In the beginning...

...there were these college students.

No, wait. My story begins actually a few years before that...

It was the summer after 7th grade. I was thirteen years old, or thereabouts. My Boy Scout troop was taking a bicycle trip along the Katy Trail in Missouri - 200 miles in five days. When you're thirteen, that can seem like a nearly impossible goal...but you know how it is that age. A bicycle means one thing, and one thing only: freedom. How could one resist? The trip was hot, it was dirty, it was exhausting...and I loved every second of it.

One of the things I remember most vividly was a stop we made in a small town - you know, one of those classic American small towns with a population of 350. There was a tiny grocery store a few feet off of the trail that we stopped at after a few long hours of riding in the rising heat. Some of us went inside, and behind the counter was an old woman, with silvery gray hair and a kind, wrinkled face. I don't remember anything about what she really looked like, what she said to me, or what the exact layout of the inside of the convenience store was - but I do remember I bought an ice cream bar.

For some reason, it was just one of those moments, an only-during-a-summer-in-America moment, the kind of moment that makes you feel nostalgic for a place you've never been before. Maybe it was the homey feel of the little town, or maybe it was my fascination that this store could exist with this woman inside of it that I had no clue about who she was or where she came from - what she wanted out of life, or even how life had let her down. I just remember thinking, somewhere along there, sitting by the side of the bike trail on a sweltering July day eating an ice cream bar from this store I knew I would never see again, I remember thinking, "So this is it. This is America."

...I guess it's a feeling that's just hard to describe. But it's one that has never really left me. The places I saw and the people I met on the Katy Trail filled me with an odd sense of patriotism, about how beautiful this country is and how interesting the people that make it up are. Ever since that trip, I've wanted to travel this country and really experience for myself what else is out there, how much it really has to offer...and what other grocery stores are waiting for me to buy ice cream from kind, elderly women.

Once I got a little older, and decided filmmaking was what I wanted to do with my life, I maintained this dream of travelling the country to make a documentary; I wanted to take a year off after I graduated to seriously explore. Maybe it would be just me and a car and a camera. I had no idea what the film was going to be about, but I knew it was a dream, and I also knew that there was no one else who was inclined to come with me...until I met Lauren.

When Lauren and I became friends sophomore year at Webster University, she came to me with a question. She said she had this idea about travelling cross-country to make a documentary, and she wanted to know if I might like to come.

Now I don't know about you, but I believe in God, and that, to me, was pretty much a slap on the back; a nudge in the right direction, if you will. So then there was me, and there was Lauren. The only thing was, Lauren wasn't keen on taking a car. She wanted to walk.

"Walk?!" I said.

"Yes, walk," she answered.

And that, as they say, was that.

I'll let Jonathan, Lauren, and Katelyn share their stories about how and why they are getting involved in this crazy project, but for me, it all comes back to that ice cream bar from that tiny grocery store in that little town. I want to recapture the feeling of that one American summer afternoon...the freedom, I suppose you could call it, of being out and experiencing a small part of this great country of ours.

More than eight years later, it seems as if my dream is finally getting ready to come true...