The holidays during High School for me always used to bring considerable stress – I ran Cross Country for four years and anything that interfered with my daily training felt like a major distraction and derailment. I always felt incredibly guilty and lazy if I wasn’t able to, at the very least, put in three miles. Perhaps I was a strange teenager.

I bring it up because I find it funny that now, I don’t get anywhere near the exercise I used to, but I do feel a great deal of stress when holidays come around because it’s nearly impossible to work on Pedal my normal 5-6 days out of the week.

I’m sure the occasional easing-up is probably good for my sanity – but still, I always feel so awkward and derailed when a week goes by and I haven’t spent most of it on the film.

That’s not to say I haven’t touched Pedal in any capacity for the last week – I’ve been very busy finishing up some of the Kickstarter rewards for all the amazing people who helped backed our last campaign. Normally my time would be spent doing KSR work half the time, and the other half I’d be writing or story-boarding. It’s just this month has been half KSR and half getting ready for Christmas.

Anyway – last week I dropped off all the files for the new FToM t-shirts and stickers we’re ordering from the awesome, local, indie-friendly VGkids in Ypsi. Two weeks ago we ordered 500 new, hand-made-with-love Project Pedal buttons from the wonderful Karen Abad. In the next few days we’ll put the final-final touches on the 64 Days production journal (which was supposed to be 160 pages, but has ended up being 180 pages) that we’re making with Blurb.

After that – the very real and pressing deadline of Feburary is coming up, in which all the film’s writing needs to be done. Or at least done enough to film from. Any changes made will need to be small enough to work with what we have. All story-boarding and logistical planning needs to be complete by April – in which we also need to have nearly all the temporary voice-overs recorded and placed in sequence with the drawings of needed shots.

Larry will be leaving near the end of June or early July for his 16,000 mile adventure and sustainability efforts for Expedition to Endure. All of FToM’s additional filming needs to happen between April and June or else Larry will be out of town for the next year.

It’s a lot to finalize and I’m excited to do so. I can’t wait to pull off some of the shots that we’ve been working on – much of the film tells the two-sides of coming home, and we’re working hard to be sure the visuals of the film match those mirror opposites of someone’s post-trip experiences.