Trying to make my way back to 0.0 (slowly)

Back before I left, the corporation I am in was part of an Alliance (Electus Matari) which had links to U'K alliance (Ursha Khan I think, I'm going off memory here) who had an outpost by the name of Unity in 9UY system in Providence.

Since I came back to Eve I've since found that we left the alliance, and Unity station was captured by CVA alliance, now called Deliverance Reclaimed, and with it, my access to 0.0 was removed as we are no longer under the flag of any local alliances in the region.

Now I'm busy checking around trying to find the local alliances in the various regions around where we live and seeing if I would be welcome to roam around their space and get back into the swing of things. I'm having trouble of course finding out this information - once I get through the lowsec dangers of Molden Heath, I wouldn't want to end up in the Great Wildlands and podded by the first Foundation pilot I ran into.

The strategic maps are proving to be quite useful for this, but of course, the sovereignty of the various regions around the Minmatar space border leading into the drone space is a bit varied at times (look at the big wars list on the map, everyone seems to be fighting everyone around that area trying to claim dominance) so at the moment it seems to be more 'every man for himself' around there, though I'm sure experience will say otherwise.

Now the problem of course is that I could quite easily apply to a local alliance subcorp and presuming that I'm accepted, would have at least some access to 0.0 but I don't want to do that - I've been with my current corp since I first joined Eve, its from a set of both RL and Online friends who I have known for years through various games and whilst we do expeditions into lowsec, we don't particularly have any alliance contacts in 0.0 that I know of.

Is there anyone out there who has any experience about personal affiliations with 0.0 Alliances, what seems to be the best course of action to prove the 'I'm not a spy, just wanting to look around and fit in with the crowd' without leaving a long standing group who may not share the same point of focus as you do at this time.

When I left, I was just beginning to explore my 0.0 career, learning the fun intricacies of PVP and being more active in an Alliance, and now, its all been taken away again and I've got to start from scratch learning the ropes once more.