Numnuts here. 13,000 miles. Cross country in 42 days. Geez, that’s a lot of turns of the wheel.  When I graduated college, there were two main mandates one had to follow. First was, don’t get a job. Being a largely freelance shooter for more than 30 years, I figure I’ve fulfilled that one quite nicely. (Or, if you did have a mind towards gainful employment, it had to be radically, you know, out there. One of my friend’s entire business plan for post-college life was to go to Katmandu and sell Swiss Army knives. Hmmmm. Haven’t heard from him in a while.)

The other was go cross country, man. (You can supply the inflection—Tommy Chong, Spicoli, Firesign Theater.) Never did that. I mean, I’ve logged lots of miles, but it’s never been in a string that starts on one side of the country and ends on the other. Come March, David Hobby, Drew Gurian, myself and crew start playing out that long held string.

And we go in style. The bus looks amazing. I have questions about it. Top end? Capable of a wheelie? Can I drive it for a while? I drove a bus in college, and I’m sure it would all come back to me, just like riding a bike. David’s already filled you in on URLs for video, tweets, and Flickr groups. We’ll be heading to 29 cities, spread over 5 weeks, and hitting rest stops, truck stops and f-stops (couldn’t resist!) all along the way. We’ll tweet locations and routes. We’ll publish, ahem, behind-the-scenes videos of life on the bus. It'll be a blast, and a touch on the weird side. (Huh? Let’s be straight up here. It’s going to be really weird, and a ton of fun.)

Really, really excited about something else. The opportunity to teach with David. We both get to the same place, which is good light, but come at it in very different ways. It'll be a good mix, and a great day of teaching. 

So keep checking here, David’s blog, and my blog for updates. The road is calling, and there’s a bunch to do. 

David Hobby here. Welcome to The Flash Bus blog. 

Someone has to write the first blog post. And since Joe and Drew are in Asia, it falls to me. And I don't mind telling you that I am at once totally stoked and scared to death at the prospect of 29 cities and 13,000+ miles in 42 days. 

Best road trip ever? Yep. 

Complete insanity? Also, probably, yes.

We have seen the bus and it looks totally off the hook. There's basically a chill room at each end and rows of bunks in the middle. On the one hand, it is most certainly the slickest ride we will ever live in for over a month. But on the other hand it could quickly devolve into a 55-foot long rolling Dutch oven, too. 

(If you have to ask, look it up.)

But I am sure of this: Spending that much time trapped on an awesome bus with McNally and crew will certainly provide lots of blog fodder. Some of it will pop up on Strobist and Joe's blog, but you'll get the Full Monty by keeping tabs here. 

So bookmark us, or just go ahead and sign up to the RSS feed. You might also want to follow us on Twitter, where the tour is launching its own stream. That's to spare our normal (admittedly, perhaps the wrong word) followers the Flash Bus Tour blow-by-blow -- and to allow us to occasionally get a little weird on the tour tweets. Fair warning.

For the most part, the posters here will be Joe, Drew Gurian (Joe's first assistant) and yours truly. But look for behind-the-scenes stuff from the rest of the crew, too. Heck, we may even rope in the bus driver for some words of wisdom. (I'm expecting Otto, from The Simpsons.)

Oh yeah -- and we're looking for your stuff, too. Drop your pics from the tour, pics of the (insanely cool) bus, etc., into the tour's Flickr group. They might end up on the blog. You can join in the discussion there, too.

We want your video'd lighting questions via YouTube, too. (We'll pick the best ones and YouTube the answers.) Just tag them "The Flash Bus" and we'll see them. 

That's all for now. Lots (and lots, and lots) of work to do as we prep.