These discussions in a poll thread are always interesting. Sometimes, I find the reason for a vote to be more important than the vote itself.
When a friend asked me some time ago how many states I had been in, I listed off the states I stayed in for a while, either for work, vacation, or being a resident of. Came to about ten. But then they said I should count the states I had been in, even if just driving thru to get to those other ten. Came to about 35, iirc. But, as I knew from other’s view of Texas by means of I-10 vs how I knew the state, I figured I probably hadn’t really seen anyplace from having only interstate interaction.
It pleases me that some are choosing the “wanker” option.
Agreed (almost). I count it if I leave the airport via ground transportation to depart from another airport. Even if I don’t interact with the city in any other way. I figure the bus driver counts.
Even though I know O’Hare like my own house, I’ve never “been” to Chicago. However I have “been” to New York (although I’m only qualified to comment on their buses).
(1) I have been to South Korea and to Japan, having spent a few hours at Seoul Incheon and at Osaka airports. This means that I interacted with the local culture to a certain extent.
(2) I have been to France, having taken a train from Basel to Dunkerque through eastern France, only setting foot in Dunkerque to take the ferry to England.
(3) I have been to Egypt, Aden (now Yemen) and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Travelling there on a ship, and spending a few hours on shore, definitely counts. (And Egypt – i.e., Port Said and Suez – was the first really foreign country that I can remember going to, at the age of nine.)
(4) I have been to Wisconsin: driving north from Chicago to stop at the Welcome Center on the Interstate, then driving back south, has to count
(5) I have not been to Hawaii, even though I was in a plane that made an unscheduled stop at Honolulu. It was the middle of the night, I didn’t leave the plane, and I had trouble seeing anything of the airport.
(6) I have not been to the State of Delaware. Going through by bus or by train, without stepping outside, does not count.
(7) I have not been to Alaska, Oregon, New Caledonia or Russia. Just flying over does not count.
(8) I have not been to North Korea. My plane from Chicago O’Hare to Seoul Incheon carefully avoided flying of the Democratic Peoples Republic, even though it would have been the shortest route, so there is no way that I claim that great honour.
Airports are kind of iffy. I went through Midway or O’Hare a dozen times before I could say I was ever actually in Chicago. On the other hand, I do count a layover while changing planes in Reykjavik once as me being in Iceland.
Flyovers, no. By that criteria, I could say I’d “been to” Greenland because I once looked out of a plane window and saw some land way down below on a flight to the UK. Uh-uh.
I guess Delaware and Wyoming are the only states that I’ve done no more than drive through to get somewhere else. My feet have interacted with all the others. Of course, Delaware is pretty small up at the top where the interstate goes through. Blink and you miss it.
Once we planned to just drive west right through Nevada, too, except that we tried to take a short cut across the Black Rock Desert, out beyond Winnemucca. We went through a little town whose sign read “Where the pavement ends and the West begins.” We set out across the desert and sure enough, the road kept dwindling down to a dirt road which finally became lost in the rocky desert surface. We kept going (the ground was really flat and we just had to steer around the rocks) and it took an extra couple hours or so before we picked up a dirt trace which led to a backroad, which eventually led to a state route that got us to California. So yeah, I’ve been in Nevada.
Oops. I meant to click the airport one, too. Though that one is a bit shakier than the rest–you at least have to have looked out from the airport or done something else to actually get a sense of the place. That, for example, is why driving through in a car counts. (I also counted born there and feet on the ground.)
Now, if we were just meaning “really been there”, only the top one would count, and not entirely if all you did was get out to get out or go to the bathroom. And even then, it won’t count if the location is specially known for something and you didn’t do it–you know, like see the arch in Saint Louis.
