Tim Boelter

I arrived in Beijing on the 30th of May at approximately 9:30 pm. After nearly 16 hours of flying and one layover in Tokyo's Narita Airport, my shuttle driver holding a sign that read Mr. Boelter greeted me in the pick up area at Beijing's Capital Airport. The trip had gone flawlessly, and this was unexpected considering the gear I had in tow.

On Saturday April 29th (one day earlier) I wheeled about 150 pounds of gear including some the latest technology in video camera equipment to the airport for my flight to Beijing.

I'm used to packing this kind of weight when headed off on a serious mountain climb into the Himalayas. But this trip is different. We're not climbing a Himalayan giant, were taking a 4-wheel drive vehicle and following the northern and southern Silk Road routes through China. Our goal is to document the trip on video and produce a live web cast of the adventure on the Internet. And for us to do this we need satellite phone equipment and video equipment.

Because I wanted to shoot the trip using the high definition format I had to make a decision on how to do this. Because I wanted images that are not compressed in the MPEG 2 format I chose to use the new Panasonic HVX-200 P2 card camera. This little beast or as Mike and I now call it, "Little Fat Boy," packs a lot of punch for a small hand held $6,000 camera. It shoots using both the 1080i and 720p HD formats, and can use variable frame rates in the 720p mode. Best part is that it does not use MPEG 2 compression but Panasonic's DVCPRO HD format with a video recording bit rate of 100 Mbps, like its big brother the $40,000 Varicam. For most of you this means absolutely nothing, but for me it means great images packed into a very tiny camera.

Now, in order for all of this to work, my set up requires additional equipment. Because I want to shoot in the HD format with 100 Mbps, I have to shoot onto P2 memory cards. These little solid-state cards hold a maximum of 8 gigabytes of information. When shooting in the HD 720p or 1080i format the card can only hold a maximum of 8 minutes. One minute per gigabyte of information. So what this means is, if I'm to go off for 30 days and shoot in the HD format, I'm going to need a heck of a lot of storage space to hold this footage. I'm also going to need a laptop computer to help with the data workflow. I brought with me a one-terabyte portable firewire drive to store the footage the HD footage on, plus I have additional hard drive space in my computer. The camera can also record to 63-minute mini-DV tapes in the standard definition format. Without getting into too many specifics here, the Little Fat Boy is amazing.

Now, none of this stuff has really been proven to work flawlessly in a real world and sometime extreme environment. Before leaving on this journey I spent some time testing the workflow of this system. This camera is more then just a camera, it's an honest to goodness portable computer that can mount a hard drive and transport information. I do realize that anytime you subject yourself to machines with little discs in them that spin at high speeds while reading and writing information also have a good chance of failing. Many camera operators out there think relying on hard drives to store valuable footage could be too risky, and I'm sure they're right, but sometimes you have to leap into the unknown and see if the future of this technology is reliable and doable.

So with all this high-tech equipment including the satellite phone and its accessories we are going to need power and lots of batteries. Fortunately we're not on the side of a mountain like we normally are, so this isn't going to be as difficult a challenge as expected. Vehicles have batteries and alternators, which equals "juice" for us. We just need all the adapters and DC to AC invertors to run our stuff. This is where the weight issue comes in, not to mention the questions it may pose at customs check points.

Going off to climb mountains always requires a lot of equipment, but this stuff  I'm carrying and checking into baggage is heavy and looks suspect. So you can imagine my anxiety when packing such expensive and unusual equipment to be transported to one of the largest countries in the world that has a knack for watching people.

MEETING MIKE IN BEIJING AND RECAPPING THE EVENTS
When I finally arrived at our hotel, I walked into the lobby to see Mike Chrisp, my very good friend and traveling partner sitting on a sofa reading and having a cold beer. It was so good to see him again. I walked over gave the ole boy a hug and we sat down to recap the events of the last few weeks.

Mike and I met on our unsupported lightweight Everest expedition back in 2001. Our friendship was molded on the rugged terrain of the world's tallest mountain and since then our friendship has grown to be like family. In November of 2005 I traveled to England to spend time with Mike's family. I had the privilege of meeting everyone including Mike's father. At the same time that I met Mike's dad, he was also diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in his lower sinus. Although the diagnoses was a shock, the doctors believed that it was curable. In the ensuing months he went through cycles of chemotherapy and had his last cycle about a week before Mike was to leave on our trip. Everything was looking good for Dad, in fact he drove himself to the clinic for his last session of chemo. But in a horrible twist of fate, he contracted a cold just a couple of days later, which eventually turned to pneumonia. Because the chemo had destroyed all of his white blood cells, he couldn't fight off the infection and in the matter of only a few days, Mike watched his father pass away.

During all of this, Mike kept me updated on his Dad's condition. There was a slight improvement in his condition and we all prayed that he would recover, but the dreadful call came only a day later and under a week before we were to depart on this trip. Without a second thought we postponed the trip indefinitely. There were far more important things to tend to now.

Mike's Dad, John Maurice Chrisp was an adventurous man of the sea. He traveled the world and was a captain for the British merchant navy. What I found fascinating about him is that he had done so much and saw so many places, he even captained a ship in the Great Lakes where I grew up. Just in the matter of one meeting with him I sensed a man that people loved and respected. He had a certain gentle nature about him, I remember telling my wife about him and the best way I could describe him is that he was a gentle man, which did make him a true gentleman. The day I left England, he drove over to the house just to say goodbye to me, and that, I thought, was incredibly kind.

Three days after John died Mike called to say we are going to continue with the trip. In the spirit of his Dad, Mike wanted to carry on with this adventure and dedicate this trip to his memory. I wanted to be sure it wasn't too soon, but Mike insisted we go. After giving his father a poignant send off Mike departed on a plane the next day for Beijing.

LAO WANG AND OUR TRAVEL IN CHINA
With all of these last minute changes our Chinese friend and driver Lao Wang had to be notified of Mike's family emergency. Lao Wang lives in Zhengzhou, China he owns a bar and the Target Off Road Club. Lao Wang and I met back in November of 2004 on a mountain called Siguniang. I was filming the historic first Chinese ascent of the mountain. Since then we have kept in contact and started planning this trip among other documentary projects.

Lao Wang had to make some last minute changes to his schedule, which would affect our travel plans in China. Lao Wang was now going to take part as a navigator in the famed Chinese Taklimakan Desert Rally. Because our travel date was pushed back by a week, we were not able to make it the desert in time to shoot portions of the rally, so Lao Wang traveled to Urumqi ahead of us. He gave me his word that someone would pick us up at the airport in Zhengzhou on the 2nd of May (today) and would provide us with a jeep to drive over 1,500 miles across China's northern Silk Road to meet Lao Wang in Urumqi. Of course Mike and I may be with a Chinese escort, but more than likely he or she will not speak English, so this makes our journey even that much more of an adventure.

THE JOURNEY HAS BEGUN
There will be much more coming to these pages, but for now I will paraphrase yesterday's events. I am sure that Mike has covered this in great detail, he is, in fact the writer for this trip.

Our journey already began while shooting video in Tiananmen Square and our meeting with Professor Fifi.

It is the Labor Day holiday here in China, and I will strongly suggest to never travel to Tiananmen Square or the Forbidden City during this time. I think in a five-hour period I truly learned what it is like to live in a country of 1.3 billion people. It was a mass of humanity for miles around. And when you're the only one with blond hair in this sea of Chinese people with black hair you tend to stick out. Although I have traveled to China on three separate occasions, never while filming did people stand around me and just stare at my camera and me like they did in Tiananmen Square. Most of these people acted as though they never saw a foreigner before. Even while traveling in Tibet I didn't get the stares I got here.

I must admit, the amount of police and military patrolling the square was impressive. So much so that I felt I was constantly being watched. And with Professor Fifi constantly telling me to keep moving so that I wouldn't draw attention, I felt a certain level of unease. My camera is a hand-held model, but it's still quite large and it looks too professional. So with the Professor guiding us around portions of Beijing, I just shot as much as I could.

Today we repack and board a plane tonight for Zhenzhou, hopefully my gear won't raise any flags going through security.

Cheers from the land of the yellow sky.

—Tim Boelter

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