Slow Ride

When Hunter Weeks's mom was in the Peace Corps, she traveled Africa by thumb, hitching across the Sahara Desert with just a girlfriend and a map. That was the mid-'60s, a decade before her son -- and heir to her wanderlust -- was born in Scottsdale, Arizona.

"That was her crazy time. I grew up hearing stories about it," Weeks says. "She was a schoolteacher, so in the summer she was always taking us on trips. She'd drive deep into Mexico for a week or two, things like that. I learned early on that a big part of travel was getting to know people."

At 27, Weeks uses his camera, not his thumb, to see the world. In 2003, he and his two partners, Josh Caldwell and Patrick Armstrong, founded Spinning Blue, an "expedition-based" web, film and video production company, in Scottsdale. But Arizona's heat and lack of creative opportunities were stifling, so earlier this year the company moved its offices to Broomfield -- just down the road from Armstrong and his wife, who live in Boulder -- and got busy. The company's done work for the Howard Dean campaign and Rock the Vote. In the master plan, Weeks, Caldwell and Armstrong will travel the world, document what they see and get paid for it.

"I've been to 26 countries, and when I travel, I always sit in airports and wonder about people: 'What's their story? Where are they going?'" Weeks says. "Everybody's got a story. I like the idea of finding those stories, using travel as a variation on journalism."

So far, Spinning Blue's first major project is slow going. Really slow going.

This week, Caldwell, Armstrong and Weeks begin filming America at 10 mph, a documentary that chronicles a journey across America from the gyroscope-balanced platform of a Segway Human Transporter, a two-wheeled, upright scooter. The 4,300-mile journey -- the longest ever attempted on a Segway -- will take the crew from Seattle's Space Needle to Segway's headquarters in New Hampshire. If all goes according to schedule, they'll be in Bedford, New Hampshire, on October 20, after eighty days of traveling at golf-cart speed.

"You've got technology and all these things that help us go faster. It's nice to have a different perspective where you take some time enjoying what you're seeing," says Caldwell, who will be the Segway's sole pilot during the trip. "People get so caught up in the areas where they live, but a lot of this country is rural. This film is a way to show them some people and places that they don't know much about."

Caldwell hasn't done much in the way of training for the long journey ahead. Armed with an iPod and a lot of sunscreen, the 27-year-old will hug highway shoulders in Boise, traverse trails in Yellowstone National Park and saunter down sidewalks in Casper and Cheyenne before making a stop in Denver in early September. Then it's a long, hot stretch across the plains of Kansas and through the Midwest. To break up the monotony, Caldwell and his crewmates will interview locals about their definition of the American dream, adding a man-on-the-street (or the scooter) interaction to the molasses motion of the journey.

"I think asking that question will be an easy way to identify with people," Caldwell says. "This is something that we've always wanted to do -- the big dream of making the film is part of our American dream. So the idea of being able to ask people a question about their dream is pretty cool."

America at 10 mph is, by design, an exercise in tedium, born out of boredom. John Keough, a friend of Weeks and Caldwell's from Principia College in St. Louis, came up with the idea while living in New York City. He'd taken the requisite number of soul-sucking jobs, including working as a production assistant on indie films. "At the time I thought of the idea for America at 10 mph, I was temping in an office where I removed staples for eight hours a day. I had nothing to do but stand around and think," Keough says. "When you're working a job like that and you come up with an idea like that, no one's going to take you seriously. They'd say, 'That's so funny, that sounds so cool, but it's not going to happen -- it's impossible.'"

But Keough knew that Weeks and his partners wouldn't think it was impossible. Weeks was seeking a project for Spinning Blue, and he seized Keough's concept. They took a cue from the Howard Dean campaign and found sponsorship and fan support through the blog community and their own website, www.10mph.com. Supporters of the project have offered crash-pad space, cocktails and meals along the route.