Ah, how well I remember the day when Michael deYoanna and I were shopping at the Fort Carson Post Exchange trying to decide if we needed to buy just one 1-terabyte hard drive to store the footage for our then-untitled documentary about injured veterans or if we should pony up and buy two just to be safe. Filming hadn’t started yet and, since neither of us had ever made a documentary, we had no idea how much storage we would need.

Nine months later, we’ve filled five terabytes with material, stored in a teetering stack of external hard drives on Michael’s desk. I think we estimated that the footage equals about 500 hours. I am responsible for most of it, having filmed veterans on multi-day long-distance bike rides from Arlington, Va., to Virginia Beach over six days in June; all around Normandy, France for more than a week in July; and from Richmond, Va., to the Pentagon via New York City and Shanksville, Pa. during ten days around the anniversary of 9/11. After each day’s ride, Michael and I conducted in-depth on-camera interviews in our hotel rooms and traveled to vets’ homes to see their lives when they’re not on a bike.

Michael and I are hard on our equipment. During the course of filming, we destroyed a DSLR, a Rode microphone, a GoPro camera and a nice Canon lens. We lost a handful of speed plates, boom poles and too many other filmmaking gimcracks to count. And with each leg of filming, our volume of gear grew and grew … we went from lugging a few heavy bags to lugging a dozen heavy bags as we added studio lighting, walkie talkies, more and more hard drives, and extra tripods to our list of essentials. By the end of it all, we needed to rent a van just to get the gear from place to place.

But it was worth every effort.

The emotional and impactful story at the heart of our film, “Recovering,” is that of men and women who were badly injured since the beginning of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, both mentally and physically, taking their recovery into their own hands (and feet) from the saddles of bicycles. Even if they have no hands or feet.

Each of their stories are different—one cyclist was initially injured as a first responder at the Pentagon on 9/11, another was run over by a Humvee while rescuing a comrade, another lost his legs in an IED explosion—but the common thread is the inspiration they found with one another while riding. Out there on the road, surrounded by the only people in the world who can truly understand what they had gone through, and are still going through, they found a new sense of duty and purpose. As they would in Iraq or Afghanistan, they formed small squads and units on their bikes and tackled each day’s challenges with the same discipline and camaraderie as they would any other mission. No one was left behind. Everyone was pushed to give their all. Friendships and bonds were formed.

That’s as true with us as it was with them. Michael, the film’s director, and I, the director of photography, approached this project as we would any other journalism assignment, but we emerged with friendships that will last well beyond the completion of this project. It wasn’t always easy—many vets tend to be wary of the media. But we’re pretty wary of the media ourselves, frankly, and took pains to distance ourselves from many others in our profession. For example, there was the TV reporter in Arlington who, with no introduction or preamble, approached one of the paralyzed riders, clipped a microphone on him, turned on his camera and said tactlessly, “Tell me how you lost your legs.” No wonder it took awhile to earn their trust.

But I’m glad we did. I came out of this experience a better person, with a much better understanding of war and the toll it extracts from those who fight them. I also came away with a sublime appreciation for the healing power of the human spirit. That, in the end, is what we hope others take from the film as well. We called it “Recovering,” because it is a long and ongoing process.

And so too is finishing the film. Today, we’re proud to release the first trailer, both to give a sneak peak into what the film is about, as well as to help generate financing in order to complete it. We have many months ahead of editing, entering competitions and finding a distributor, which is where the real work lies. Much of that is in Michael's hands, and those of our friend Andrew Pogany, the film's military consultant who has been making connections in many areas to move the film forward.

But there's a role you can play as well. This project began with the help of strangers, through a Kickstarter campaign that financed the first bit of filming. Now we’re asking for a bit more help—please go to our production company’s website and promote the trailer on Twitter and Facebook. If you or someone you know is a bike rider, consider buying an official “Recovering” jersey made especially Primal Wear in Colorado to promote the film and give thanks to the troops for their service.