So Ormskirk’s getting a new nightclub. Some of the residents of Ormskirk aren’t impressed that it’s applied for a 3am licence. I’m glad that the Arriba of old is gone – it’s years since I’d been in because the sticky floors put me off so much!

But as I passed by on my lunch break today, one thing instantly struck me – they are advertising an email address – alpineormskirk@googlemail.com – on the side of the building with no mention of a website. This is a badly missed opportunity, poorly executed. Who is seriously just going to email a nightclub, and why would they? A domain name costs ten quid for two years so why advertise a Gmail address? Even if it’s just a holding page with dates of upcoming club nights it would offer something to those searching for more information online. Heck it could even redirect to a Facebook fan page!

If by any chance this happens to rank higher on Google than anything else about the Alpine Club, you can hire me for online marketing advice – my rates are reasonable

Update: it took about an hour for this post to get top Google ranking for “Alpine Club Ormskirk”.

For quite some time I’ve had "Vanity" Alerts set up with Google. To attempt to cut out some of the irrelevant results, I’ve had a a couple of negative filters to remove Mike Nolan, former head coach of the San Francisco 49ers. Now that I’m going to SF, I might have to remove some of these filters!

With both Alex and I being IT professionals, it seems appropriate to use the interwebs to help us out and decide what to do along the way.

Here’s the initial route we came up with:

So: San Francisco, CA; LA, CA; Las Vegas, NV; Grand Canyon, AZ; Denver, CO; Chicago, IL; Toronto, ON; Boston, MA; New York, NY.

If you’ve been to any of these places, or have heard of good things to see and do, let us know in one of the following ways:

• Twitter: DM or @ to MikeNolan or AlexNolan.  Use the hashtag #roadtripusa.
• Delicious: Tag roadtripusa and for:mikenolan.
• Comments: Leave a comment on this blog post.
• Google Docs: Request edit access to our itinerary on Google Docs.

During the trip, I’m hoping to keep track of what’s going on.  Of course I’ll be tweeting, I might be able to blog occasionally, I’ll upload photos to Flickr but I’d also like to try some more unusual things.  I’ll try to plot the route on mapme.at – hoping that John McKerrell can advise on the best way to do this!

• SFO to LGA and 4000 miles in between: See what we’re doing and some ways you can help.
• Follow @MikeNolan and @AlexNolan on Twitter
• View our itinerary on Google Docs
• More soon!

• The Inbetweeners
• Big Bang Theory
• Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps
• Grownups
• Coming of Age

To be continued…

(Feel free to add any suggestions in the comments.)

1. I can juggle (4 balls, 3 clubs, fire, knives).
2. Ably assisted by a fantastic team, I organise an annual camp for around 500 Scouts.
3. Around 30% of people who know me call me Nigel. That percentage used to be much higher.
4. I know how to spell ceilidh without a spellchecker.
5. I might be a workaholic, but I actually just really enjoy my job (most of the time!)
6. I’m the Director of a company, which employs me and currently does very little else – a hangover from my freelancing days.
7. I haven’t drunk Coke (or any other brands of cola) since November 2002 except one sip at Alton Towers, and I spat that out.
8. I used to have a mild coke habit – I’ve replaced that with drinking coffee.
9. I hate climbing up mountains but I keep getting tricked into doing it.
10. I’ve never been interested in computer games.
11. Being put in bottom set English in year 9 was a kick up the arse and now I get annoyed by incorrect grammar.
12. I often wonder who would come to my funeral if I died in a car crash. I hope not to find out.
13. I’m a bit of a maps geek – if I could afford it I would get a complete set of OS maps just because.
14. My life is overly dependent on Google. I should probably fix that but the SMS reminders from Google Calendar make it look like I have friends.
15. I have started eating most foods I used to avoid (e.g. mushrooms) because it seemed like too much effort to pick them out of meals.
16. I still won’t eat courgettes – they’re sinister.
17. I’m a life member of the YHA and feel slightly guilty for not using them more.
18. I think I swear quite a lot but most people don’t seem to notice.
19. I remember virtually nothing from my early childhood, and those memories I do have were probably seeded by other people.
20. I have almost all of my (non-work) emails going back to 1997. I cringe when I read what I was like 10 years ago.
21. If I had $1,000,000 I’d buy you a monkey (but if more than one person is actually reading this you’ll have to share).
22. I work in Higher Education, so clearly I don’t have $1,000,000.
23. I often book cheap flights to places on a whim and leave the details like what to do and where to stay when I get there to the day before.
24. There’s a few people who I owe more to than they’ll ever know.
25. For a group project at university I wrote a program to play Texas Hold ‘em. I find poker fascinating, but I know better than to play for money.

I don’t wish to pressure people into thinking they have to follow suit (ha!) but if you want to share your deepest insecurities I’m sure plenty of people will be willing to read them.

I recorded five dreams throughout the night and while none of them seemed related to the sounds I was played, that’s far more than I have normally. Two of the dreams were related to the event itself, being woken in the middle of the night to perform some task – listening to a banjo playing band to spot the difference between two pieces of music in one case, and to play a game of rounders in the other. Unfortunately neither of these things happened in real life.

At the end of one dream I believed someone had stolen a pack of steak but on checking in the fridge it was still there, so I wrote my name on it in blue marker pen just to make sure. And on that note I’m going to have steak and chips for dinner… as long as no one has stolen it.

Update: also check out the video from 2007 to see it all in action: