As is bound to happen when I get cooped up too long in any one place, I got thinking on my drive to Missouri on Friday. I was planning to spend about 7 hours in the car, driving over 500 miles to see my friend. I grew up in a family who loved driving vacations and thought nothing of traveling thousands of miles in the car on annual trips. 500 miles seemed a little daunting to drive myself, but I never thought twice about doing it to visit. It's just what I do. But as I was driving I realized that 500 miles was quite a distance. I was really only driving from one state to another that shares its borders. Not that far in theory. But when I thought about it that drive in a lot of other countries would have me crossing international borders or making a much larger dent in the breadth of the country. After I got home today, I played around with Google Maps and realized a drive from London to Glasgow would have been about 100 miles and 30 mins less than my trip this Friday. London to Glasgow is a pretty big chunk of the length of the UK. Barcelona to Paris would be just 130 miles more.
It made me realize just how big the United States is. Explaining where Iowa is to someone from outside the states is always difficult as the closest big city most seem to know is Chicago, about 200 miles away from my city. How can I expect someone to know that much geography about a country they don't live in. I can't pinpoint provinces in European countries. (I can put about 95% of them on a map though!) Some days I wish there were better public transportation (like you see in Europe) but driving to and from Emily's this weekend made me grateful that the transportation is as easy as it is here.
More musings about the books I've listened to/read recently coming up later this week. Hopefully it'll be more coherent than this!
It made me realize just how big the United States is. Explaining where Iowa is to someone from outside the states is always difficult as the closest big city most seem to know is Chicago, about 200 miles away from my city. How can I expect someone to know that much geography about a country they don't live in. I can't pinpoint provinces in European countries. (I can put about 95% of them on a map though!) Some days I wish there were better public transportation (like you see in Europe) but driving to and from Emily's this weekend made me grateful that the transportation is as easy as it is here.
More musings about the books I've listened to/read recently coming up later this week. Hopefully it'll be more coherent than this!
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