According to Yahoo Maps, I live 147 miles from Rehoboth Beach, 171 miles from Ocean City, and 215 miles from Virginia Beach. Not as close to a beach as I’d like, but it could be worse!
I’m mildly amused by the fact that I live in Virginia yet the Delaware beach is closer than the Maryland beach, and the Virginia beach is the farthest away. 
Exactly 5.0 miles to the beach, although the shore is closer. To get to the beach, you cross a causeway. I love having it so close by.
I don’t know the exact mileage but it would take me about 3.5 hours to drive to the Atlantic coast. Definitely easily within a day trip, and even more easily within a weekend trip.
My aunts want me to move to Colorado and that’s all I keep thinking - “So far from the coast?” There is no logical reason to feel like this and yet, and yet.
Probably about 15 minutes from one as the car flies, 3,000 miles from the other as the oriole flies. Used to be the roughly the other way around, back when I lived in the land of the oriole.
FWIW, Chicago would be “on the water” enough for me to live in.
Yes, the Pacific is to the east of me, and to get to the Atlantic I drive northwest. Part of the Atlantic is due west of me.
It takes my staring at a map of the Canal Zone and keeping my sense of direction primed for this set of facts to sink in. One of those counter-intuitive things that just doesn’t “make sense.”
About two miles from the Bay, about 30 miles from the Pacific Ocean.
I live 35 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico in Vernon, FL, and work about 2 miles from it.
Well, if we’re doing satellite views, here you go! The strip on the left is all beach – some of the prettiest in the nation, and certainly the nicest in Florida (but I admit I may be biased). The land on the right filters down into the bay as a mangrove estuary, which I also love. I may be alone in that on the board though. I don’t know many non-Floridians who would consider an estuary pretty.
Here’s the bay (the water on the right) on my commute home last week: Looking northwest from I-275 towards home. No matter where I go outside the county, this is almost always the view that welcomes me back. Feels like home to me.
About three and half long blocks from the Hudson River.
Get in the
A little over 50 miles.
Did the manatee get you?
Ditto.
And thanks levdrakon, Johnny L.A., and Bambi Hassenpfeffer. I’ll be sure to stop by the next time I’m in your respective neighborhoods. 
You’re welcome to go to the Hess station on that corner whenever you want. E-mail me first and I’ll meet you You don’t think I’d give you my actual address, do you?
About as far as possible from both sides.
Twenty minutes to drive to the Pacfic Ocean, less than twenty minutes to walk to San Francisco Bay.
I measure about 194 miles to the Chesapeake Bay and 270 miles to Rehobeth Beach. That’s not our beach, though - we drive 10 hours to get to our beach.
Awesome! Is there any way you can post pictures? I’m fascinated by the Caspian Sea, but couldn’t find good pictures anywhere last I looked. (Though that was years ago, before Wikipedia, so maybe I can find some now.)
You may recall that I was the one encouraged you to open the thread about oil rigs, though I think I was still javaman in those days.
I live 3.22 miles from the beach in Santa Monica, as Mapquest calculates it.
As I begin this post, I count 66 unique responses, ranging from ~1500 miles to jwithin spitting distance. Based on these numbers, we can deduce the following about Doper living:
The **median **distance from the sea is 144.8 miles.
However, this figure is skewed by a handful of people who (mostly) live in Middle America.
The **mean **distance from the sea is only 15 miles, and 71% (47 of 66) live within 50 miles of a coastline.
Pretty much in line with worldwide population figures if I recall correctly.
Thanks very much for doing the math, Suburban Plankton. I had intended to do a similar analysis myself, and you have saved me the effort. Nice job.
