Kickstart Your Weekend: '4000'

Each summer, a couple dozen University of Texas students hop on their bikes in Austin and ride … and ride and ride, for 70 days and 4,500 miles, until they reach Alaska.

They are a part of the Texas 4000 ride, which raises money for cancer research. They ride for friends and family who lost their lives to the disease, and they ride for those diagnosed and still fighting. Stopping periodically throughout the American West, the cyclists act as ambassadors for their cause, spreading information about their mission and offering support for other cancer survivors along the way. Their journey, simply put, is a hell of a ride.

And now a group of filmmakers seeks to make a feature-length documentary about the ride: 4000: The Documentary is a project up on Kickstarter posted by Leland Ohlinger, a senior in the university's Radio-Television-Film department. He wants to document the riders' journey, their determination through physical challenges and extreme weather and topography – to showcase "the human spirit defying our very physical limitations."

But first, he needs the funding to do so. The Kickstarter campaign is currently sitting at $3,360 of its $10,000 goal, and it has just one week left to raise the remaining funds. In return for your donation, the filmmakers are offering incentives like DVDs, posters, T-shirts, and more. Check out the trailer below, and find the full campaign here.

Track Texas 4000's 2013 journey on their website with riders' blogs, route maps, and more.

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The Kickstart Your Weekend series puts the spotlight on a local crowdfunding campaign each week. Find past projects here and here. Got a tip for next week's project? Email filmflam@austinchronicle.com.