1. For weeks leading up to my departure from Cape Cod to go produce my feature film, The Cabin, everything was smooth. The fundraiser went off without a hitch; I got my hotel, rented a car, and we hired the whole crew. In my mind, this was the next natural progression in my creative journey. The last five years have been one long road of continued growth. It’s funny how, despite all of the things I just mentioned, the old insecurities came creeping up the day before I was to head out. It was like the Imposter Syndrome and the little negative voice in my head decided to make themselves known. When I woke up on Monday, I felt this tension and these nerves that hadn’t been there even the night before. It was as if the reality of the situation finally stepped to the front. The voice was asking me if I knew what I was getting myself into. It asked who I thought I was, trying to do something new and challenging. It tried telling me that I would be found out and this project would fail. I have had to battle these demons of self-worth and self-confidence for way too long, and this is no different. I have been told every step of the way that the script I wrote is good. We have everything set up to make the best film we can. I have the funds, the place to stay, the car, the time, and yet despite all of that, the voice still came calling. I had to take a step back and reassure myself that I deserve this opportunity based on all of the hard work and sacrifices I’ve made throughout the years. It’s almost as if the closer I get to this new, exciting opportunity, the harder those old thoughts push back. Only when I open that door and step through will those voices shut up. They won’t do it on their own. I have to make them by believing in myself.
2. To time things right, I had to put off doing my laundry until the day before I left for Pennsylvania. I wanted to make sure I had all of the clean clothing possible for the movie shoot. No need to stop at some dollar store and buy shirts made of recycled paper. This meant that those extra days without doing laundry saw me wearing clothes I haven’t taken out of the closet in a long time. Thankfully, I do have enough that I didn’t run out. I suppose there are some guys who have enough outfits to last a handful of days, and if anything goes wrong, they’re stuck wearing an old T-shirt they’ve been using as an oil rag for years. The only downside to waiting to do laundry was the sheer size of the load. The laundromat I go to doesn’t have a good spin cycle to rinse the excess water out of the clothing. This means when I take them out of the washer, they weigh a ton, sopping wet. You do get a workout having to carry the basket. In total, to get that load of laundry done and fully dried, it took about 2 ½ hours. Lucky for me, all I had to do on that day was wash clothes and pack. If I had made any plans, they would have needed to be postponed. Telling someone you can’t meet them because you’re doing laundry sounds like a lame excuse because you don’t really want to see them. Next time I do a huge load like that, I’ll have to weigh it to see just how much of a workout I get when carrying it.
3. Once everything was packed and ready for the long drive out to Pennsylvania, the last thing on my list of things to do on Cape Cod was checking for a few things for the trip and the shoot itself. This meant going to Dollar Tree and Ocean State Job Lot. Hey, I’m not looking to gash the movie budget by getting expensive items. Mark, the film director, asked me to look for cheap clothes we could ruin for the film as well as some LED lights for a few scenes. As is typically the case when I go to these stores, I wandered around looking for any deals I didn’t know I needed. I got a cheap T-shirt for shredding but found myself interested in some of the other clothes. I literally just mentioned above that I didn’t want to get such clothing for my regular wardrobe, and yet here I was on the edge. I will say that teenage me would have scoffed at shopping at Job Lot, or as my Nana used to call it, ‘Odd Lot.’ Now, I find the savings more appealing than caring what some rando might think of whatever I get. I got a cool travel bag for toothpaste and things of the like. The piece de résistance, though, was buying unknown-brand energy shots at both Job Lot and Dollar Tree. They would no doubt come in handy on the long drive out. Eventually I had to remind myself that I could always come back again once the movie was done being filmed.
4. The anxiety was in full-court press Tuesday morning as I got ready to leave for Pennsylvania. Despite checking repeatedly, I still believed that I was missing something when packing. I finally had to accept that everything was good and leave. I was a little early when I got to my mom’s. It was there that I was leaving my car for the week. Leaving it at the airport wasn’t as bad as I’d expected, something like $80 for the week, but $0 is way better. It’s a good thing I was early too because it took a few minutes at the airport to figure out where to go to get my rental car. My sister Ashley, who drove me to the airport, had to circle the parking lot a few times while we figured out the protocol. Eventually she parked in front of the main terminal of the Hyannis Airport while I ran in to check. I was renting through Budget but got rerouted to Avis. The terminal was empty, as I guess not too many people are arriving or departing from Cape Cod on a Tuesday morning in September. The actual process of getting the car was easy and took a few minutes. I had wondered how many people went to the airport to rent a car but didn’t come in via plane. Surely I can’t be the only one. Oh well, they didn’t ask any questions, so I wasn’t sharing any info. Shortly after, Ashley was helping me toss my luggage into the backseat of a pretty sweet Honda Accord. Of course, it began to rain once I was ready to drive, but we’ll get to that in a moment. I was very grateful that my sister took time from her day to drop me at the airport. The money I saved alone on parking and an Uber probably covered the gas and tolls on the trips out and back.
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| This was what it looked like, except mine was gray. |
5. Speaking of tolls. Because this was a new adventure, I wanted to try a few new things. I’d never rented a car for a trip, so driving a pretty new one with a touchscreen display was an immediate luxury. I also wanted to try a different navigation app, so I went old school with MapQuest. It all seemed fine at first. You get to pick out an avatar to move across the map while you drive. I picked someone who looked like he was from Lord of the Rings. I just kept calling him Gandalf. It was my choice to keep the toll option turned on while driving. It was already 450 miles, and I figured that was the fastest, so I could spend a little money on tolls to speed things up. What I didn’t expect was MapQuest not only bringing me to the toll road, the Mass Pike, which was expected, but also taking me off and back onto it. It was like they saw the toll option on the app and wanted to see how much they could rack up for me. I yelled that Gandalf was screwing me over, which wouldn’t have made any sense out of context. I had no clue what my toll bill would be. They do everything by license plate now, and you get a bill sent. That leads to another issue you may have guessed. It’s not my car, so it will be the rental company getting the toll bill. I am sure they will just use my card to pay for it, as I would expect. I do wonder if I can get a receipt so I can see just how much I paid. Oh, and I got rid of MapQuest and went to an old reliable in Waze. That whole getting me on and off the Pike twice was weird. I plan on keeping the toll option off for the drive home as well.
6. I have driven in all of the bad weather. Rain, snow, storms, wind, so when the weather report said some rain along my driving route, I was prepared. What I wasn’t prepared for was a near-death experience. For a while, going through Western Massachusetts, the rain was basic showers, nothing to be too concerned about. Then as I crossed into New York, it changed. Showers became sheets of rain. It was like a whiteout to the point where my windshield wipers were almost useless. The final straw for me came when I came up on a ramp after stopping at a rest area. I was merging, but the rain was so dense I could hardly see the semi truck barreling down. I was in the middle and didn’t know whether to slam on the brakes or gun it. I gunned it, and that truck was coming up fast. All I thought was, ‘man I should have gotten the insurance on the rental.’ I was sure the truck was going to knock me into the guardrail. Luckily, I sped up enough, and the truck driver was able to get into the other lane, so a tragedy was averted. That incident convinced me to pull over and wait out the heaviest rain. My thoughts of arriving in Pennsylvania early went out the window. But hey, I arrived alive, which I think is more important than arriving early. The rain ended up staying moderate much of the way, only really stopping when I was within an hour of my destination. Naturally, as soon as I parked at the motel, the first sound I heard when stepping out was a loud boom of thunder.
7. To answer a question I asked after a 450-mile drive in one day, yes, you can get symptoms similar to jet lag when driving. It’s known as travel fatigue, but oh boy did I have a bad case of it upon arriving. Driving that far, stopping only 3 times, and having to white-knuckle miles of road due to serious rain left my brain resembling a fried egg when I got to my motel room. I texted my mom at first so she wouldn’t worry. Then I texted Mark, the director of The Cabin, so he knew I arrived. He wanted to meet up and start going over logistics of the shoot. My brain was trying to escape through my ears by this point, but I mean, I was in PA for the movie, not a vacation. I was hungry and a bit dehydrated, so trying to listen and formulate thoughts was tough, but I did my best. It was mostly catching up, going over the shoot dates, and planning some of the smaller minutiae that might fall through the cracks. Lucky for me, the following day was basically the one ‘vacation’ day I’d have. We didn’t have plans to do anything related to the movie until later in the afternoon. This gave me plenty of time to hydrate and relax. I don’t know for sure, but I think that it was the most I had driven in one day since I drove to Florida in 2005. On that trip, I got into Southern Virginia in one day from Cape Cod, which I think is over 600 miles. I was so hell-bent on beating the time that MapQuest had said for my arrival and was way ahead until the rain hit. Now I am gleefully anticipating the drive back home, part of which will be at night, and I am sure full of jet lag the next day. Oh wait, sorry, travel fatigue.
8. Travel fatigue made the choice of what to do for dinner much harder. My brain didn’t want to form coherent thoughts, so I did a lot of staring at local maps and various restaurant websites. In order to get the blood flowing again, I needed to just get moving. A half-mile away was a Sheetz, which is a convenience store chain in the Northeast. I decided to walk down there, which allowed me a cool view of Lamb’s Creek. There are more than 800 Sheetz locations, but none in New England, so when I am out in their neck of the woods, I stop in. It’s the same thing with Wawa. Not sure why, but visiting stores I can’t regularly see on Cape Cod is thrilling to me. Their claim to fame is having an actual cooking line there to make food. This isn’t like reheating pizza slices or microwaving egg sandwiches. No, this is an actual line with people working. I say all of that and didn’t order anything. I grabbed typical things, drinks and snacks. I did make sure to get enough stuff that they had to give me a plastic bag with their logo. Yes, they had branded merch in the store, but that costs money. It’s far easier to have them give me a bag that I can keep and eventually forget where I got it from. I am sure before I leave, I will be back to Sheetz. I saw a few brands of things I want to try. Yay, visiting a convenience store is exciting to me now. Man, I’m old.
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9. My mind was set on having Chinese food the night I arrived in Mansfield. There were two places close by; it was just a matter of deciding which one. Mark made sure to let me know that the one located a block away, Lucky Star, was the better one. By this point it was dark out, but I had only had a protein shake during my 450-mile drive, so I needed to eat before I crashed out. Rather than drive literally 500 feet, I again just walked. No, I didn’t have PTSD from driving in the rain; these places are literally within walking distance. Mansfield is a college town. A very small college town with a population of under 3,000, but it is a college town nonetheless. So it has a walkable Main Street with lots of stores clustered together. When I went down to order my food, the streets had a charm to them. There were string lights on either side, and even though it was now September, there were still families and groups of friends out walking. I felt right at home. Two things about Lucky Star: their food was great, and the price was lower than similar places on Cape Cod. It was a win-win. I got sesame chicken and also a take-out menu as a souvenir. The portion size was also amazing. Lifting the bag was like a mini workout. I will say that the travel fatigue was a killer. I was eating and expecting to immediately feel 100%, but I was just a puddle. I was able to eat and stayed up until maybe 10:30pm, but my body was desperate for sleep. I was so tired that the bed, which was a little too firm for me, didn’t hold me back. I crashed and enjoyed the one day of being able to ‘sleep in.’ The rest of the week would be earlier wake-ups and longer days than a typical workday on Cape Cod.
10. The rain continued into the next morning. In fact, it was more heavy thunderstorms. My plan of walking a nearby bike trail went up in smoke. I used that extra time to go to the closest Walmart and gather supplies for the crew that Mark had laid out. This Walmart was a big one. It was made more impressive by the rolling hills surrounding it. As I walked toward the entrance, a huge bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, followed by a crackling roar of thunder. A guy walking out asked loudly, ‘Who angered Zeus?’ That was pretty funny. Inside, it was a typical Walmart, although larger and cleaner than most I’ve seen. The people, though, fit right in with what you think of as Walmart folk. Not all, mind you; most of them were just ordinary people, but you had a good group of stereotypical odd folks wandering the aisles. I think it was the most I’ve ever bought at Walmart with food and drinks for the next shooting day or two. I went to self-checkout because, of course. A woman was working there, or more like watching me check out. I don’t know if she ever even looked at me while I was there. When I rolled the cart away, there wasn’t even a sound. I guess she’d have noticed if I stole anything, so why bother to interact with customers?
11. An interesting, and probably fitting, thing I’ve noticed since I started my journey off Cape Cod. The sights and music remind me of people from my life. It’s like I have been driving through previous chapters of my life as I am on this road to a new chapter. There were tons of moments like that on my drive up to Pennsylvania. Passing places that somehow sparked memories of old friends or family. Sure, I was playing my music on the drive, but it still seemed to capture the right emotions of this journey. It culminated while I was in Walmart. My favorite Grateful Dead song, Eyes of the World, came on. It’s an 18-minute jam, and a fairly odd choice to play at a Walmart. But it reminded me of an old friend, Dan, who I worked with for years cooking. He was a writer, and he pushed me to be a better writer, mostly to stop his trash talk. That never would work. That really put the icing on the cake for the symbolism part of this trip. I am fulfilling a dream, shedding parts of my old self, and also trying not to lose the essence of who I am. It’s having one foot in the future while keeping one eye on the past. I wanted to make sure I noted this phenomenon before I forgot about it in a sea of filming days.
12. As soon as the rain stopped, I was itching to get outside. I went to a nearby ‘bike and hike’ trail. One thing I noticed was how it immediately got insanely humid as soon as it wasn’t raining. It was still cloudy and maybe 75, but I was sweating pretty good after only about fifteen minutes. In total, on the trail, I walked a mile. There were more spiders than people. I did manage to spot a cute brown cat but only got a fleeting glimpse of it. I think it lived in a house right off the trail. The big thing I wanted to explore was an abandoned old bridge that crosses the Tioga River, which the trail runs along. I wasn’t desperate enough to walk the 2.5 miles in each direction, though. Nope, I drove out to where it was to hike down. Seriously, it was in the middle of nowhere. I passed vultures and crows eating a dead deer. There is an overgrown road leading down to the bridge. It’s now referred to as the Graffiti Bridge and has been closed since the mid-1970s. It is obviously covered in graffiti, which is where the name came from. I was hoping to see a live deer along the riverbanks, but sadly only that poor dead one along the road. The walk was totally worth it, and I got tons of photos and videos of it. I briefly thought of not walking onto it but figured if I didn’t I’d regret it the instant I got back to Cape Cod. It was very peaceful and way less creepy than expected based on the photos.
13. We unofficially got down to business around 4pm on Wednesday. Mark came and picked me up from the motel, and we went to his house located in the next town over. The plan was to start formulating a plan for the movie shoot while awaiting the arrival of the rest of the cast. I quickly made friends with Mark’s dog named Django. He was very old and had limited mobility. Mark even said that this past spring his family thought they were going to have to put him down. But he was there, still kicking. For me, filming a movie was all brand new, so I made sure to sit under Mark’s learning tree and ask loads of questions. One thing that hammered home that I wasn’t on Cape Cod anymore was the wildlife. To save money on the budget, we planned on using a beautiful larger shed in Mark’s backyard to stand in for a location in the film. So I am looking out of the back door and thinking about whether deer ever come through the yard. As if he were psychic, Mark mentioned that he gets a lot of deer in the yard. I laughed and then jumped back when I spotted a lone deer walking out from behind that shed. I don’t think the deer is psychic, but stranger things have happened.
14. Dinner was an event. I went with Mark. We picked up his son Anthony, who lives a few minutes away. The plan was to go meet a few others from the cast who had arrived and were staying in another hotel in Wellsboro. As we all got acquainted, or reacquainted, in the parking lot, we decided to go eat at Pizza Hut. It was convenient because it was literally a block away. For a moment, I thought Mark had said ‘Frog Hut,’ which got me intrigued because it was a place that, when looking for food on this trip, looked interesting. It was right across the street from Pizza Hut, so from our table I could see it. I hadn’t eaten at Pizza Hut since I was in high school, so it was very full-circle on this trip. There were six of us at a big table; the rest of the restaurant was empty when we got there around 5pm. The server was really friendly, and we all ordered. Then the positive coincidences continued. Someone ordered a pepperoni pizza. That’s not the coincidence. No, the server came out with a large pepperoni pizza that someone had made by mistake, and she asked if we wanted it for free. Well, you can guess what we said. There we are with all of our meals plus a free large pizza. It ended up becoming part of the food for the film crew the next day. As we laughed and told stories, the server came back and said they had made a mistake with someone’s food. She brought the mistake out, and the person who ordered took it, but then she also said they were remaking it. In the end, we got two free items. It was as if they knew we were making a movie and they wanted a positive write-up in my blog. In reality, it was one cook who made mistakes. He actually came out and apologized. We were all fine with it since it resulted in free food.
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| The Frog Hut |
15. The Cabin wasn’t just the title of the film. It was also the largest shooting location. In order to have the film appear as isolated as it needed to be, Mark found a cabin in the middle of nowhere. I don’t use that phrase lightly. To get to it, we had to drive 25 miles north, near the New York border, to a very small and very rural town called Osceola. When I say ‘rural’ I mean like sparse houses, and of the ones you’d see, half of them looked like the people would shoot you and turn you into a skin suit if you put a toe on their property. It was one-part terrifying and one-part exhilarating. The cabin itself is owned by hunters, and oh boy could you tell. There had to have been more than 20 stuffed deer heads and deer skulls, all over the walls and on various tables. There were also stuffed squirrels, a turkey, a black bear, and probably other animals scattered about. Our job on that first trip out was to clean it enough to make it camera-ready. This meant some sweeping, covering up objects that didn’t fit with the movie’s theme, and blocking areas to fit upcoming scenes. Blocking just means getting the scenery set, like moving a bed back so we could get a clear shot of the bed where the main character in the film is supposed to be sleeping. It probably took us longer to drive out to the cabin than we were there cleaning. It was a mix of rustic, modern, confusing, and horrifying. It would prove to be home for us all for the entirety of two days of the movie shoot.
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| What the buck is going on? |
16. We ended up making that long and lonely drive out to this cabin three times. The first time was the most memorable. It was around 6:30pm as we got deeper into the drive. I kept hoping I’d see a deer, or even a bear. What I got was lightning, and lots of it. When the rain had stopped that morning, the humidity began building. By the time dusk rolled around, it was in the mid-80s. As Mark explained it, heat lightning was a common occurrence in that area due to a similar weather pattern. On the drive out, as the sun sank behind the surrounding hills, I became fascinated with the lightning. I shot video and photos trying to get bolts of lightning. This lightning never let up. It was literally like 15-20 flashes per minute for probably three hours. That is not a stretch. It was amazing. As we got near the end of cleaning the cabin, I again wanted some lightning photos. Behind the cabin is a pathway that leads to a big clearing up a hill. There was a birdhouse on a high pole, and I thought a photo of the lightning behind the birdhouse would be money. None of the photos captured the lightning bolts. It was around this time that all of our phones got the emergency alert: tornado warning. Here we were in the middle of nowhere as it got dark, and now there was the potential for tornadoes. I turned my back to the lightning and shot a video of me explaining what we were doing and the tornado warning. All the while, the pink sky behind me was exploding with lightning flashes. It ended up being one of the best, and most surreal, experiences of my life. Once we had cleaned the cabin to Mark’s satisfaction, it was time to leave. We drove the dirt road out as the lightning made the sky look like a movie special effect. If I didn’t have the videos, I wouldn’t have believed it. There didn’t end up being any tornadoes. We also didn’t see any weird people out there, at least on that first day. The first day of the movie shoot came next, and we all had to make sure to be at Mark’s house by 8:15am. Luckily, the first scenes to be shot were inside his house, so it was shaping up to be a good way to ease us into filming The Cabin.
