Jayson Hale of the U.S. Snowboarding team will bike across the U.S. in 60 days starting from Anacortes. His trip will be filmed for a documentary.

Here's the release from U.S. Snowboarding.

[More:]

On Tuesday, U.S. Snowboarding's Jayson Hale will leave his home in Sierraville, CA, and catch a flight to Seattle, WA, more specifically Anacortes, the starting point for a coast-to-coast bicycle trip traversing 4,300 miles at an average of 80 miles per day.

If all goes well, in 60 days or less, the 2005 World Championships bronze medalist in snowboardcross and friend Larry McKurtis will dip the front wheel of their bicycles into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Bar Harbor, ME.
Set to be filmed as a documentary tentatively titled "Pedal," the journey, according to creator and producer Michael Ambs, is not about the trip, but instead will focus on the cyclist's interaction with the people they meet along the way. For Hale, who suffered another major knee injury in February, it also will serve as cross-training before undergoing the reconstruction of his right anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in August.
"Originally, Larry and I had planned on paddling a canoe from Redding, CA, to San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, then cycling all the way to Mexico, but then I blew out my knee again," said Hale. "The doctor removed my ACL completely in March and said sitting in a canoe wouldn't be a good idea, so I bought a bike and started cruising around Sacramento to help recover."
Hale, who was named to the 2006 Olympic Team, but was unable to compete due to a training injury in Torino, was frustrated, yet wasn't about to abandon the idea of a major trip and began talking to McKurtis about riding across the country for fun. McKurtis took the concept and ran with it, eventually stumbling on a group called "Project Pedal" on myspace.com looking to cast a group of people for a cross-country trip. He quickly connected with Ambs.
"It was crazy," said Hale. "We had talked about possibly doing the bike trip, then he just called me, said he was going and asked if I wanted in. My doctor was stoked on the idea and said I didn't need an ACL to ride a bike. He said it was a good way to stay in shape over the summer."
The only request of the casting call was that interested people should already be planning to ride coast to coast (west to east), preferably along Adventure Cycling's defined Northern Route during the months of June and July. "The less money you have as a group: the better. The more you are fundamentally opposed to staying in hotels and hitching rides: the better," stated the myspace blog.
"Larry and Jay found me through the casting call web episode," said Ambs. "I've always been OK with the idea that the people I'd be following would be kind of OK...but I definitely got more than I bargained for with Larry and Jay. I think they're great. I got very lucky. They're going into the trip with the right mindset, which is going to help them take the most away from it."
The idea for the documentary began in 2001 when Ambs and a few friends peddaled 3,500 miles in 55 days across the United States. What he found was an experience that wasn't about the riding a bicycle or even his own personal conquest; it was about what drives a person to leave everything behind. It was about the stories of others, living their lives in towns across America and their interaction with his journey. From that trip he had a total of three minutes of video taken by his father during their departure and hundreds of memories. It wasn't enough.
Following years of planning and pitching the film, Ambs' motivation took off after designing the project's website, www.projectpedal.com. Small donations started rolling in and the project began to take shape, yet funding remained the biggest roadblock. With just two months until the projected launch, he had already secured his cast, but was still struggling with finances until he submitted a video to a contest with Network2, a website serving as a guide to internet television. He won $25,000, securing the project.
"This isn't like something you'd see on the Discovery Channel where they dramatize every hill," explained Hale, who said it's the unknowns of the journey that excite him most. "Mike has said the film crew will be on the peripheral as much as possible, there will be no scripting, they'll just be there to observe and film."
The journey begins Tuesday, June 5.