Neither does a chronological account convey the ways in which the show evolves from gig to gig in response to the contingencies of the road. In New Orleans, for example, a faulty power connection and someone's failure to buy coffee canceled the Poet's Cafe. In Baltimore, Austin-based performance artist Chad Salvata joined the tour with a show-opening voice-manipulation chant-fest, only to bail out of the tour in New York after an ugly slap-fight in Baltimore and a near smashup on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway convinced him that he had better things to do than risk death for art that, so far, has been variously described by a New York City art director as "absolute horseshit" and by a Baltimore art school event coordinator as "great, really great."

Salvata, in fact, was only the first of several troopers to truncate the trip, and not without justification. If adventure has been the much trumpeted name of the game, risk and luck have existed in a frighteningly tenuous truce. No one thought much about pitching tents in the parking lot of the Maryland Institute of Art the night after the Baltimore performance, but when Pirtle woke the following morning to find the rear end of a moving station wagon backing over his torso, its wheels straddling his sleeping place, he spoke -- when he could -- for everyone when he asked, "How many times can you roll a seven?"

But any company of performers that heads out half-cocked on the great American highway seeking art and adventure would be poorly advised if it didn't expect a generous helping of both. And whatever the ultimate impact of the individual performances along the way, the root fact of the matter is the experience itself. Whether or not an audience finds that experience rewarding to watch is, of course, that audience's business.

"For me," Topchy says, "it's about living everyday life in an exciting way. And to me, the most exciting way is to take real stock of not only day-to-day activities, but the adventure and the freshness in going different places."

Songwriter Townes Van Zandt says much the same thing in "To Live Is to Fly," when he sings, "Where you been is good and gone / all you keep is the gettin' there." And so back in Houston, with the bus finally safe in the Zocalo compound, it's appropriately telling to take a last glance at the small chalkboard-paint "Destination" oval above the windshield -- and to realize that, after two weeks and 3,600 miles worth of performance art, nobody ever bothered to climb up there and write down just where Zocalo thought it was going.