. Every culture has an origin story, sometimes it gets erased and other times it is passed down.

Layers upon Layers

The Nimiipuu, as they call themselves, (the French fur traders gave them the moniker Nez Perce) welcomed and traded with the Americans after helping Lewis & Clark. In time, they lost most of their homeland and went to war in 1887 against the US Army. Refreshing my memory of these facts challenged my perspective of the day’s adventure.

Origin stories matter and the Heart of the Monster was a sacred stop on my journey today. This is where according to Nimipuu traction where humans came to be. I listened to the old tale of coyote helping slay a monster and bring the different First Nations people into existence.

It reminded me of the stories my grandfather would tell me which he had learned from his summers traveling among the Ojibwe in the Boundary Waters and from his longtime friend and Lakota Medicine Man, Chief Al Fasthorse. He did not descend from those nations, but he made sure his grandchildren would hear and appreciate those stories for what they represented to those who did.

Responding in the Present to the Past

None of us alive today were part of those events directly. However, as the Irish like to say, the past is never in the past. We see the reverberations of the culture clash between European and Asian empires and indigenous people around the globe.

We’re seeing these reverberations in every country today, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic lays bare the legacy these clashes and erasures have for all of us who inherited this system. It is up to us to determine how to carry it forward.

Do we continue to gloss over these facts or do we put names to them? Do we begin to see the “others” as “brothers and sisters” or do we continue to treat them like “things” and “its”? We cannot control the past but we can shape the future.

What origin stories do you carry around with you? How do you share them?

Tumbling Again

Ah, the rush of the open road and discovering new vistas. There’s something soothing about that for me. While I did enjoy my extended stay in the Tri-Cities and having daily family time again, this documentary isn’t gonna finish itself. Plus, we made the local NBC news.

Earlier this year, techno-optimist Kevin Kelly shared the various lessons he’s learned in his 68 years of life. One comes to mind right now:

Be prepared: When you are 90% done any large project (a house, a film, an event, an app) the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete.

That is the truth that looms in my mind right now. I have many more miles to drive but only 10 more interviews to shoot. With 26 interviews completed, my mind has begun to shift towards the myriad of details and various steps that will get this large project to the finish line.

Getting back on the road yesterday felt good. Driving up US Hwy 12 from the Tri-Cities to Lewiston in the late day sunlight was spectacular. This highway traces along the route Lewis & Clark took on their journey. The landscape is different today thanks to modern farming and irrigation technologies.

I became enamored with the rolling hills, amber waves of grain, and sinuous path of the road as it followed the natural terrain. My drive took about an hour longer since I stopped multiple times for photos and video segments, including two Mavic Pro flights.

This was a surprising gem of a segment on this route and today’s journey into the Bitterroot Mountains promises to be even better.

What’s been a surprising discovery you’ve made recently?

Eastward Bound

My Backyard Work Station and Co-Worker

It’s time to pack up my car and hit the road. My time in the Tri-Cities of Washington has come to an end. I’ve eaten my fill of amazing Mexican food, spent lots of time being the crazy uncle, and have hit a groove with the production mechanics.

Second Leg: Tracing the Lewis & Clark Route

For the next week or so, I’ll trace various portions of the route Lewis & Clark traveled in their search of the Pacific Ocean and the headwaters of the Missouri River. If you ever study that exploration, you’ll find they owe their survival and eventual success to the various Native American tribes they met along the way.

Today, I’ll head to Lewiston, Idaho for the evening and spend all day tomorrow exploring the Bitterroot Mountains before arriving in Missoula, Montana for an interview. On Tuesday, I’ll stop in Great Falls, Montana as I make my way to North Dakota and then on to South Dakota. I hope to make it to Omaha by the weekend.

Ten More Interviews Left

What’s on my mind now is who should the final ten people be that I interview? I will need to stretch these interviews from Idaho to Georgia. My sense is that five will happen in the Northern Plans and the other five in or around Kansas City, St. Louis, Nashville, and Atlanta.

I have 26 interviews completed and 14 in rough cut form. Episode 1 is in the hands of VidLoft and Episode 2 is with my rough cut volunteers. My goal is to publish Episode 1 next Sunday and then keep a weekly release schedule until we have all six episodes complete.

What content are you enjoying the most? What would you like to see more of in the coming two weeks?

Firsthand History in Stereo

California Hill on the Oregon Trail

While we continue our work on episode one, I wanted to share this video experiment with you. I recorded this high-def video along with a binaural microphone to create something you’ll want to listen to with headphones or ear pods.

You can join me as I walk up California Hill near Brule, NE, which has one of the best remaining sets of Oregon Trail wagon ruts. This section came shortly after the pioneers crossed the South Platte River and began to head northeast toward Chimney Rock, Scott Bluff, and eventually Wyoming.

I arrived at sunset while a thunderstorm loomed north of the site. You can hear the birds and bugs buzzing, the crunching of my steps, and a train whistle from the Union Pacific transcontinental railroad line towards the south.

Smooth is Fast

This self-taught documentarian is feeling the learning curves. I’m glad I took the week to work through the production process kinks and bottlenecks. No one but me placed an urgency on this production when I called it a real-time documentary. The name implicitly and explicitly sets the expectation you’ll see it sooner than later, right?

Kinda reminds me of the “It Might Get Loud” documentary featuring Jimmy Paige, The Edge, and Jack White. In a segment, Jack White explains how he likes to push the envelope and challenge himself. He says something like “if I can get switch instruments in five seconds, I like to then give myself only four seconds.”

Why do it the easy way when you can go for the higher degree of difficulty? That’s my mindset and why I was willing to take on what my friend, Mitch Maxson, termed a “pretty ambitious project” when he introduced me to Dana Whitelaw from the High Desert Museum.

What this week has done for me is given me time to figure out the rhythm for how to turn the captured footage into the final product. I still have many hours ahead of me, but thanks to a circle of rough cut reviewers and a weekly production cycle, I feel much better about getting these conversations and insights out into the world starting in about a week.

In fact, I’ve begun to share clippings via the Instagram channel and even posted the first experimental video using stereo sound on location at California Hill near Brule, Nebraska where you can see some of the best wagon train ruts remaining.

What’s your appetite for pushing the envelope? Do you play it safe or take chances?

A Little Help from My Friends

Pasco Farmers Market

Everyone who knows me knows that my best work comes when I collaborate with other creative, bright minds. I like to say my passion is getting others excited about painting the fence and then giving them the freedom to paint it with whatever colors or medium they prefer.

Perhaps the concept of a farmers market is a better analogy. I’ll provide the structure, you bring the curated goods. That’s fresh on my mind since I just learned all about the Pasco Farmers Market today.

Right now, the production bottleneck is the juncture between my laptop and me. My partners at VidLoft can’t do their work without me reviewing, clipping, and uploading the interviews and b-roll footage I’m shooting.

The creation of a single 30-minute rough cut interview video takes about 2-2 1/2 hours between the rendering and uploading to YouTube. Then it takes me another hour to review and clip the juiciest segments from each interview.

With the clock ticking and my travels resuming on Sunday evening, I have devised a game plan to help speed the process by leveraging my super power. I’m asking a handful of the 118 producers to jump in to help review the rough cut interviews to find the segments that stand out.

My intent is to render a new batch of interviews each week and keep a weekly production cycle so that a new episode and the corresponding six rough cut interviews can drop each week. That’ll give folks plenty of content to binge on while we work through the library of footage.

Are you interested in helping review the footage? Hit me with an email here.

My First “Oh, $h!t” Moment

A few weeks back, my former colleague, Chad Pittman, made the comment that he was wondering when I would have my first “Oh, $h!t” moment. Initially, I laughed it off.

He’s a two-time US Army combat veteran who’s seen his share of war and knows what it is like when reality smacks you in the head that’s filled with fancy, elegant plans. Suddenly, his musings became real.

Last night was that first “Oh, $h!t” moment for me. I had rough cut the first six interviews and began to arrange a plan for the first episode. Then, I found out my MacBook Air was overmatched by the task of rendering them.

I know from previous experience how rough of sledding post-production could be. But I didn’t think to consider how well my laptop could handle rendering 30 minutes of high-def video. Turns out loading three hours of 4k video files onto a taxed hard drive isn’t a good idea.

Mind you, I found this out around midnight, 2am, 3am, 5am, and 6am as I napped while my laptop was rendering (and mostly failing/rebooting) these videos. By morning, I had two of the six rough cuts uploaded and one stuck at 95% processed on YouTube.

Because I’m already 1/3 of the way thru my production work week, I began to spiral into a late night doom loop. My body and mind froze on the looming July 15 IRS tax filing deadline, the need to book interviews for my eastward journey, and all the decisions to be made for what to do when I arrive in Atlanta.

I woke around 7:45am and got myself square with my morning routine of stretching/Tai Chi/yoga/core exercises. Clearing my mind allowed me to realize the need to delete the 4k video files and pare down to the bare essentials.

Instead of rendering and sharing directly to YouTube, I’m rendering to the hard drive and then loading to YouTube. That way, I can at least get the rough cut videos rendered without losing them if the upload fails.

In about an hour, I have a whiteboard session with my partners at VidLoft to map out the first episode and the basic structure of these episodes. That’ll help me select and clip footage for the second and third episodes quicker (that’s the hope).

This doesn’t make for great social media posts. So I’ll just walk old town Pasco and take photos of the bright colors. Of course, I’ll capture pictures of tumbleweeds to satiate those of you asking where all the tumbleweeds I somehow promised to deliver. Found a bunch in their own marina slip.

What part of your work is necessary but non-glamourous?

Slow is Smooth

Looking up in Pasco, WA

Driving around the country interviewing people and capturing road scenes are the glamorous part of producing a real-time documentary. Hunkering down in front of a laptop is the non-glamourous yet equally important part.

I chose to spend this week in Pasco at an airbnb guest suite so I could prepare the footage and creative briefs for the first few episodes. Right now, I’m on track to interview 36 people which means we need to figure out how to fit six people per 10 minute episode.

Out of the 10 minutes, we're looking at 5-6 minutes of interview segments. What’s highly likely is each episode will have one of the six people play a larger role than the rest. That’s because it takes about two minutes to develop an emotional connection to a person on video.

But how do I make sure everyone who took time out of their life to share their story gets a chance to have their story told? My solution is to create rough cuts for each interview and publish those at the time their episode is published.

This way, each 10 minute episode weaves a cohesive narrative thread and provides you with enough of an introduction to each person for you to decide if you want to watch their full interview or not. Each interview ranges from 15-30 minutes which means you have a chance to binge to your heart’s desire when each episode drops.

What are you most interested in hearing from these interviews?

Timeout in the Tri-Cities

Snake River at the confluence with the Columbia River

Two straight weeks on the road. 24 interviews completed. First leg of the journey done. Phew, I needed that holiday weekend.

Back in the high desert this time in eastern Washington, I find myself surrounded by family and their neighbors. It has been good to see my brother, sister-in-law, and their five kids. It is fun to be the crazy uncle camping out under the stars in the backyard for Independence Day weekend. So good, I decided to stick around another week.

New Timeline, Possible New Route

Taking the holiday weekend off, I had time to reflect on the documentary’s progress. The fact 24 people (so far) have shared their pandemic stories with me is quite the responsibility in my mind. I want to make sure their perspectives are shared as earnestly as they were given.

At the same time, I am tracking on how COVID-19 infection and hospitalization rates are back to peak numbers but spread across a wider geography with sunbelt states getting rocked. I am beginning to reconsider my planned route and am already adjusting my timeline.

I have decided to pause my travels for a week to give myself time to review and prepare the footage for the VidLoft team to edit the first couple episodes. Plus, I need to take time to line up interviews for my journey eastward. That way, you can begin to see the fruits of this collective labor while I’m still on the road.

Chances are pretty high that I will not take the originally planned southern leg of the route. I am fortunate my precautions have paid off to date and I want to make sure that continues. Rather than follow the Mississippi River, I will likely travel from St. Louis via Nashville to Atlanta.

What to Expect This Week

While the past two weeks have been filled with new places and tons of photos, I will mostly share interesting footage that I find in what has been captured to date. Plus, I hope to get some fun on-location experiments I shot on my westward journey published. You’ll be among the first to know if you follow on social media and/or subscribe to the Daily Journal digest.

I have also begun to fly the DJI Mavic Pro around and practice aerial photography. I think it will be a great addition to the documentary especially to document the vast beauty of the route I’ll take back east.

What?! Am I really planning to add a new layer in the middle of the trip? Yup, that’s the spirit of this production. Learn by doing and challenge orthodoxy.

What plans have you changed or are considering changing because of the COVID spike happening now?