Anne Hepperman reporting:

Anne: John Freyer's a road nerd. You know the type: "My way is the highway." He's an artist from Iowa City, a place that's 200 miles away from anywhere. So, he drives a lot, and driving makes you think; your mind starts to wander, turning along with the wheels. And when John drives, he thinks about life and things, such as: "Why do I have so many things?"…"What can I do about all these things?"…"How can I get rid of at least some of all this clutter in my life?"

John: Kind of crazy, but one of the things that I realized was, in a year's time, I had accumulated so much stuff that, you know, I couldn't fit in a moving van if I had to. And, it was kind of frustration with that that made me think that maybe I wanted to reduce things right down to where I started.

Anne: And like I said, John's an artist, so things got out of hand. John didn't mean to sell all of his stuff, he was just trying to find a name for a Web site: Garagesale.com -- gone. So, was everythingforsale.com. Allmylifeforsale.com was just a fluke. Really, John says, it was. But once he registered it, he felt obligated to go all the way. So, he invited his friends over to inventory his stuff, and then the eBay everything-must-go-blowout-sale began. Toaster: sold for $11.50. Kitchen table -- do I hear $61? Sideburns: a mere $5, plastic baggie included. And then, things got weird.

John: You want me to visit you in Portland, Maine?

Anne: …e-mailed the lady who bought his salt shaker.

John: Cool. Well, if you want me to visit you in Portland, Maine, then there might be other people that might allow me to visit them.

Anne: And, here's where the art comes in. You see, anybody can become an e-Bay member and put their life on sale, but what John did was he asked people to write him letters telling him what they were doing with all his old stuff. And now, he had another request, or maybe more of a warning: "Hey, guess what? I may just come by and visit."

Now, the weird thing is that people actually wanted him to. The invitations came in by the dozens, which for John means, what else? Road trip. And, since this is art, document it in a travel journal on the Web.

Week one: Get the car ready and head to Chicago. Meet Ten Don (who bought John's copy of "Franny & Zooey.")
Week two: Go to St. Paul to find the person who bought the telephone list, and who…

John: …is a person who, at first, I thought was Ave Green. And, I immediately thought Ave Green was Al Green's brother, so I'm imagining a very tall African-American, deep-voiced Ave.

Anne: He wasn't even close. That's Ave Maria Green. Ave Maria Green, and, yes, she's Catholic. Ave also invented the printed rubber band. I'm sure you've seen her work: the "A players," rap stars, trendy teens -- they all wear them. If you bought any Christmas boxes from Liz Claiborne this year, those rubber bands with the printed snowflakes around the top? That's Ave's work. She keeps John's phone list in her office.

Ave: So, we're going into the highly secure area where the phone list resides.

Anne: The people who bought John's stuff fall into two groups: First, there are the regular eBay shoppers: the guy who wants a toaster, stumbles across John's toaster and simply buys what he needs. Then, there's the second group: the people who found out about John's project beforehand and were really excited to buy anything from him.

Ave: Oh, I went on eBay -- like, I went to really buy his sideburns because I thought that would just be a treasure.

Anne: Ave obviously falls into the second category.

Ave: So, then, it was the first time I was on eBay, and I lost, and I thought, "OK, this is war." So, I went to the next most personal item.

Anne: A lot of people bought personal items from John: A theology bought his red T-shirt to use in a sermon. What about this guy in New York? He bought the rights to be John Freyer at John Freyer's own birthday party, thrown by John Freyer's friends. This set him back an incredible sum of $1.25. And, don't forget the lady who did get his sideburns…John met them all while visiting his stuff.

But don't think everyone likes John's idea. His parents were skeptical; his friends asked, "What if you stay with an ax murderer?" And, you can imagine what his girlfriend thought. Even the fanatics, the people like Ave, even they were cautious.

Ave: I thought, this guy could be a little bit too into it. You know, you didn't know for a second…You go, Ohhhh…OK, now, he's making these connections…well, it's my office and you were on par with a friendly UPS driver…Could you could you turn around and leave now?

Anne: But all the awkwardness seemed to fall away once he walked in the door. John says it was like a really good blind date. He was meeting strangers, but not really. I mean, how hard could it be to get to know somebody when they're wearing your favorite belt?

John: The superficial kind of reaction is unnecessary, right, so they have a pretty good sense of who I am, you know, or at least how I present myself. So, they don't ask me where I'm from -- because they know.

Anne: Which is really what John's trip was all about. It wasn't some nostalgic journey to reunite with his favorite shirt: It was meeting the person who bought it; it was seeing the country from the perspective of ordinary people who simply happen to have bought his stuff. John says the whole experience was really curious. He crisscrossed the country so many times; he thought this trip wouldn't be that much different. But you know what? It was. Suddenly, it was an adventure, and once he tasted adventure, he couldn't go back.

John: October 29th, 2001: I'm almost back to Iowa, but not after experiencing what my trip could have been like. Yesterday, I stopped for gas in Kansas City and then ate at a giant chain restaurant. Now, I spent the last 2 months visiting different people around the country, and I never once walked into a house and said, "Oh, your house looks like the last one." But last night, I looked down at my food and couldn't eat. I checked into a hotel, watched cable TV until 3 a.m., and today, I drank my free orange juice. And then, I realized that this is what my trip could have been like: days full of chain restaurants and night after night of free cable and complementary breakfast. So, when you travel, try to find a way to stay with strangers. I did.

Anne: In Minnesota, I'm Anne Hepperman for The Savvy Traveler.