Originally posted at Project Peadal...

Six months later, Chuck and I rented an apartment outside of Ann Arbor together, with the hopes that it would give us the freedom to work on film-projects more consistently. Chuck began taking film-courses at Washtenaw – and at first, things seemed promising. We would often work on Chuck’s film assignments together, I was even allowed to sit-in during classes on occasion. A highlight of “Rolling Chair” was seeing two of our shorts played at an Ann Arbor film-festival in ‘The Michigan Theatre’.

We’d completed a few shorts and shot several small projects, mostly just goofing around, but we never shot anything serious or wrote another script. Over time, I found it increasingly difficult to spark Chuck’s interest in personal-projects. Weeks between “Rolling Chair” projects quickly became months. Many of our works-in-progress never made it past a late night of brainstorming. In public, Chuck was quick to point out our interest in film – “Rolling Chair” though, was becoming more of a conversation-started for Chuck than an actual routine.

“Rolling Chair”, for me, continued to grow as an idea. I often spent my free-time working out details and storylines to a number of different projects; it was a form of release from my everyday life. I spent many nights pacing the top-levels of parking garages in Ann Arbor; several scrap pieces of paper and a pen in my pocket. The parking garages gave a birds-eye view of my favorite theater, ‘The Michigan’. But, it seemed the more my interest grew in film, the more distracted, on a monthly cycle, Chuck became with: his girlfriend going off to college, zines, stamp-making, aggressive-inline-skating, starting a sticker company…

By the next spring Chuck and I were no longer living together. The lack of hands-on filmmaking/ screenwriting had, over time, driven an uncomfortable wedge in our friendship. I hadn’t talked to him in months. He was living an hour away at his cousin’s, and I was now living with my girlfriend, Amanda, in a house just down the street from my first apartment.

At this point, whether I liked it or not, Rolling Chair seemed dead, and I was getting used to the idea of going-it-alone. Which almost brings us “Project Pedal” – but before “Project Pedal” there was moving to California, well… kinda.