Long, long ago I got into animation. I really liked being able to create an experience or story someone else can have and share. Animation was long and tedious, you have to literally create a scene from a blank canvass, piece it together and then mold it frame by frame. Then I found videography. The hardest part is over, it's already created. Now you just have to piece it together. If I ever find myself pursuing another profession, it would be related to film.
Anyway, I've been stretching out as I settle down out here in Denver and have spent a bit of time working on a couple quick spots involving my travels.
I'll admit, I'm not the best blogger. I have my spurts of blogging energy and then find myself too engaged with life to take a moment to sit down and reflect (something I should be doing more of nowadays). I am always shocked to see that it has been a month or more since my last post!
We concluded our wonderful road trip adventure a few weeks ago in Blacksburg and as of last week I moved out of town back to my parents in Northern Virginia. I'm definitely going to miss all Blacksburg had to offer, but there are definitely exciting opportunities coming down the pipe.
I spent a good 28 hours on a really awesome ~30 minute video putting the entire trip together. Unfortunately there are several copyrighted songs in it so I cannot upload it to sites like Vimeo or YouTube. I threw a version of it on my website (don’t sue me!), but expect it to take a long while to load at 2.2 GB. The quality is regretfully lower than I would have liked, but I ran out of time to compress it appropriately.
A new chapter in my life will start in two weeks with the bound-to-be-quite-crazy adventures of Green Corps, a national non-profit environmental organizing training school. Out of thousands applying across the nation, only 25-30 get accepted... I guess running for town council didn't hurt my chances.
My training starts August 1st up in Boston. Halfway through training I’ll find out where in the nation I’ll end up for my first of several 3-month assignments. I’ve been pushing for Hawaii but I don’t think that’s likely, so I’ll settle (if I can) for something on the west coast. Either way after experiencing the U.S. through our road trip I’m pretty excited to be anyplace new!
Another exciting tidbit- our guest trainers for August include the Executive Directors / Presidents of the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice, Greenpeace, Environment America, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Quite a lineup!
My goal is to blog a bit more regularly over the next year, so keep your fingers crossed and / or yell at me!
It has been brought to my attention that the privacy settings on Facebook haven't allowed for everyone to view my photos. I believe I fixed the problem now and anyone should be able to see my photos from the trip.
If not, please let me know and I'll work on the settings. Either way, once I get a chance to really sit down (most likely after the trip) I'll upload all the photos and video directly to my website to download. I'll also geotag the real cool ones so you can see exactly where we were (it takes way too much time to upload them when you only have 15-30 minutes of internet every few days).
To keep to blogging I'll say a brief few words (it is now 1am West Coast time where I'm in Portland, Oregon now and I need to get to bed because we have a long day in the city tomorrow!). This trip already has been quite an amazing journey. We've just about crossed the 5,000 mile mark on how far we've traveled. We already slept under the stars in the desert-like landscape of the Badlands, scaled numerous mountains, camped in snowfall, heard wolves howl and coyotes yelp in the distance, seen numerous wildlife numbering aplenty and of those nearly extinct, journeyed to the tops of skyscrapers in Chicago and Seattle, eating delicious cuisine both at the campfire and at mom & pops across the country. On this trip alone I've already camped more than I have ever done before in my life put together.
I haven't found myself able to sleep in the car at all because I've been too excited to see what is around the next bend; afraid that I might miss something. There are similarities across America in the way we live our lives, but there are also subtle differences in design. The green neighborhoods of Portland are vastly different than the sprawling suburbs of Chicago compared to the shanty town in the Indian Reservation we journeyed through-- all of which is in the same country we call home. Often there are McDonalds, Wal-Marts, Safeways, Home Depots, Starbucks, and countless other stores cookie-cut across the landscape-- I was rather startled to see a Safeway layout exactly the same as the one down the street from my house 2,300 miles away in Canada.
There are also differences in how communities find their identity and values and how they want to be known. From tourist destinations such as Wall Drug Store in South Dakota to a rusting 1927 Model-T with a fake skeleton in it parked on the shoulder in a backwoods community in Washington State. This is only a hint of what we've seen.
We're only two weeks into the journey now, and have around 25 days to go. I'm excited to see what else we're going to learn!
-
So far the most interesting story was that we were stalked most likely by a Grizzly Bear in Glacier Park. After going on a 6+ hike up the mountain to Glacier Lake, we noticed huge fresh bear prints over our foot prints that had been following us for at least a mile (you can see the bear prints on the left, I guess grizzly judging by their huge size; bigger than our biggest shoe prints).
Highly nervous by finding this out, we started to hurry down the mountain path only to come face-to-face with another bear:
This is what ensued: *Note: "Everyone" is supposed to be able to see the videos but apparently Facebook doesn't publicly publish them unless you have an account?
We're just outside Yellowstone National Park in a public library at Cody, Wyoming. You can already smell a hint of sulfur in the air.
Unfortunately time has been drastically short in terms of being able to connect to the internet on the trip. I've been able to continue uploading pictures to facebook, but haven't had the time to fill in details or geotag the photos on Panoramio.
We're going to be juggling where we are in the next couple of days, but we'll be hitting up Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Glacier National Park (U.S.), Glacier National Park (Canada), Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland.
I am now officially an alum of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. After four years of devoted work as an organizer and student, I've somehow managed to graduate Cum Laude.
Also after three years of video work, and one month of intensive video editing, I finished the Wise County Project. You can view the 40-minute documentary at www.wisecountyproject.com.
On Monday four of us will be embarking on a nearly 40-day, 10,000 mile long road trip across the country. As shown with the map in my last post, we'll be making a large counter-clockwise circle across the country. We intend to blog regularly and also hopefully utilize a really cool way to show where we've been with GPS enabled photos.
You can see the geotagged photos I've already uploaded, such as those from graduation, here. I hope to have a similar map on the main page of the website but I'm having some issues making it only show my photos.
Below is a map of our planned 40 day, ~10,000+ mile cross-country road trip. I just got a new netbook and a GPS-enabled camera, so you'll be able to follow our adventure closely!
Just a for-your-information posting that the location of this blog needs to be moved due to Blogger no longer being able to provide FTP uploading to my website. After doing some fidgeting on the site, http://blog.brycecarter.com should direct you to it soon.
Expect a couple major updates and more regular updates regarding a cross-country road trip I'll be going on starting May 17th. Stay tuned.
