Dave was born in the Midlands in 1976 and was raised and schooled in Redditch, Worcestershire, an ill-fated experiment in town planning, now a showcase for unfortunate architecture. Though its people were lovely, its lack of discernable cultural worth was by no means made up for by its wealth of greetings card shops.

In 1994 Dave moved away from the Midlands to study American literature in Swansea, Wales and Knoxville, Tennessee. Despite an abundance of job opportunities in the literature industry, Dave decided to seek fame and fortune elsewhere, finding neither.

Since 1998, he has lived and worked by the sea in Brighton, Sussex. A place he has loved but now needs to leave. Dave has itchy feet. He will look forward to returning if that is what happens; Brighton is a fine town.

Dave has been working a desk job for a company providing cleaning to high street stores for about 4 years. It was about 4 years ago that he realised that this was not something that he wanted to do. Instead he is undertaking what he hopes will be a brief but successful career in epic walking.

Though he has long enjoyed escaping out into the mountains, this will be Dave’s first long-distance hike so he will be continually intending to begin a rigorous training schedule, right up to the day of departure.

Dave is a sometime musician, his talent matched only by his ambition (he is selling his guitar to fund the trip). He loves his camera and will be taking the pictures. He hopes to take what’s left of his creativity on tour and to concentrate on making music, words and images as a diary of the trip. He will have few excuses this time.

America has always held a fascination for Dave. He has travelled the Sates in person but also in the music and literature which he has spent years absorbing. To date he has not spent 2 years walking across it.

Dave is bored with going to work, bored with bills, bored with taxes, taxis and trains, bored of seeing things through windows. Dave is bored with banks. He expects to find people in Indiana who are unaware of his boredom. He wishes to get away from the small things and remind himself that he lives on a planet, a big one. Dave looks forward to being Dave in leafy Virginia and dusty Utah, snow-capped Colorado and thirsty Nevada. He feels its adventuring time. He expects his Mother to worry.

Dave has never swum in the Pacific. Dave has some walking to do.