Five friends with limited experience in the saddle ride 2,600 miles across the US in an endearingly honest documentary
As bike touring booms, we’ve seen a trickle of documentaries by cyclists filming their adventures on helmet cameras. This one, from
Australian director Cameron Ford, is slicker than most. In 2015, Ford and four mates cycled 2,600 miles in 30 days across America in the footsteps of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, following the route of dustbowl migrants searching for a better life.
The five men travelled on a budget of $420, the equivalent of the $18 an average depression-era family had to get them to California. This creates the slightly queasy sight of affluent guys in expensive Patagonia T-shirts slumming it and relying on the kindness of strangers – some of whom are themselves clearly only just scraping by on low incomes.