Episode 1 Bridge Day - In the Beginning
Traventure Man - Online Travel and Adventure Show
This is the real deal folks! I am your host John Jurko II, and this is Traventure Man! This will be the first official Traventure, and it is a whopper of a weekend. With the power of the internet and social media, I am taking you, the viewer/participator, to Bridge Day in Fayetteville, West Virginia. It is an all day event including BASE jumping, rappelling, high line rides, chili cook-offs, and loads of other food, music and festivities.
You can ask me questions and follow my adventures on Twitter. I will let you know where I’m at, what I’m doing, and shoot you photos and video clips in real time. When I’m going to do an interview I will ask you what you want to know from the interviewee. This isn’t just a TV show that you sit in front of and veg out. This is Traventure Man, and you get to take part in the making of each episode. So come on a Traventure with me! Read on to get the low down on this weekends shoot.
Part 1 - Road Trip
Friday Oct. 16th, 2009 it all begins. My friend/crew member, Dustin, and I will be leaving my humble home town of Yankee Lake, OH at approximately 8:00am EST. Our destination, Fayetteville, West Virginia and the Bridge Day event! We will be taking I-79 South passing just outside of Pittsburgh, PA. Then we will take US-19 for the last 50 miles, and if all goes well we will get there by 1:30pm. This should leave us time to get the lay of the land and possibly shoot some footage and interviews before our Bridge Day Media meeting at 4pm.
From 5pm-9ish we will be meeting and mingling with Bridge Day staff, other media, and possibly some jumpers and spectators. We hope to get some great interviews and behind the scenes interviews here. Oh yea, and some great food at Smokey’s on the Gorge! It should be a great night and start to an exciting weekend.
We don’t want to stay out too late though, because we have a 25min drive to our hotel in Beckley, WV and we will be getting up extra early Saturday. I’m hoping that the Holiday Inn has WiFI so that I can post some of the behind the scenes video and photos. If you’re lucky, I may even do a Live USTREAM video cast. So watch your tweets!
Part 2 - Bridge Day
Saturday, Oct. 17th, 2009: Bridge Day. The current weather forecast calls for a 40% chance of rain with highs in the low 40s. But don’t worry, we are dressing warm and dry, and the BASE jumpers will be jumping no matter the weather. They are prepared as well, and out of the last 29 years of Bridge Day, there has never been a year that they did not jump!
I want to get a nice sunrise time lapse sequence, so we will be up extra early. Probably around 5am. That way we can shower, eat and setup our cameras in a good location! From there we will probably poke around and talk with some of the vendors. We need to get into a good position at the top of the bridge by 8:30am. The BASE jumpers begin jumping at 9:00am and I want to be there for the fist launch!
From 9am to 3pm Dustin and I will be running all over the place to get shots of the jumpers, the rappellers, and high line riders. I want to get tons of great footage from a multitude of angles, and I want to get interviews with as many participants as I can. If I’m lucky I will even score a high line ride and take you on it with me!
After all of the adventure activities wind down, we will be hitting up the food and music of Bridge day. There is an Oktoberfest & Chili Cook-off in Downtown Montgomery. This will be a good chance to warm up and get into the minds of chili artists. Mmmmm. Bands will be playing all night, and if we are lucky we will get to talk to a couple of them. This is going to be one running and gunning, blast of a day!
12am Pass out…
Part 3 - Day After
Sunday, Oct. 18th, 2009: We will drag ourselves out of bed at a reasonable hour… We will finish any last minute interviews that we arrange, possibly get some more shots of the bridge and surrounding area, and check out the Harvest celebration. By noon we will be on the road homebound with hours of exciting video footage, photos and stories to tell!
Part 4 - Behind the Scenes
This is where Traventure Man shines, and is unlike any other show you know of! We will be posting constant behind the scenes photos, video clips, audio clips, and plenty of tweets. We will do our best to interact with you as we run in circles around the New River Gorge Bridge. I will be setting up a posterous site where I will upload photos I take with my phone throughout the day. Whenever I have WiFi access I will upload Flip Mino footage of the days events and travels. I might even post some audio files from my phone to Tumblr. Ahh, technology!
So watch your twitter feed and make sure to follow me: @TraventureMan. If you don’t have Twitter, now is the time to sign up! It’s quick and easy. Go to www.Twitter.com now! If you don’t you are going to miss out on an Entertainment Revolution that you could have been part of. Don’t miss out! Come on a Traventure instead! Oh yeah, and anytime you tweet about Bridge Day use their hash tag #bridgeday.
Part 5 - Completed Episode
Once I get back home, recover from the trip, and find some time between my two “real” jobs, I will edit the footage into a polished episode! I hope to get it completed within a month at most. Sooner if possible!
I’m shooting for 20 minutes as a good episode length. This is the internet and no one wants to sit around for much longer than that. Plus I will be posting full interviews, video montages to music, and blog entries about the Traventure as well. In fact, when I get home I will post an entry giving you an overview of the whole experience from my perspective. There will be plenty of content to feed your hungry eyes and ears, and get you totally psyched about the travel and adventure philosophy!
Live your one life to the fullest, and stay tuned for more Traventures to come!
P.S. If you have any adventure footage, rocking audio, or motion graphics chops, and you love what you see, then please send or do what you can to get this show going. I hope to be doing Traventure Man full time in the future, but I need sponsors and people power! Next summer I want to do a 3 month long Traventure across the US and Canada. I’ll keep you posted!
Related Links
www.officialbridgeday.com
www.bridgeday.info
www.twitter.com/TraventureMan
traventureman.posterous.com
