I read this a couple of times until I realized that your befuddlement was befuddling me, because I wasn’t befuddled about this to begin with and I was getting befuddled now.
Growing up in Saskatchewan, I was surprised to learn that Amsterdam is further north than Saskatoon.
I though Ireland was east of England. Even though I know it’s not that image with Ireland in the North Sea still haunts my mind.<
Fun fact: Inverness (in eastern Scotland) is further west than Liverpool.
When I was I in Japan I did the usual thing of “what major cities are on the same meridian?” The funny thing is that there is no major US city level with Tokyo.
Atlanta is at the same latitude as Baghdad and Islamabad and well north of Lhasa
Istanbul is north of New York.
It was back in April 1983, and to this day I still figuratively call it “the longest day of my life” — the day I drove nonstop across Texas on I-10. Stopping only for gas and bathrooms.
In the days of the double nickel, the 55 MPH national speed limit.
Could you even do it at 55 MPH without speeding? I did it once in 2017, hopefully that’s the last time I’ll be doing that.
I always wondered why Rhode Island, given its landmass, was a state, given that it’s smaller than a number of counties. Well, before cars a trip across RI was a rather long trip, and the way roads have to account for so many bodies of water, and also it seems the purpose of roads in RI is to jam all traffic into downtown Providence somehow, it’s still a long trip across RI.
That is correct.
East to west it’s about 20 miles, even by foot that’s not a long trip. But time and distance are funny here in this state. People have to pack a lunch to drive to Cranston but think nothing of hopping in the car and driving to Maine for the weekend.
Anyway, we are state because we called dibs on some land no one else wanted. We’re so small we aren’t ever shown in proportion on maps of the US
And everyone wants to go to Maine for the weekend. If you accidentally find yourself on the 95 going south through New Hampshire on a Sunday afternoon, that is a mistake you will make only once.
Maybe I should have just walked across Rhode Island instead. That could be an interesting activity for the new year.
That would be something unique to do, take a walk across Rhode Island.
One thing that I didn’t realize till my early 20’s when I started hiking / backpacking was that all the mountains (particularly in NY) already were all named. I just took it as a great wilderness expanse, not realizing it was as limited as developed land.
Another thing as a child was that I imagined it would be possible (in the winter) to ski to the ski areas, if they just put lifts up. Basically travel by ski. Now in Europe that is possible, but again NY and New England areas, while some limited areas such a thing is possible, I was thinking about very long distances through areas with minor hills
And this came to mind, I grew up on Long Island, and as you can tell from the above post, our family activity was skiing, which meant some very long drives. GPS was not a thing back then, and we used paper folding maps. Usually one of the Long Island, NYC area, then switched to the ‘rest of the’ state of NY map. We had our route highlighted on both maps, where one stopped the other started, very little overlap. The amount highlighted were about the same length on paper, and my thoughts were once we got out of the smaller NYC map area we were half way there, as the lengths were about the same on paper (though the NY state map covered a much much greater area.)
When I was a small kid in Maryland, “goin’ downy oshun,” meant heading over to Ocean City which was on the Eastern Shore (mistake #1) and when you got off that scary Bay Bridge you were there, Hooray! (mistake #2 – it was another two-hour, one hundred mile drive).
I can’t imagine anyone driving 55 on I-10. I believe the official speed limit is 75 mph and most of the traffic I’ve seen is going well above that.
I once saw a car that had been pulled over by the police. I asked Texans I knew how fast you had to drive on the I-10 to get stopped for speeding.
Of course, accuracy can be defined in many ways, from country size to relative measures. I don’t care enough about it to watch his TED talk, having limited interest in dimensional mapping. I presume there are other maps than the one shown in the article.
No wonder Australia wants to built an Antarctic airport! A bad precedent.
It depends. There are some infamous speed traps on 10, and a gazillion more if you step off of it. That said, I was content to cruise at 105 in West Texas—wishing to go faster, but I thought that was prudent—and only saw one DPS car. The boy racer behind me…did not see him. At least until the trooper turned the discos on. Whatever they use to clock speed works at distances in excess of two miles, because that’s at least how far he was away across the canyon when he took off from his hiding place in the median bushes, to get the guy.
Houston—because of the EPA—is 60, and yeah, no one does that. Often because you can’t get up to 60 because of the traffic. 863 miles from Orange to Anthony. If in Orange, make time to visit the Stark Museum. Great Western art, one of the big original copies of Audubon’s Birds, and a bunch ofStueben glass.
I like driving, but I think I’d fly if I had to visit CA again.
I’m sort of confused, since if you mean north-south meridian then it’s true if somewhat obvious, but latitude-wise, parts of Las Vegas, Nashville, and Oklahoma City are level with parts of Tokyo, and Santa Fe proper overlaps.
New Mexico is far west of Oklahoma, right? Nope. They share a border.
Help out; what’s the error here?
Despite having been in and around DC for nearly a decade, I don’t get out much.
“Meridian” is longitude. Adelaide is very close to being on the same meridian as Tokyo. If you go full-circle, it looks like Serra, Brazil is about on the same meridian as well.
To get from Pittsburgh PA to Columbus OH, one goes through West Virginia.