A Leg To Fly On Short Film

(Watch the video at the bottom of this post or HERE)
So I emailed the contest people and asked if I could just upload this video to my personal youtube account so I didn't have to wait to show it to people - and they said that was fine. It was kind of surprising they allowed it because it is usually a no-no.

Here's some background/behind the scenes info on the film. It is for the LGfilmfest.com contest (their youtube page). There are four categories and this one is in the sports category. There is no public voting for this video so celebrity judges like Jamie Foxx are going to be picking the winners, only one from each of the four categories. 3 will receive $10,000 and one will receive $100,000 (Canadian dollars).

I got home on a Monday morning from the Santa Cruz Flats Race and found out about this contest that same night. Slept on the idea, which the theme for the contest is an inspiring human story and/or pertaining to LG's logo of 'Life is Good.' So I thought about Tip Rogers who is a really nice guy and since the Treetopper's Team Challenge was going on that week I thought he might be down this way flying with everyone so it would make it easier to film him. I contacted him and he agreed to let me film him for this so I went the very next day to film. He was only down for that Tuesday, Wed., and Thursday, so it was as quick of a turn around as it could be. One of my college buddies Matt Phelan created the music for it after just some quick messages to him about the kind of feel I was going for and I think he did a great job.

Please leave your comments here and especially on the youtube page for this video, please go there and rate it and make comments on it. While this doesn't have any public voting I think it couldn't hurt if I had a bunch of comments and good ratings on the youtube page of this video.

Feel free to pass it around, copy and paste this address and email it around:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cykHENutlkI

Also stay tuned in here, bookmark this blog or whatever, for updates on my upcoming projects. I should be posting my Doritos contest commercial within the next few days as well. In addition, I think I will be reposting my other short film "A Soaring Life" on youtube, now that the Stella Artois contest is over, for easier viewing.

Enjoy!

Mammatus | Healthy Community

Some nice little mammatus clouds were at sunset yesterday as some of us were hanging out.

This place, the flight park and surrounding area and it's community, reminds me of a passage I just heard (got the audio book) from Malcolm Gladwell's 'Outliers.'

In it, he describes a town that has no heart attacks, everyone is relatively healthy, although most get little to no excersize and even suffer from obesity, but that people were dieing from nothing but old age. What was discovered there was the importance of community and its health benefits. Here's a passage:

The townspeople in Roseta had built a “powerful protective social structure capable of insulating them from the pressures of the modern world. The Rosetans were healthy because of where they were from, because of the world they had created for themselves in their tiny little town in the hills.”

Sounds like the place I live.

FL Ridge Day 2 - end

Made goal again!

Tougher day than yesterday, it was an 86 mile task and I almost decked it in no-man's land only about 35 miles into the task. Even with that I was much faster today than yesterday. It took 2h10m for 46 miles yesterday and today it was 3h10m for 86 miles.

I went on glide from about 5,200' and didn't hit anything substantial and got down to 900' - plus my radio wasn't working so I couldn't tell our awesome driver, Dale, where I was.

I picked out a landing field and got over it and started working 200 fpm and waffled in that for about 30 minutes and finally got a boomer at about 700 fpm. Got back up and took off again, and never got below 3,500' for the rest of the flight.

Coming into the the small goal LZ I came into ground effect and was whizzing past all these animal bones beneath my feet - pretty intimidating scene as I'm trying to have a safe landing.

All the Treetoppers made goal today too!

I've also got to thank Steve Kroop over at Flytec for the 6030 - that thing is awesome!

Launch line today

GOAL FIELD!

Day 2 (still) - Woohoo! This was awesome!

This was an off day because it was blown out, but still freaking awesome because Dustin got people psyched to go to the atlantic coast and soar an abandoned hotel.

I think it got hit by a hurricane and they never fixed it up. So we 'man-towed,' by people pulling on a rope, then we'd release and soar!



Eric took the picture of me flying and the video of my launch below and there's a group picture of the Treetoppers (sans Stump).

First HD Vid! BIG Contest - Taxslayer.com

Please go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MljBjpb02Tc

and give my video 5 stars - that's how they're voting to see who gets into the finals.

This one is for $25,000! Thanks!

This video is my first attempt at HD, so click the HD button to watch it - I think I can do better, but with our electricity being out I was scurrying to get this one done.

Nicholas Cage and Letterman think HG is cool

Our sport is well represented here!

This makes me feel cooler than I think I might be, thanks Nicholas Cage!

It starts at about 3:15 minutes in.

In almost a week, I have gotten 0 votes here, but hoping to be in the top 10 in this contest on the 24th