It’s all so surreal. Four years ago, I watched a short film called ‘Marla‘, made by a team of Belgiums (who, at that time, called themselves “Another State of Mind”) on a shoe-string budget. Using a homemade rig involving a GL2 and an old SLR Nikon they bought off eBay for cheap, they created a “mini35″ (MiniDV meets 35mm film) look that was very impressive and different. I was an instant fan.

Fast forward to last night – driving in the rented mini van with Amanda down the 405, on our way to pick up Olivier (co-founder of ASOM) and Jeff from LAX.

We were late – because I didn’t finish installing the rack on the van’s roof soon enough – and not to mention traffic was backed up on a Tuesday night at 6:30. Add to this I only wrote on the back of my hand the flight number, and not the actual airline… yea, we were having issues.

First we park the van, run into terminal 2 looking at US Airlines and Delta – Amanda is on the phone with her sister trying to look up the airline, I’m at the baggage claim begging some guy to punch it in on his computer. They’ve been on the ground for 30 minutes. We find out it’s in terminal 6 – which just happens to be about as far away from 2 as possible.

We run back to the parked van, go through the long exit line, do a loop to the other side, miss the parking structure for 6, drive another 400 feet to garage 7. Get out, race to terminal 6, realize that international flights get dumped off at 7. Turn back around, race to 7, at this point it’s been 45 minutes since their flight has landed. The pick-up area is packed, I don’t actually know what Olivier or Jeff look like… we forgot to make a “Black Sheep” sign.

I’m basically looking for two people who look like they are looking for people looking for them. When a tall guy to my left casually asked me, with a bit of a grin on his face, “are you looking for someone?”. It was perfect.

And luckily, they had just picked up their bags moments before, so we didn’t look like total assholes.

They are great – I couldn’t be happier with things right now. It’s all happening. Tomorrow we are going to be prepping the van, loading the equipment, finishing the rack on the roof, picking up the last of the camping gear, and 20 other little things. Friday night we pick up Olan, and Saturday morning we leave.

In the mean time – check out the short film that started all this craziness:

tags: pedal, documentary, indie, vlog, blog, bicycle, coast-to-coast, community, funding, another state of mind, black sheep