The End?

The Band traveled the final 20 miles to San Diego without much difficulty and then started on the logistics of getting everyone back up to Portland. Israel's friend Kate welcomed us into her home and everybody became very tired. Kati and Luke mustered the energy to ride to the train station and see if they could bribe a baggage handler to put his bass trailer on the train the next day. Amtrak wouldn't take it, and Luke ended up having to send his trailer via Greyhound, who had no problem taking the beautiful monstrosity back to Portland for only $32. They returned later that night and after some Big Kahuna burgers, it became clear that the band was not going to play a show on their last night of bike tour, and they began to feel like they needed a "finish line." Israel proposed (maintains he was joking) that they should either sit outside and meditate- "speak without speaking"- or ride naked to the bay and jump in. Maybe it was a reluctance to meditate, but Ryan jumped at the latter idea. So they celebrated by skinny dipping in the bay and then relaxing in Kate's apartment complex hot tub (clothed.) After only 3 hours of sleep, we all got up and headed to the train station for the 30 hour long ride back up to Portland.

Max boarded the train with the band in order to do interviews while Emily drove to the Bay Area to visit Jamie again and wait for him. The train ride, with the pacific coast on fast rewind through the windows, was a very compelling backdrop and the interviews were going really well, but the train ended up being a bit noisier and bumpier than the romantic notion we had in our heads. Despite the less than ideal shooting conditions, within the first 16 hours, Max had filled up the hard drive on his laptop with about eight hours of interview, and with only a USB1.0 portable hard drive to offload footage to very slowly (if given eight to ten hours to transfer what was already shot, it would have yielded space enough for another hour or so of footage,) he hastily disembarked in Oakland, where Emily could easily pick him up.

We are off for a little time off to relax with a friend here and then will be back up to Portland to do final interviews and figure out where we are going to edit the 250+ hours of footage that we now have stored in hard drives throughout the car. We will keep posting with updates about the film and our whereabouts over the next few months. Thank you Blind Pilot for a great ride.