Well, where do I start. We are now back in Calgary after 63 days living and traveling on the bus. We logged over 4,600kms on the bus and over 13,000kms on the rental truck. Both the bus and truck fared well...surprising since the bus was retired by the city 7 years ago because it was unsafe for public transit, and not to mention it's been in active service (including the Drop In Crew) for over 27 years, and the truck was a Ford rental...enough said!
We sure had fun with that rental truck. Only a few scrapes and dents that I buffed out before returning it yesterday. In all we traveled for 63 straight days living on the bus in parking lots and sometimes camp grounds when we could afford it. We toured through 12 locations from the deserts of Drumheller to rain forests of Van. Island (Drumheller, Calgary, Fernie, Rossland, Nelson, Invemere, Golden, Kamloops, Williams Lake, Whistler, Vancouver, and finally Vancouver Island). Each episode/location averaged about 15 hours of raw footage which our editing house we've contracted (post express) , must edit down to 22.5 minutes to fit a 1/2 hour scheduled program. Mike and I have given them our outline of how the show should look and we log all the footage from each episode to guide the editors on the shots we want. After they get the first rough cut they shipped it to us at whatever location we were currently at and we would watch it and make notes on the mistakes, changes, and add-on's etc. It worked well for the first three episodes. Now that we are back in Calgary we can have more input and be available more often for supervising the editing of subsequent episodes.
To date episodes one and two have aired (Drumheller and Calgary). The responses have been pouring in swamping my emial and flooding the chat forums on PinkBike.com (one of our sponsors - on-line mountain bike community web magazine). The comments and messages have been outstandingly positive! Here are a few of the comments I have cut and pasted from the PinkBike Forum page:
1. I just saw the show!!!! It kicked A$$!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
im gonna tape 'em ALL!
2. what can i say, the show was AWESOME!!!, i can't wait for next week, I am so stoked i don't even know what i'm doing on my computer, i should be out riding.
3. Blown away by the show - well put together and an excellant presentation of the level of skill and devotion of these guys to biking and extreme living. They are super stars, your show is going to be a huge success
4. So when does the second episode Air??? I've recorded the first one 3 times now.....
5. I'm from the US and can't get the show so I have a friend in Canada recording them for me.
6. finally ferried tv i love this show.
7. Hey, I watched the first episode, and it was excellent, kudos on a job well done.
Thanks to all of you who have logged on and commented. We appreciate it! Keep it
coming.
Our return to Calgary has been interesting to say the least. It sure different sleeping in a real bed in a huge one bedroom condo and not waking up to a water gun blast! We really bonded with the 5 guys (Mike, Shawn, Dylan, Byron, and Darren) and had an incredible time. It was amazing feet of athleticism for the five riders to get through 60 days of intense riding and being 'on' infront of cameras virtually 24/7. My hat goes off to those boys! The only tragedy along the way was Darren Butlers injury while performing a road gap drop in Kamloops. That was about the scariest crash we had ever been involved in. Darren is one lucky guy considering what happened and what could have happened. Both of his heels were crushed and bones in his feet broken. The full extent of his injuries will not be know until the surgeon goes in. I think the Lord was watching over him.
Tues. Sept. 17 was his date for surgery. You can wish our friend Darren all the best through the forum.
We want to thank each and everyone of you for following our journey and now sharing in it with us on TV. Be sure to tune in and watch all the airings per week you can. The better our audience numbers are, the better
budgets we can get for
subsequent seasons, which means bigger and better adventures we are able
to give you.
Tim Bieber
Producer, FALL LINE Productions
www.DropIn.PinkBike.com
tim@falllineproductions.com
