Scouting for PPP…
Greg and I just spent the afternoon scouting locations for the Pole Peddle Paddle. I’ve never seen the route before so off we were to look over things. It was rainy and dreary; I’m not sure how much we will be able to actually get out and see. The past several days (actually for about the last two weeks) it has been miserably cold and ridiculously wet. Very unusual for this time of year. Anyway, as we headed up to the mountain the weather just got worse and worse—worse cause it’s spring… if I wasn’t ready for spring then it would be a perfect powder day! Snow was coming down and covering the tracks as soon as we made them, and it was that slushy sticky snow; the kind of stuff that seems to reach out and grab your tires with a million tiny fingers and takes you where ever it wants to. I think all the snow plows have been parked for the year—or the drivers are lazy—because the road has not seen a plow in a while, judging from how deep we were sinking.
Thankfully, Greg knows how to handle snow and we were having such a great time talking over PPP story ideas that we hardly noticed Father Winter making one last attempt to show us global warming is a hoax (he will have to try harder). However, we did start thinking about what it would be like to do this race in a week and a half with these same conditions – God forbid! I don’t see a road bike (with those wonderfully skinny tires) going 60 mph down the mountain in snow and ice. On second thought, it would make for some GREAT footage! At least the attempt would make great footage…So while Greg prays for sunny weather and great road conditions, I’m praying for a Three Stooges moment between Greg (Moe) Road Bike (Curly) and the Snow (Larry).
Anyway the scouting went great. It really helped to get an idea of where we needed to be to get the best footage and how many camera’s we need (at least three). The transition from alpine to skate skis will be great… lots of mayhem. The hardest footage to get will be the skate skiing, so will will do our best to get what we can where we can. Maybe we’ll get lucky and capture some good spills :). The biking section will be fantastic. I hope to have one camera following Greg the whole time in a car, and then the other two will leap frog ahead and capture him whizzing by at critical moments. The running will be pretty easy, as much of it is along the road, and what isn’t will have me following him with my mountain bike (I’ll have to sneak it past security). For the Paddle section we will have two people in a canoe following him in the Kayak and one person filming from the canoe.
It’s going to be fun stuff! If you have any ideas let me know!
