This is the second in a series of guest posts from Steve Ogle’s journal during a 2008 trip to Zambia to film The Ultimate Ride: African Rush.
If you havent read The Ultimate Ride: African Rush Days 1-3 you can find them here.
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Day 4
A mostly good start to the day. The sun was back out, I still felt pretty good (no problems with the Malaria drugs so far, which have a reputation for being kind of harsh), and no serious gastro-intestinal issues. I have been pretty careful about things like tap water and foods that can be problematic.
After a great afternoon yesterday we kind of took a hit today. We wanted to shoot a scene in a market area in downtown Livingston with Steve and were accosted by a small group of men who seemed to take offense to the camera. After a pretty tense confrontation, we decided to cut our losses and move on. Things didn’t improve after that. We traveled fairly long distances to shoot scenes of “the boys” running the river and kept running into technical issues with the cameras. At best we were probably spending 2-3 hours of travel and set-up time for a 60 second shot of Steve running a specific section of the river and then didn’t even get that.
We went to a fair amount of trouble and expense to bring along a helicopter mount to shoot aerial scenes of the kayaking and other scenic shots and this was the afternoon to set up and flight test the mount. First the helicopter didn’t have the appropriate power supply that we needed (eventually solved with a 12 volt car battery strapped under the seat), and both power inverters shipped with blown fuses (replacements took awhile to scare up). The good news was that we managed to get it all up and running and took a test flight right at sunset over Vic Falls. Have I used the word “spectacular” recently? Yet another moment for the memory banks.
Day 5
No fun to be had today. Tyler Curtis was scheduled to leave Thursday and it was decided that it was critically important that he stay until Saturday. Just try changing a discounted ticket booked through Orbitz on a cell phone from Zambia. I stayed behind at the hotel to take care of it while the crew spent the day shooting. 450,000 Kwacha worth of CelTel minutes (the local cell carrier) and 6 hours later I still wasn’t much closer to getting it done. I went though the same nightmare in Japan and will never book a multi airline, international ticket through a discounter again! Long story short, there was no way to get Tyler out until Sunday and at that it will cost over $1,800 to change. I “celebrated” my lack of success with a Zambian beer, smoking a Cuban cigar, watching the sunset over the Zambezi River. All things considered a pretty awesome end to a medium-crappy day.
Oh yeah, I also got in a laundry day. Smelly shirts and socks in Woolite in the sink. Not sure how much it will help but I didn’t have room for 2 full weeks of clothes so I had to do something!
Day 6
I think it’s really day 8 since we left Portland but no need to confuse things at this point. Today was all about aerials and it was quite the adrenaline overload. During the middle part of the day we followed the kayakers downriver for the better part of an hour 20 feet off the river which had up to 20 foot “waves” going. The pilot gave us a safety briefing before we left that went something like this” “If we have a problem and I have to put down in the water, wait for the rotors to shear off, swim away from the fuselage as quickly as possible and make your way to shore ‘if possible’”. Yeah, “if”. Quite the pep talk. Luckily none of that was necessary and it was just a great thrill ride all the way. Our closing shot of the day was of Steve, Dan and Tyler celebrating around a blazing bonfire high above the river as we flew past them overhead and made our way down the gorge as the sun dropped over the horizon.
Footnote: I’ve got a 6 foot crocodile that suns himself in the lagoon about 15 feet off my back deck. I don’t have a great shot of him yet, he sees me and submerges, but I’ll keep trying (from a distance).
Footnote 2: I finally managed to get Tyler’s ticket changed after 1,200,000 Kwacha in cell phone time. It’s hard enough working with the airlines locally, try doing it from Zambia.
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Pre-order (release set for June 9th, 2009) The Ultimate Ride: African Rush here.
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