A British filmmaker with a taste for adventure is making a pit stop in the city this week.
After feeling stuck in a rut in his native England, Dave Gill made the decision to create his own North American open road narrative - on a bicycle.
He pushed off in New York in November for the more than 17,700-kilometre loop of the U.S. and Canada.
"There's still a lot of places in England and Britain I've never seen," Gill admits. But he couldn't resist the pull of the geographic diversity and ingrained tradition of adventure offered abroad. "It's a great backdrop for an epic tale."
The route roughly translates as: south from New York, down the Atlantic coast to Florida, west to southern California, north to Alaska before striking back east through Canada to end where he began in New York.
His project, entitled Vague Direction, will turn into a documentary film and interactive digital book about the people he comes across and why they've made the lifestyle decisions they have.
Uprooting himself for a year from his nine-to-five life in commercial video advertising in Manchester represents a massive upheaval of Gill's own lifestyle. Prior to this trip, the 24 year old had no experience with cross-country cycling and didn't do much by way of training to prepare.
"I still don't think of myself as a cyclist," he laughed, explaining the bike riding is the method of travel, not the root of the project itself.
That would be the people he interviews along the way, some of whom he pre-arranged to speak with and others he came across by chance on his travels.
While he had been to the States before to film rock climbing, this trip marked Gill's first time in Canada and he found out rumours of Canadian friendliness were not exaggerated.
"Within the first hour [after crossing the border] it became obvious it was true," he said.
Though he still has about six months to go before he reaches the end, Gill is already learning lessons about human kindness and finding his own path clearing up as he encounters people who were just as lost as he felt before leaving home.
And while he gets along with everything he needs strapped to his bike (including his cameras and editing equipment), Gill does miss the creature comforts of home after spending his nights camping or accepting the kindness of a stranger's couch.
"You miss simple stuff," he said. "There's a reason people live indoors."
Gill is aiming to release a finished product of the material gathered in his travels next spring.
He keeps a regularly updated blog on his trip and project at www.vaguedirection.com.
