(Banjo Music) I was really ready to be someplace and to open myself up to just accept that I am from this place.

And it was kinda nice to be able to make that choice.

To choose where my home would be.

(Banjo Music) My name is Nathan Tolzmann.

I live in Chicago, Illinois.

I was born in Marian, Ohio.

We moved from there when I was three to Plano, Texas.

Growing up in Texas not being from there, I didn't have a connection to the place from birth.

They would find out that I was not from Texas and then that would lead to being called a Yankee.

And then I went off to college in Minnesota and was ready to move far away from Texas by that point.

People from Minnesota pointed out my Texas accent, which I was pretty sure I didn't have.

Ya know I was obviously an outsider there.

But then I went down to Mexico and stayed down there for seven months and it was great.

And then I felt like, I'm gonna stay in Mexico.

I don't know it felt fun to be an outsider for that short amount of time.

I thought this is nice.

So when I came back, then I didn't have a plan.

And so I ended up staying in my parents basement with my stuff.

I don't think I did try very hard to fit into a place that I was.

I wasn't moving towards anything, nothing was happening.

I was looking for what would move me forward.

(Banjo Music) Then the summer of '98 my friend had decided that this was the summer that we needed to do something great.

So the plan he came up with was to ride bikes across the country.

That was the perfect time for me to do something like that.

And the plan was to start in San Francisco and ride all the way across the country.

There was a day that we had to go a hundred miles because there was a hundred miles between towns and this is you know, what the day looked like.

And then, we ran into these people who were moving from a small town in Minnesota to an even smaller town in Washington.

They moved by covered wagon.

Kind of put it into perspective.

(chuckles) We had hoped to make it all the way across the country, but we just got too late of a start and there's no way we were gonna make it.

In the end we didn't make it all the way across the country.

We only made it as far as Chicago.

Here's our reception committee.

(Laughing) I don't think I did realize that I was going to end up in the place that would then be my home.

So yeah I always use to think I'd been here five years and then after a while I realized it was ten years.

And now it's twelve years plus.

So we're working in thirteen years and here we are still.

(Banjo Music) I don't know that much about being from Illinois.

It's almost like being in Illinois as being a Chicagoan.

I mean Chicago is you know, half the people.

I just love it here.

I love the way the place looks.

I love the way I'm able to get around here.

I love my family and friends that are here.

For me it's become the place that I was looking for.

It's hard to completely shake that thing where, well but I didn't grow up here.

But I guess knowing that a lot of people didn't grow up here either, that allows for more variation in what a Chicagoan is.

So if people ask me where I'm from, I'll say Chicago.

It let me feel like a part of something, just accept that this is where I'm from and accept this as a home.

It gives give me a lot of satisfaction to just be relaxed with who I am and where I am.

That's probably part Chicago and part me.

(Banjo Music)