New London — Allison Porter is having a mid-life crisis, and when she came to New London from Pennsylvania to visit family, she developed an unorthodox response: She suggested making a cross-country trip on Segways.

"I didn't really think anybody was going to be listening to me," she said. But "a week later they called me, and Kate had this film idea, and she wanted to move to California, and Dawn wanted to be involved with getting her there."

Kate Harkness is Porter's niece and Dawn Harkness is Kate's mother. Dawn Harkness owns Wheeling City Tours, a Segway tour company, in New London.

The three of them — along with Kate's boyfriend, Brett Van Egmond — are embarking from New London at 9 a.m. on Monday morning for what they're calling the "Ultimate Segway Tour" to Los Angeles. They're welcoming the public to bid them adieu at 8:15; the tour company is located at the back of 36 Bank St.

The way Dawn Harkness tells it, the group represents a diversity of attitudes: As a retired attorney, she can be "a little too pragmatic;" Porter is "a wild and crazy woman;" and Kate Harkness and her boyfriend offer the creative vision.

Kate and Van Egmond met as film students at Rhode Island School of Design, and they will be posting daily videos on their newly created YouTube channel, The Ultimate Segway Tour. They moved to New York City after graduating from college and then to New Orleans, and now they're moving to Los Angeles.

And so the Segway tour will involve four people, four Segways, two dogs and one RV, with a goal of finishing in under 100 days. Dawn, 56, wants to beat the time set by Josh Caldwell, whose journey from Seattle to Boston in 2004 was the subject of the documentary "10 MPH."

That's the average speed one can travel on a Segway, and Dawn Harkness, who will be the only one to make the entire trip on a Segway, aims to cover 60 to 70 miles per day. Porter will sometimes join her on a Segway, and one of Dawn Harkness's three trip companions will drive the RV ahead to a base camp each day.

Dawn Harkness still is figuring out the route but has a rough idea. They will be heading north toward Naugatuck and crossing the Hudson River north of New York City, considering Segways are illegal in the city.

They plan to go through Pennsylvania and hit Louisville, Ky., before stopping in Kansas City, Kan., for a Segway polo match. Dawn Harkness is the legal adviser for the International Segway Polo Association, and she was the goalie for the American team that played in the 2017 Segway Polo World Championship in Hemer, Germany.

She is interested in trying to play Segway polo with veterans. She said of playing with people who are disabled, "We can't go any faster than they can, so it's really a great equalizer."

Kate Harkness and Van Egmond have requested a stop in Las Vegas, and the group has found some Renaissance fairs they're interested in attending.

"I love history, culture, art," Dawn Harkness said. "I love exploring places, and I've taken Segway tours all over the world, and I've found it's one of the best ways to explore any new city."

She has been living in New London for four years, and this summer was her fourth season running Wheeling City Tours. She has given tours to patrons ranging in age from 14 (the minimum) to 86.

"I love the technology. There's something really amazing about a machine that balances you," she said. "You don't balance the machine; the machine balances you. It's like magic."

For the Ultimate Segway Tour, she is running a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of $10,000, to help with the RV rental, audio and video equipment, gas, food and laundry. She has raised more than $5,000.

"I think it's going to be a really personal experience, even more than being in a car," Porter said, "being on a Segway and being a part of everything that you're in at the moment, the environment, the land, the people that you're going by at 10 miles an hour."

Filming the experience will be something different for Kate Harkness, who has worked on the ABC show "Black Box," the Fox show "Scream Queens," the Disney Channel original movie "Invisible Sister" and the Boston Marathon bombing biographical drama "Stronger."

She has been wanting to work on an independent project to take the leap into creating her own films.

"I hope that different people with different interests get different things out of it," she said of creating the Ultimate Segway Tour web series with Van Egmond. "I think it's a lot of different stories. I think it's a story about adventure. I think it's a story about a family. It's a story about these different people in different stages in their lives. It's the mid-life crisis; it's the quarter-life crisis. It's sort of all these things."

e.moser@theday.com