Fifty States. Fifty Days. One Red Dot Moving Across the Map.

Excerpt: Two recent graduates. Fifty state capitals. Fifty days. A Boost Mobile flip phone feeding GPS updates to a live map. Hitch50 turned a wild road trip into a story people could follow, cover, and help move along.

The next idea came at a housewarming party

At the Kipling housewarming party for Kyle MacDonald’s One Red Paperclip project, we were talking about what would come next for Kyle’s brother, Scott “Scotty” MacDonald, and their friend Matt “Fiddy” Fidler. They’d just graduated college and still had to go back to Vancouver to walk across the stage and get their diplomas.

So we started tossing out ideas.

“Why not travel around America?”

“What if you hitchhiked?”

“Could you visit every state capital in 50 days?”

We had just watched a paperclip turn into a house. Our sense of what counted as a reasonable next project may have been a little off. But we were serious enough to start figuring it out.

A few months later, Scotty and Fiddy set off from Times Square on October 10, 2006. Their goal was to reach all 50 state capitals in 50 days, take a picture in front of each capitol, and make the trip without paying for transportation.

As Fiddy later explained in a Vagablogging interview, Scotty had hitchhiked before, but Fiddy had never done it. Kyle’s older-brother dare helped push the idea into action. The rest of us were ready to see if the internet could help carry it across the country.

The flip phone that put them on the map

I bought a Boost Mobile flip phone. One of their college friends, Heath Johns, worked on the technical side and helped connect the phone’s GPS, location software, and an online map.

When the system worked, a red dot showed where the guys were. A red line traced where they’d been. People could check the site and follow the journey while it was happening.

That sounds like a standard feature now. In 2006, it was a big part of the idea. A Matador interview with Heath described the Boost phone sending its coordinates every 15 seconds or so and the team combining those updates with an embedded Google Map.

The website gave the trip a live pulse. If the dot was moving, Scotty and Fiddy were on their way. If it stopped, you could wonder what had happened and check back for an update.

The Hitch50 YouTube channel preserves some of the videos they made along the way. They even filmed a Hitch50 trailer in Kipling while we were all together for the One Red Paperclip housewarming.

A local story in every town

I was checking in with them by phone and pitching media as they traveled. When I knew which town they were in or heading toward, I’d call local radio and newsrooms and explain the story: two recent graduates were hitchhiking to every state capital, and the public could follow their location online.

The pitch changed with the map. If they were in your town, the story was happening in your town. They could call in, talk about the trip, and tell listeners what they were trying to do next.

I remember people calling radio stations with offers to help. Some had ideas for a ride. Some offered airline miles for the difficult legs. That was the thing about Hitch50: the audience could move from watching the story to becoming part of it.

NPR covered the project on launch day. MSNBC also followed the guys, with one early MSNBC interview and a later MSNBC check-in from Hawaii. The trip even made it onto CNN Pipeline.

Local television was part of the mix too. Here’s a WCCO-TV interview in St. Paul, one of the stops along the route. The trip’s premise was easy to explain, but there was always something new to report: where the guys were, who had helped, what they’d seen, and whether they were still on schedule.

The road delivered its own comedy

The trip didn’t go smoothly every day. In Fiddy’s Vagablogging interview, he recalled that the longest wait for a ride was in Branson, Missouri. They waited almost 24 hours.

That gives you a sense of the rhythm. One day the map moved quickly. Another day the guys were stuck, trying to get someone to stop. They shared the funny moments too, including the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Hitchhiking” video and a collection of funny things they saw on the side of the road.

They also took jumping photos in front of state capitols. The Hitch50 Flickr archive keeps some of those pictures alive. They’re wonderfully earnest: two guys in the air, a capitol building behind them, another state checked off.

The audience helped get them to Hawaii

The project’s rules left room for generous strangers to help. The guys couldn’t pay for transportation, but a donated ride didn’t have to come from a car that happened to pull over on the highway. People could find them through the site, offer help, and become part of the route.

Hawaii was the biggest question mark. The answer came through a benefit concert organized by the Los Angeles band Fermata at Carpe DM in Simi Valley. The show raised enough money to get Scotty and Fiddy flights to Honolulu. A Matador story about the end of the trip describes how the fundraiser got them there.

They made it to Hawaii, finished the goal, and had a party. You can see the Hawaii TV news coverage and the final MSNBC check-in from there.

They reached the last state capital on November 28, 2006. The Independent later included Hitch50 in its year-end roundup of internet stories, noting that media attention helped with the Alaska and Hawaii legs. My project timeline has a short summary of the coverage, including ABC, NPR, MSNBC, and USA Today.

The trip ended. The story kept moving.

No book or TV show came out of Hitch50. For Scotty and Fiddy, it was a huge post-college adventure: 50 capitals, a lot of strangers who became helpers, and a story they could tell for the rest of their lives.

For me, it was another lesson in how a good idea can keep producing moments. The challenge gave the story its shape. The live map made progress visible. Media outreach gave local communities a way into the trip. Videos, photos, interviews, and offers from listeners gave people a reason to keep following.

We didn’t wait until the journey was over to tell people what happened. We gave them a way to follow along while it was happening.

The Big Idea: Build a story with a clear goal, visible progress, and room for people to take part. Then keep finding the next local moment worth sharing.

Want help turning a big idea into a story people can follow? Let’s talk.