How in the world can Arizona be in the Mountain Time Zone? It is a South Western state, for goodness sake.
did you mean latitude?
In Maine going “Down East” means your going up the coastline, but it is really a North East direction.
I live in Canada and when I visit the West Coast I look across the ocean and say, “Somewhere over there is Japan.” Of course, I should turn 90 degrees to the right and look along the coastline and say, “Somewhere up there is Japan.”
Also, New York City is less than 800 miles from the natural range of the polar bear. If you drive to Syracuse you are already a quarter of the way there.
The sun has riz,
The sun has set,
And here we is
In Texas yet.
Mine main two issues have already been mentioned:
London is closer to Greece; Toronto is closer to the Bahamas, than Australia is to New Zealand.
And the one about the East Coast of the US dropping away westward as you follow it south, leading to counter-intuitive facts such as the one that Miami actually lies slightly to the west of Pittsburgh.
The East Coast of the United states is in the same time zone as the West Coast of South America.
A subcategory of this problem is cities that can be confusing because their street maps are often oriented in atypical ways. For example, maps of Buenos Aires are often laid out with West at the top.
All this talk about distance from N. America places to Africa got me measuring. It is shorter from St. John’s to Safi than it is from New York to San Francisco.
I always have to think a bit to realize there are islands just a little ways off the east coast of Florida. There weren’t any on the maps that formed my memory - still usually aren’t any.
Purely a local image but there’s the sense in Rochester that Toronto is north across Lake Ontario. In reality if you were standing on the shore of Lake Ontario in Rochester facing north you could stick your left arm straight out and you’d be pointing towards Toronto.
I always imagined Venice to be on the western part of Italy, but it is on the east near the Adriatic coast, not very from Austria and Slovenia.
Courtesy of The Amazing Race:
I had no idea you could drive from Denmark to Sweden. I always pictured Denmark (roughly) equidistant between England and Norway/Sweden, with waterways on both sides.
In San Diego I navigated by knowing the Pacific is always to the west.
I still have trouble, here in New Jersey, because I can’t get it in my head that the ocean is to the east. It just seems . . . wrong.
Was coming here to say something like this. I live on the Niagara Peninsula, and a significant portion of the US is more northerly than here.
Caused a humorous discussion between a relative and an Michigander who were both vacationing in the Dominican Rep.
My relative basically said “whoo, brr, northern Michigan. Sure gets cold up there. (condescending smirk)” To which the Michigander replied (paraphrasing) “haha, dumb Canadian.”
It was all in good spirits, but the conversation ended with the Michigander still believing there was no possible way my relative lived more southerly than him.
I might be missing some quirk of geography, but from what I can tell, Japan is west by south from Canada’s west coast. Basically perpendicular to the averaged coastline direction when viewed from the macro.
Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Indeed, he should have turned to his left and said, “Somewhere down there is Japan.” It’s about straight west from the US West Coast.
I think he/she is referring to the Great Circle Route, whereby Vancouver to Tokyo follows a line approximately along the Aleutian Islands.
I wouldn’t have used the phrase “of course” for this…but if you look at a globe, it really is a more reasonable way of conceiving a straight line. It’s the due-west route that suddenly looks like an unnecessary detour.