This concludes our intermission. We now return you to your regularly scheduled roadtrip…

New Mexico was a lot of fun. While the purpose of this roadtrip in general is to get out and clear my head a bit from a decade and a half of non-stop work, it’s specifically to clear my head from the 'no-fun' parts of that work; lawyers  and departments of labor and the other sorts of administrative nightmares that tended to detract from the whole 'creative/showbiz' experience. It had been a while since I was out on a show, so it was nice to find that I still had a good time working with the equipment and the people and being in that environment (and that I was still good at it), so overall I’d say that it definitely added to my head-clearing experience. It's a really fun picture itself; it should be pretty funny (if you’re OK with fairly crude humor). It seems to be sort of a cross between “Something About Mary” and “Blazing Saddles”, with quite a bit of the type of humor that Seth MacFarlane is known for from shows like “Family Guy” and “American Dad”. The crew I worked with were great too; I’ve worked with Scott Rogers on many occasions before, but Randy and Ryan were new guys to me, and they were both awesome, which helped make it an overall good time.

I can’t really say much else about the movie (or show any picutures), so I’ll jump to what we did on our day off. I got up in the morning and did some laundry, then ran into Ryan and Randy out in the hotel parking lot, where they were getting ready to go explore some of the mountain and ski area north of Santa Fe. I jumped in the car with them, and we went up into some really pretty country; lots of aspens and elevation. We were woefully underprepared for any real hiking (no water, no food, marginal shoes on Randy and Ryan), but we took off anyway to see if we could make it to Nambe Lake (only a couple inches on the map!) We got pretty far (all the way up to 11,000’), but not quite all the way to the lake, as it was getting late in the day, weather was moving in, we had no water, and I’d only eaten a PowerBar that day, so I was at risk of bonking if it got too much more strenuous.  Amazingly, our better judgment won out, and we headed back down, jumped back in the car, and had a tasty dinner (with a lot of water) at the Cowgirl BBQ. 

The shooting schedule ran quite a bit behind over the course of production, in no small part due to the capricious New Mexico weather. There were thunderstorms practically every night I was there, and the wind could come up out of nowhere pretty much any time. According to the crew, there had been downpours and floods of biblical proportions numerous times on set before I got there, and everybody was pretty tired of it. However, it did make for some pretty skies and lovely sunsets. Santa Fe consistently had some of the most epic and postcard-worthy clouds and skies I’ve seen…I don’t know if it was the elevation, the terrain, the time of year, or something else, but every day the skies were amazing. It’ll make for some great “classic western sky” backdrops for the film. I didn’t have my good camera with me (just the point ‘n shoot and my phone), so hopefully this kind of weather is a regular thing and it’ll be just as pretty when I’m coming through on my way home.

Next stop, the trip goes international: Seattle to Vancouver Island, BC!

PS: As previously promised, the wake surfing video has been added to the Portland post. Thanks for sending it, Kim!