By this time in my life, I feared I had lost sight of almost everything that was valuable and true from the bike trip – my rough split from “Rolling Chair” combined with a short list of emotionally-draining events in the past two years had left me feeling unfocused and caught-up in route, I had, since Sept 11th, become obsessed with world politics, something that on one hand I found fascinating, but on the other, this obsession, often times, left me angry, confused, distracted, cynical…

I desperately wanted to leave on another bike trip – this time; sharing the experience with Amanda – to get away from everything that I found distracting: TV, my day-job, politics, errands, bills, money, etc… On my first trip, everything was so clear, the perspective was different, instead of feeling distracted through 80% of the day, I felt clear-minded, able to focus on things that are eye-opening, for example: “there are more links in a person’s brain than atoms in the entire universe”, or “no energy is either created nor destroyed, everything is recycled and reused and replaced”… Of course, not everything that consumed my thoughts on the bike trip revolved around science, maybe these are terrible examples, but you get the idea. These thoughts broke the boundaries of the day-to-day-mindset in a way that was liberating…

It was around this time, of planning a second bike-trip, this time, with Amanda, that she suggested to me creating a documentary around the cross-country trip. But before I get ahead of myself; right around the time the bike-documentary was born, Chuck entered our lives again, he had started living at the dorms over at Eastern, which were minutes away from where Amanda and I were living in ‘Ypsi’. In the beginning, I made it a point to not bring filmmaking into our friendship. The three of us – Amanda, Chuck and myself – began hanging out quite often; hanging out at Chuck’s dorm-room, going for late night walks around Ann Arbor. At this point that I was working for myself as an editor / videographer, I began asking Chuck for his help in shooting events that required more than one camera… it was around this point that Chuck showed an interest in the bike-documentary idea, and although I intended to not bring “film” into the picture, he was so genuinely excited and anxious at the mention of the project that I --

I think it’s important for me to stop and take a moment to explain something relevant to this story and my relationship, both personally and professionally, with Chuck: shortly after the bike trip, but before we moved into together, Chuck and I made a promise to each other; “that we would, no matter what, make films together”. I rarely make a promise to someone - only when I truly believe I can keep that promise 110% do I feel comfortable making it in the first place – and this promise was always something that weighted on my conscious when “Rolling Chair” seemed broken. I always wondered if there was more I could have done? Was I too intense or pressuring? So you can imagine my predicament here: do I put our friendship at risk again by starting “Rolling Chair” back up? Or do I tell him no and avoid taking responsibility for my promise?

Having said that – we began planning the bike-documentary together – we even designed a new logo for “Rolling Chair”. Then winter came, it was terribly cold and miserable in Michigan – one night, out of nowhere; Chuck suggested we move to California. At that point in time, he was suggesting we leave that night, just pack up everything and drive west, tell no one, just go – but this was something I couldn’t and wouldn’t do because I had editing jobs I was currently working on that month, not to mention it seemed a bit inconsiderate to our families.

But we didn’t dismiss the idea – we spent hours that night discussing the move. For Amanda and I, moving to L.A. was something we wanted to focus on after our bike trip. But at the same time, Chuck and I were close again – and I couldn’t and wouldn’t leave without him. So when he suggested the idea, we didn’t have a lot of reason not go besides the fact that we were all broke at the time.

But, for whatever reason – maybe simply because it was so amazingly cold outside - we started seriously discussing the possibility of moving. Chuck wanted to follow his dreams of directing films and “what better place to do it than in Hollywood, right?” He said. It was a terribly frightening/ risky decision – and in my experience, those are the risks you regret not taking the most.