The bike is a healing tool for cancer survivors.

Fifteen years later I found a 100-mile gravel road in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia. I first bikepacked it in 2018 and fell in love. This is where my obsession with bikepacking began. At the time I was battling with anxiety over the fear of getting cancer again and bikepacking was a type of therapy for me.

I have added my favorite section of this road to a never-before-done packrafting / bikepacking route. I want to make a poetic film that uses this route as a metaphor for my life in remission. The film will be told with a poem written in subtitles.

The route has 2 sections of bushwhacking that will symbolize the anxiety and hardships I’ve faced. The packrafting and biking symbolize the moments of calm.

Direction

• The first 15 seconds will have scenic shots of roads intercut with veins.

  • Veins will be faked to match the same shape as the roads

• This will cut to a shot of me in a tent writing out the poem in a journal.

  • There will be no voiceover just subtitles.

• Slow meditative pace

• Minimal camera movement

• Simple music. Piano or violin

• Film in empty elementary school to tell my past

• Lots of visual metaphors

  • Roads, empty playgrounds, the calm of a lake, dense bushes, etc.

• A mix of black and white film with color

• Simple scribble animations

• The poem takes 1:30 to read, and the remaining minute will just be music and scenic bikepacking

• Entirely self-filmed

  • My self-filmed portfolio is below

My life was derailed at the age of 8 with an acute lymphoblastic leukemia diagnosis, and I would have to start a three-and-a-half year-long journey through chemotherapy. 

At the end of my first year of chemo, I got a second diagnosis. I had a bad reaction to the steroids and I developed osteonecrosis in my legs. This condition weakens bone structure, and I was forced to avoid running or jumping for four years. For a nine-year-old kid that was devastating

The doctor told me that I could ride bikes, and it would benefit my condition. The first bike ride was challenging, but it was the beginning of an exponential recovery aided by bikes.

100 Mile Road

(written in subtitles in the film)

100 miles. Winding, steep, and rugged.

Cancer at 8.

Three and a half years of chemo. Steroids made my bones die. 

9 and unable to run or jump, did 3rd grade twice.

Played with Legos inside during recess.

But the bike gave me the freedom I had lost.

Weak, but I was flying.

At 11, I had my last treatment, and it was a new beginning.

At 21, the anxiety started. 

Could it come back? 

Panic over any ailment.

But the bike always shows me the way out.

Alone in the mountains with dew on my tent. 

The only fears I have are of lions or bears.

Life is simple out here.

Just drawing lines on a map.

I’m at mile 28.

I wouldn’t be the person I am today without those hard times

I might meet it down the road again, and I might not.

I’ll just keep pedaling.

My Self Filmed Projects