Back to the point. I almost cried with joy and excitement at the opening credits, watching superfit guys and girls vaulting off rocks to cling into almost invisible holds, mountain bikers zooming and zagging through trees and stalling off banisters built twenty feet off the ground. One image I'll never forget was at the 2003 Film Fest, where you follow a mountain biker from behind, and he rides right off a cliff, bunny hops into the void, then busts out a parachute and some ill moves mid-air til ground. Never forgetting that one.
The movies here were, as always, inspiring and hair-raising. The first was a mountain biking one, pure adrenaline. Then there was a skiing video from Japan, some dudes ripping through powder 50 feet deep. A cracked out dude and some other guy he dragged along climbed a melting waterfall in Canada. The long film was about this Brit who cycled a tandem bicycle, picking up random people on the way, from northern alaska to the tip of Argentina. Took him more than two years, and he picked up some pretty great characters, gold prospectors, free thinkers, a South American cycling club, a 70 year old ex-rocket scientist with leukemia and a heart disfunction named Ernie (those two are going across the states next summer, for Ernie), some beach babes, a couple general enthusiasts. the last video of the first half was less adventurous but more important: a meditation on global climate change, taking its perspective from some bird population that lives on cliffs in Canada.
The second half of the festival was equally as sick. There was an extreme unicycle thing, which I didn't much like. My favorite might have been a movie about free solo climbing, starring some kid named Alex (who dropped out of college at 19, stole the family mini-van and started climbing every day) who free solo'd up some epic climbs, one in Utah and also Half Dome in Yosemite. The cracks he was in were insane, so small, and he made it look effortless. He would have his fingers in cracks and his feet basically planted on the vertical wall. There was a kayak-combo-solar power'd oven movie set in East Africa and Madagascar. An award winning film about free riding / free flying, where some dudes attached parachutes to their backs and skipped down Mont Blanc on skiis. Very artistic, pretty sweet. The last film was about some goofball nordic skiiers doing spins and jumping out of the woods.
Anyways, so much of the footage was so ridiculously beautiful. The films were inspiring because of their beauty, but also because I know that I have the ability (mental and physical talent) to accomplish a lot of what those guys were doing. I have a real problem committing myself to one sport, but I want to get really good at rock climbing. I probably can't ever free solo Half Dome, but I want to do well in Moab this spring break.
The other realization was that it was so nice to share this film festival with someone else. Most of the best memories one ever has are shared, there's someone beside them. There are some transcendental experiences that happen when you're alone, say running on snowmobile trails in finland, but the ones you can share may definitively be the best and most important of all.
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