The Story Of Blood Brother (pt 1)

Back in 2010, me and Steve Hoover were itching to do something outside of our commercial work. Our friend, Rocky (Steve’s best friend at the time), had been living in India and sharing incredible stories of his journey. Steve had decided to go visit and wanted to take a camera with him. I started to get wind of the stories and approached Steve to see if he’d want to put a crew together to go and just see what happens. He was on board. So we called John Pope, who we had just started working with, and he immediately was in. We also had Steve’s wife, Kira, our friend Tyson Vanskiver and Phinehas Hodges, and myself. That was it. We decided early on to take enough equipment so that everyone could have a camera at the same time. 

I’m skipping over the first funding effort using Kickstarter as well as the generosity of Animal. I believe we stayed for about 30 days the first trip. Steve left ahead of me. Myself and John followed a few days after. Rocky had special requests, and he begged me to pack an entire suitcase with Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. We obliged.

Fast forward to the long flights to get to India, very late at night. Rocky told us he’d be at the airport in to pick us up. We get off the plane and get through security and head out into the crowd of people swarming the airport looking for Rocky. When I see him, I see he’s holding his motorcycle helmet. Uh-oh. Me and John are struggling to move handling two tripods, two camera backpacks, massive suitcases with our essentials, 2 pelican cases, and 1 giant roller suitcase of Kraft macaroni and cheese. We ask "Where is the f#ing car?" For some reason, he thought we would have less luggage and that he could get us home, and hour away, on his motorcycle. 

This is what three grown men look like on a small motorcycle.

I’ll do my best to explain what transpired. Rocky convinced us to try to make the bike work. We we wearing everything we could. Next, I grab a roller suitcase and strap it to my back, and grab a pelican roller case in each hand. John grabs the remaining two roller suitcases. We’re all being starred at - it’s great. Rocky slowly balances the bike and turns it on. John cannot use his hands to hold on so he’s squeezing his legs in a death lock against my butt. We start out very slow but eventually we get up to a decent speed and John’s arms are flying all around holding on to the suitcases. It’s not working and we’re screaming at Rocky to pull over. We got a good mile down the road to a bus stop. 

He got us on the bus and tells the driver to tell us when we reach his village bus stop. The ride seemed like it was hours and what makes it worse is the blasting of a Bollywood movie from a TV at the front of the bus. Finally the bus driver makes a gesture for us to get off and we find Rocky. I think by this point it’s probably 3 in the morning.

I don’t really remember much once we finally got to Rocky’s hut, but waking up in rural India was special and beautiful.