Yes, so you're going to travel across the USA, but why? Where do these stories start? Was there something missing in my childhood, my adolescence, my early adulthood? Some warped sense of what it was a proper thing for a chap like me to be doing? Some sort of action research that looked very much like going on a fun trip with some pals and getting other people to pay for it? Art? Is it Art? It's not Art is it?
All of the above, probably. I'd taken one trip to the USA about a year before and I'd confirmed my hots for the American people from hanging out in Austin. That spring, I'd got to the stage in life where I though I'd never get to go to the States, and then it just happened quite easily and so then I wanted to go again.
America holds this odd place in the British cultural psyche. We love it and loathe it. We can't get enough of TV cop shows and sitcoms with canned laughter, and (to someone growing up in 1970s Britain) everything looked clean and modern. But everything, everything I knew about America came from TV and film.
New York City? Kojak!
Texas? Dallas!
Deep South? Dukes of Hazzard!
San Francisco? well, the Streets of San Francisco!
This was compounded when, on my first morning in Austin, I went down to the restaurant to have breakfast and found Linda Gray having coffee with Larry Hagman.
So it quickly became obvious that there was so much more to this country and the people who live there. Yep, I was hooked, I was already fascinated and a week in Austin confirmed that there was plenty to be fascinated about - so many everyday things that just don't happen in the UK - tipping everyone who gave you service, getting service from just about everyone you meet. I also knew a fairly large number of people living in different parts of the country. I'd had a blog since 2004, now we had Twitter and Facebook and everyone was connecting with everyone. I knew lots of people who knew lots of people.
But was this enough to actually do anything? Could you make something interesting happen out of an online social network? And if you were going to do something, what would it be? This was the conversation I was having. What kind of thing could you do that would demonstrate this new connectedness and uncover some of the cultural differences as well as similarities? And how could you use these newly democratised media not only to record it, but also to make the thing itself? This wasn't making a documentary film or writing a book or doing some sort of performance art, but it had elements of all three.
The clearest thing I knew I needed was some other people to take the whole thing to the next level, the level where we'd actually get on a plane to the USA. Now where could I find people like that?