100% agreed.
Three hours driving in Britain or Ireland, or in many parts of mainland Europe, are not comparable to three hours driving across open roads. Last summer I got into the mentality, and did do three hours just to visit a place, but here I can’t imagine going anywhere for that length of time and not feeling drained at the end of it.
I’m not so sure of that. My father used to work for an English pharmaceutical firm, with headquarters (IIRC) in Loughborough. He was going over to the UK on a regular basis - say up to four times a year, maybe more often. At one point he got into bringing grey market babies (Cabbage Patch Kids) back from suppliers in Nottingham (toy retailers. While the US was having riots about those ugly things, the retailers couldn’t seem to give them away in the UK. Proof positive for the relative sanity of the consumers of the two nations, if you ask me.) to be distributed to deserving families in the US. He got more than a few odd looks from many of the people in the Loughborough office that he’d be willing to go so far for something he was doing as a favor for friends. It was, after all, about 30 miles away. Many of these people had never been to Nottingham. The way he told the story these weren’t what one would consider unusual people.
Granted, this was 20 years ago, now, but I’ve had casual conversations with people in the UK via chat and have encountered similar attitudes. Not always, of course - just common enough that I don’t think it’s as unusual as you are claiming, jjimm.
AFAIK, New York is one of the only metro systems, if not the only system, in the world that runs 24/7. It can accomplish this feat only because it has four-track tunnels over a large pert of its length, allowing trains an alternate route through sections that are under maintenance. Everywhere else, huge amounts of maintenance must be packed into a few short hours between closure and opening (in Montreal, 4 to 4.5 hours depending on the day). I’m not aware of other systems that have express and local tracks, though I would invite being told.
I had been of the impression that the Boston subway was usually 24/7. Certainly it doesn’t close at 10 PM. Which drastically reduces the utility of such a system, IMNSHO. If I were an office worker, in DC, I’d expect to be eating out, after work at least once a work week. And for that day - trusting the Metro for transport would seem iffy, at least. Likewise, it eliminates the Metro as a trustworthy means of getting back from most of the cultural events that DC prides itself on.
At least run til midnight, ya twits. 
I had a similar experience in Alabama once. I’d flown out from California to meet my then husband who was at a conference in Huntsville. We planned on renting a car and driving down to New Orleans and back, which is about an eight hour drive straight through each way, although we elected to take the scenic route and stopped in the middle for the night on the way down. Everyone we spoke to in Alabama thought we were lunatics to drive because it was “so far–why don’t you fly there?” Well, in the first place you don’t see anything of the country when you’re 30K feet above it, and there’s no possibility of eating at regional restaurants or sidetripping to odd locations (yeah, I’ve been to the Dismals, what of it?) and in the second place what the hell is so bad about an eight hour drive? Heck, the ex and I once drove 400 miles, from Sacramento to Los Angeles, to attend a party, then drove back the same night. No biggie–we had work the next day!
Funny thing, though, the highways in the South were really huge and nice and smooth but there really wasn’t anyone on them unless it was right around a city. Guess them Southern types don’t like the road trip much!
Its official hours are 5:00am 'til approx. 1:00am, with most lines starting their last inbound trips around 12:30am, but in actuality you can go some places as late as 1:30am if you know the timing of the last trips. There is a 3-4 hour closing period in the wee hours.
I had a friend from high school. Her husband was a meteorologist in the Air Force before his 20-yr retirement. Their next to last posting was to Fairbanks, Alaska, from which they were transferred to Texas. When she went to get a new DL the clerk at the DMV told her she had to go through a battery of tests, plus taking a driving test. When friend asked why, the clerk told her they didn’t accept foriegn driver’s licenses. She would not believe Alaska wasn’t a foreign country, and my friend had to go over her head to the supervisor. Even that worth was said to be suspicious, but let her by. My friend suspected she believed Alaska was a foriegn country, but didn’t want to mess around with the paperwork.
I spent the first 21 years of my life living East of NYC, and the last 30+ years living in NJ, which is West of NYC (just in case anyone was wondering )
I have always had a decent sense of direction, and I’m not a complete geography dummy, but I have to say, it took me many years to get east and west unequivocally straight in my mind. OK, maybe I shouldn’t admit that 
I ran into the same kind of attitude all over the UK when I was there last summer. They were amazed that I was planning on going somewhere that was 2 or 3 hours away. The people in the Newmarket tourist office were amazed that I was planning on making it all the way to Glasgow by Wednesday. This was on Monday morning. Not only made it, spent quite a bit of time sight seeing on the way.
Nah, all dem furriners is like t’at. 
But seriously, all the people in the UK I met were surprised I was traveling so far so quickly. From my POV, it was neither far nor fast.
Friends of my mother’s, from Germany, thought that when they came over to visit us in Alberta, Canada, they could drive to Toronto for a day trip. To my nine-year-old mind, that was the funniest thing I had ever heard. For those who do not know, it’s approximately 33 hours driving time along the TransCanada.
tee hee
It does. And til 3 on Fridays and Saturdays.
And it’s much nicer than the T.
Well, to be fair, I understand it was only a few short years ago that if you were short on punts, Irish shops would happily take your pounds instead, one for one. The fact that a punt was worth about £0.80 at the time had a fair bit to do with it. So :rolleyes: back atcha, friend.
fetus, Merhouse, the PCH is this long two-lane road that runs due north and south pretty much the length of the West Coast. There really are not a lot of intersections, development, etc. You pretty much get on it and head one way or another.
I will take your word for it, but I admit I am unable to imagine how anyone who is staring directly at the Pacific Ocean from the California shoreline would have to think more than a second or so to figure out which way is north.
That’s not much of an accomplishment.
My husband got in a fight when he presented his Guam driver’s license – which he had made a special trip on our return from Japan to renew so he’d not have to retest once we arrived in Georgia, and which had “GUAM USA” written atop it in large letters – at the local license bureau, and the woman insisted a Guam license wasn’t a valid US license. He finally persuaded her to call her main office in Atlanta which confirmed her geographical idiocy.
This wouldn’t have been so bad except this was in a town (Augusta) with a large military base, and you would expect that they would be used to seeing driver’s licenses from just about everywhere.
That’s also not much of an accomplishment.
I do know what it is, as I practically live on it. Alls I’m saying is in a disoriented state (such as the shattering revelation that you’re not facing east when you’re looking at the ocean–apparently a big deal, although I wouldn’t have been old enough at the time of the move to know firsthand) things look more confusing than they are. Ever been to boot camp? On my first night, I couldn’t find a light switch and I asked my female TI–calling her “sir” three times in the process–where it was, even though it was in plain sight. Did I know she was a “ma’am”? Yes. Could I have logically found that light switch? Yes. But it’s easy to get lost in the moment.
Not that driving down the PCH is anywhere near as stressful as getting screamed at by TIs, but you get the idea.
Sometimes the powers that be can lead to confusion. An example is the way that two airports near here were renamed. The first one lies almost equidistant between the three cities of Nottingham , Leicester and Derby . For years the place was known as East Midlands Airport. This was sensible name because the East Midlands is a recognised region of England. A couple of years ago the airport’s owners changed the name to Nottingham East Midlands. This is rather strange as the place is actually located in Leicestershire and has a Derby post-code and dialling code. Adding to the confusion is the existence of another smaller airfield called Nottingham Airport. When you are driving in the area you actually see road signs saying “Nottingham Airport” but they are for the small airfield. The signs for the larger airport still say “East Midlands”. This is also the name still used on departure boards at airports all over Europe.
The other name confusion is for an airport that opened last year and is located near Doncaster. For some strange reason they decided to call it* Robin Hood Doncaster Sheffield* , even though it is located in Yorkshire instead of Nottinghamshire. Again most departure-boards and timetables just call it Doncaster
Coastlines can do all sorts of wonky things on a local scale. For example, shortly after moving to California from the East Coast, I went to the Santa Cruz Wharf one evening. I did a double-take when I noticed the full moon rising over the water. There’s an indentation in the coastline, so the Santa Cruz Wharf actually points southeast, out into the water. There’s also the fact that part of the California coastline, from LA to Santa Barbara, actually faces south, not west.
I get it. I really do. The point is if you are on the PCH you are either going north or south. Those are your only choices. If you want to get to L.A. and you are looking at the ocean then head left, regardless whether that is due south or not. If you have been driving for miles in the daytime with the ocean consistently on your right, you are headed south. This is not walking onto some pier, at night, in an urban setting. This is just you, the cliffs, and the sea. As I told fetus, I will have to take your word for it that such a condition would be confusing for more than a second or two.
These folks were not interested in how to find the South Pole. They wanted to know, essentially, if they were headed to Los Angeles, or Oregon.