Gus Morton, filmmaker and former pro cyclist

Gus Morton quit professional cycling at the age of 21 to pursue a career as a filmmaker. He was briefly pulled back into professional racing but left the sport for good in 2017, when he merged his two areas of expertise by creating the production company Thereabouts, which put an alternative lens on cycling that didn't revolve around competition or traditional, straightforward narratives of accomplishment. Instead, the projects focus on "conveying the feeling rather than recounting the experience" of cycling adventures.

In January of 2021, Gus joined endurance athlete Rebecca Rusch and photographer Chris Burkard on the first winter crossing of Iceland by bike. They set out to make a film about the experience, but the project became much more than a portrait of athletic endurance when Gus found himself trapped in Mexico for two weeks following the expedition, confronting a very different kind of struggle.

In this conversation, he tells Payson about how his battle with alcoholism came to a head during that two-week stay in Mexico City, and why he decided to re-frame the film around his relapse and recovery. They talk about how he wrestled with alcohol as a professional cyclist, the moment he revealed to Chris and Rebecca that he'd relapsed after their trip, and the process of turning his experiences with addiction into a creative project. The film, 'I Am Here,' is in production. A Kickstarter campaign was launched earlier this month to fund the remaining work.