For Brazil 2014, my first World Cup adventure, I imagined helicoptering into the upper reaches of the Amazon and canoeing downstream to arrive just in time for the opening game.

For Russia in 2018, the original plan was to fly to Vladivostok on the Pacific coast and take the Trans-Siberian Railway all the way to Moscow.

In 2022, I intended to start in Oman and cross the Arabian Desert by Land Rover to reach Qatar.

In the end, these dreams were flights of fancy, but each carried a grain of serious intent. Indiana Jones lives somewhere in all our imaginations, and deep in my heart I paddled the Amazon, crossed Siberia by rail, and traversed the vast sand dunes of Arabia by car.

When reality took hold, more modest plans emerged, and each World Cup has been filled with memories from those adventures.

That was one of the main problems I had with a World Cup in America.

It was home. All too familiar. Where, oh where, was I going to find adventure in America?

I don’t remember exactly when the idea hit me, probably while on one of those long drives between American cities—the kind of journey unimaginable to the Brits, where if you drove in a straight line for four hours you’d end up in the sea. Here in America, we’ll happily drive ten hours for a cup of coffee. Well… not quite. But you get the point.

Road trip!

I’ve been lucky enough to drive across this great country several times, and every one of those journeys has been an adventure. The chance to see the real America—the mountains, the plains, the canyons, the rivers—and to meet the people who live in the heartland. A far cry from the version of America Hollywood likes to show us.

Yes. That was the plan.

By the time the World Cup arrived, I expected to be enjoying the freedom of retirement (I wasn’t, as it turned out—but that’s another story), so I set about planning the trip.

Inspired by the wonderfully silly Robin Williams film RV—a particular favourite of mine—I decided an RV was the only proper way to travel.

Cross-referencing the tournament schedule with Google Maps, I came up with what I considered the perfect itinerary.

6,103 miles in 31 days. Every phase of the tournament. All but two of the U.S. host cities.

Ironically, the only two I would miss were the very two I eventually ended up visiting.

I enthusiastically pitched the plan to my friends.

“So, your proposal is that five or six guys share an RV for four weeks? Can you imagine how unsanitary that would be by the end?”

“No, no. It’ll be great! You don’t all have to stay for the whole four weeks. People can come and go. Fly in for a few days. Catch a game together. Stop in some little town in the middle of nowhere and watch a match in a local bar with the locals.”

They have no imagination, my friends.

They just couldn’t see it.

Where was their sense of adventure?

So, just as happened with Brazil, Russia, and Qatar, a more modest adventure took shape.

And, to be honest, it was probably all the more enjoyable. Sometimes my flights of fancy are just too… well… fancy!

Although I have to admit to a twinge of jealousy when I think of my fellow Scot, Craig Ferguson, who walked a large part of the route I had intended to drive, from Los Angeles to Boston.

Would that more of us could live a little harder and make our fancies fly.