As usual when I’m away from home, particularly in Europe, I’m…. Uh…. At the rate my Americanness and libertarianism are intensifying, I won’t need a plane to fly back. I’ll call an eagle to me through utter, intensity of my love for the Constitution, and it will then fly me home.
I’ve been trying to be good and behave, because we’re guests, but the country makes me itch inside my skin, and the level of governmental interference in every day life is a thing we not only don’t imagine but can’t imagine.
It’s stupid little things, like I found out that they have three trash collections a week, and have to separate in more bags than I can keep in my head at any one day. Then there is the fact that their bottle caps have a tether to the bottle so it doesn’t get discarded separately and maybe polute the oceans.
And I keep getting unreasonably angry, then telling myself I can endure it for a few days, but if it were longer, there would be a revolution.
This morning, when my poor husband got up for breakfast, he was treated to a “I don’t stop to breathe” rant on the subject of “these people spend so much time obeying the pointless commands of their government that they’re never ever, in the eve of ever be productive or invent anything or– Which is why our country is the engine of the world. Because by 8 o’clock in the morning local time, I had just about enough and a little beyond.
And as I hear well intentioned things about how America should be run — and let me point out that their news here make our news sound like they’re rabid right wing. Their news have my parents — my parents — convinced that Biden is a nice man, and a very smart one, who just recently became slightly impaired — and my blood pressure climbs to the level that I expect a little whistle to come up atop my head and whistle, Merry Melodies style. — and I start fuming.
It wasn’t till a few hours in that it occurred to me: Forgive them, George (Washington). Not only don’t they know what they do, they have absolutely no idea who and what we are.
That thing when my parents call me because there’s a fire in California? They imagined, when we lived in Colorado, that we might go for a nice Sunday drive, of an afternoon, and accidentally stray into California. If there’s a shooting in Pennsylvania they ask if we might accidentally be near it, perhaps because we took a wrong turn on our way to the grocery store.
They don’t at all understand not just American geography, but the scope and SIZE of our country. And they’re exactly the same for the size of our economy. The variety of law in our states. The amazing scope of our economy.
When they say something like “We don’t understand why a country the size of yours can’t avoid school shootings” what they’re actually saying is “We don’t understand you’re not half a dozen school children who can be scolded into better behavior.”
Part of the problem with this is that they don’t understand their post WWII little socialist dream was a thing facilitated and ultimately paid for by the US. Without our creating the future, improving continuously on processes to do everything, without us creating the internet and making this amazing transmission of data across countries possible, without us buying and selling and growing, and creating untold wealth, their relative impoverishment due to their hyper controlled economies would have become so dire they’d have starved or revolted already.
And they don’t understand if they could drag us down into their socialist dream of the state looking after you in all circumstances and you not being permitted to fart unless you have a fart permit and then only on alternate Wednesdays, it wouldn’t be paradise.
They would have killed the goose who lays the golden eggs, and things would get dire very rapidly.
Forgive them, George, they know not what they do. And let them never find out, because we remain free and obstreperous enough we’ll never sink to their level.
Now excuse me, I need to go out to the terrace and invoke Ayn Rand’s name of power, and call out in the name of the George, for the eagle of freedom to come and fly me home. I’ve been here 48 hours. How much longer am I supposed to endure?
Sure, I like seeing my parents and spending time with them, but you see, I have this medical condition. I am allergic to unwitting, willing serfdom. And I’m about at my limit.
According To Hoyt 
My brother lives in Germany and we had a brief conversation illustrating the size of the US. I asked him what country he would be in if he drove to the east for 5 hours.
He said, “Either Austria or the Czech Republic.”
“How about if you drove south for five hours?”
“That’s easier. I’d be in Italy.”
“And if you drove west?”
“I would be in France.”
His jaw dropped when I told him that in all of those cases, I would still be in Texas.
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Separating recyclables makes at least some sense. When there was both incineration and dumps, er, landfills, separating burnables from non-burnable trash made sense. But multiple TRASH separation?! Whiskey. Tango. Photon-torpedo?
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For the Flyover County dumps, we have some trash and recyclable separation.
You pay to dump:
Demolition: Dry, almost clean trash.
Garbage: Anything not terribly clean. Includes stuff furniture/mattresses, tin cans & plastics.
Big metal pieces: paid as trash, picked up by the metal recyclers in Flyover Falls. Appliances need to be de-motored and refrigerant removed. The latter doesn’t bet done the way TPTB envision it.
Yard waste: (not everybody wants to/is able to burn theirs. We build piles until fire season is over.)
Recycleable stuff:
Cardboard: Corrugated only, no shiny coverings.
Electronics, specifically excluding microwaves.
Mixed paper got excluded early, since a lot of dirty stuff was getting in the mix. Some SOBs were recycling used pizza boxes to avoid paying the dump fees.
We separate our stuff for our convenience. Cans get smashed, paper goes to burn buckets in the barn. Usually do a dump run every 4-5 weeks, though with the latest rate raise ($17 for 3 cans), I might strive for 6. (I do not miss San Jose and the then $30/month garbage fee.)
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Glass gets recycled, too. Don’t know if there’s a market for it; Silicon Valley couldn’t find buyers for it in the late 1990s.
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Rumor has it the only thing for which the current “recycling” contractors can actually find a market that pays enough to justify the bother is paper. They’ve been getting more and more strident about not letting anything touch the paper (no pizza boxes), along with fewer and fewer plastic things allowed, in their increasingly frequent POLST card nagging notices.
And the word is the most pressing issue in the dumps is…paper. Since they can’t let enough water get in to let it decompose because that would emit too much methane from all the other stuff decomposing, causing a safety hazard, paper and cardboard lasts bloody forever taking up real volume. No burning out here, so dumps are it, and paper and Amazon boxes are the issue.
I’ve continued to put paper and cardboard in the bin, but all the plastic goes in the garbage. If it ever achieves an actual value, someone will mine the dumps for it.
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POLST card then, spellchecker? Post card would seem the easier guess for whatever I mistyped…
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Oh, POLST card (https://polst.org/) has its charms, too.
Recycling is very sick, mark it DNR.
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Gee, one could TAP the gas and use it…. but that’s too much sense or too much work. Or yes.
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One local retired landfill, now under a golf course and music venue, does that, with electrical generation on site. Concertgoers used to amuse themselves by lighting the seeping gas out in the lawn seating, but I thing the coven pipes suck it all away now.
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CoGen pipes. (Coven pipes are a different thing…)
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Who run Bartertown?
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Who run Bartertown?
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Orangeman, hopefully…..
Make Bartertown Great Again!
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Our trash situation is as follows:
Recyclable:
Regular trash goes in a pay-by-the-bag.
All compostable bio-waste goes in our backyard compost pile (and yes, I don’t turn it frequently enough.)
All burnable materials other than the previously mentioned plain cardboard go in the fireplace, and the ash gets dumped into the ash pit. That includes pizza boxes, coated cardboard, etc. Since I clean the fireplace out each time before use, regular wood ash goes on the garden areas.
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Same for composting (have a rotary bin, plus a 16 x 16′ corner of the garden for a compost pile). Burnable paper (we toss contaminated, don’t generate much) goes in the barn’s wood heater, with ashes on on idle burn pile.
I was told that steel cans had been/still are? used in gold processing. The gold ore was treated with aqua regia (a mix of hydrochloric and nitric acid), and the dissolved liquid was fed into a pile of tin cans. I suspect the hydrochloric attacks the iron and the gold precipitates out. Should then be fairly easy to separate the tin can remnants from the gold. I don’t know if any gold processing is done in the US, and China stopped taking such some years ago.
Motor oil is recyclable at our transfer station. Still have to deal with tractor anti-freeze. That stuff has been a problem, though I suspect the concentrate is burnable. They get testy when antifreeze gets in the recycled oil tank.
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…and what little glass goes in the recycle bins too, though most glass bottles get scavenged out to be turned in for the deposits by the unhoused entrepreneur community.
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Oh, and Al cans of course, same scavenging. Aluminum and glass, and maybe paper, are really the only economically practical ones from an energy standpoint AFAIK.
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Oregon and Michigan charge a $0.10 deposit for applicable containers. Homeless guys scouring the streets, roads, and the odd trash bin for deposit-worthy items has long been a thing around here. (As a kids in Michigan, we’d collect bottles for the deposit money. As memory serves, deposit back in the ’50s (yikes! I’m getting old) was $0.02 for a basic bottle). Might have had similar amounts in other nearby states, with larger amounts for the larger bottles.
The grocery stores used to have automated recycling operations, but dropped theirs in favor of a big one nearby. I tried it, but it was way too popular for the small quantity I had. The store in $TINY_TOWN takes 50 per day per person, and that’s maybe a year’s worth for me.
Restrictions are slightly odd. 2 liter soda bottles, deposit. 64 ounce juice bottles (like cranberry juice from Kroger), no deposit. Glass bottles for beverages, yes, tamari bottles, no. Nobody wants sriracha bottles. :)
Mixed paper was the first to get dropped due to contamination issues, followed by plastic containers. “If there’s no neck, don’t recycle it.” We separate such along with the steel cans. Can smash the cans, and stack the plastic. My garbage cans tend to be heavy.
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I use the return bottle system. Locally stores can limit 24 on single return. I just wait until I have 6 bags full. We have central and store return options. Fred’s on Division is very popular for this. I’ve been told there is a daily pickup, except for Sunday. They need it. Even at that I’ve had to get store employee help because “too full” to use the drop and go method (usually because people don’t dry to get bags toward the back, which means there is room, just needs reorganization). With the +20% store coupon money retrieval option, it pays. Cost? $0.10/bag (used to pay per bag processing fee too, but that got dropped at some point).
Recycling. We have “co-mingle” recycling for paper, cardboard, cans, and some plastic. Glass is separate recycling. Let’s face it the green recycle can contents go into regular garbage once it gets dumped. Glass? IDK. Rumor, articles read a while ago, has glass is being ground and then mixed in with road bed foundation materials (not the top layer).
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I much prefer California’s aluminum recycling by weight. We have a can smasher and I can run 80-100 pounds in at a time for decent money.
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Our county fire department recycles aluminum cans to help fund local burn units. I take a sackfull by every now and then.
Frankly, all other recycling is nonsense.
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Did a zero get lost? We’re limited to 240.
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Do they miss cans on the count? Could be. I’m not counting what goes into the bags. There is a monthly limit on how many bags can be turned in (enforced? Not even close, so have no idea.) I am pretty consistent on how I load the bags. There is some variation on plastic fizzy water bottles (less thin than most water bottles), cans, and mom’s beer glass bottles. But I figure $9.50 – $11/bag on average return. So $56 – $66 before the 20% for 6 bags “seems” correct. Been averaging > $66.
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I go by count. Now that I’m brown-bagging on market days, I’ll go through a liter of fizzy water (I like the Kroger stuff, and it’s cheaper than brand names) a week. Will get the odd soda/Gatorade, so it takes a while to get to my 50 limit. I’ll do it more frequently if I get annoyed by the mess(es–lots ‘o projects) in the shop/barn.
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I’ll have to check the Kroger brands for flavors, and additives (quit diet soda because of the salt content, now I can taste salt in soda … usually this is, um … no thanks). Been getting the Ice™️brand, no sugar/salt (5 cal). But limited on what flavoring I either like or can tolerate. Ex: Like Blackberry Lemonade, but barely can tolerate it as it “tastes” too sweet (even though the sucrose % is exactly the same). Or Lemonade, and some of the Lemonade+, which upsets the stomach. Usually get Kiwi Strawberry. Cost $0.80 – $1.20 (regular) + $0.10 deposit.
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I had an empty handy: Kroger “Sparkling Water Beverage” In this case Black Cherry
Calories, 0
Sodium 30mg (for one liter)
Looking at the ingredient list, there are three different sweeteners. Sucralose, Neotame, and acesulfame potassium. It doesn’t come across as “sweet” to me*, but YMMV.
It’s artificial as hell, but I don’t always like plain water for lunch.
((*)) Enough citric and fruit acid to counteract the sweet for my taste buds. They’re Philistines. :)
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Ice™️“Carbonated Water, Natural Flavors, Citric Acid, Lemon Juice Concentrate,
Potassium Benzoate (To Ensure Freshness), Ester Gum, Gum Arabic,
Sucralose, Green Tea Extract, Calcium Disodium EDTA (To Protect Flavor),
Beta Carotene (For Color), Niacinamide (Vitamin B3), Retinol (Vitamin
A), Calcium Pantothenate (Vitamin B5), Cholecalciferol (Vitamin D3),
Biotin, Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12), Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin
B6)”
Calories 5
% Daily value*
Total Fat 0g 0%
Sodium 0mg 0%
Total Carbohydrate 0g 0%
Protein 0g
Biotin 4.5mcg 15%
Niacin 2.4mg 15%
Vitamin A 135mcg 15%
Vitamin D 3mcg 15%
“Sucralose” is the only ingredient worried about. < 1% which by FDA is considered 0%.
My main criteria is 0% sodium.
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Oh. The other criteria is Ice™️doesn’t spike and crash the BS. Nor does it just crash the BS, which a lot of artificial sugar low fat products do. I swear my system takes artificial sugars and goes “bad, bad, bad, must purge BS from system!” But there is nothing to purge.
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There’s only so much reflective road paint a country needs…
But maybe the solution there would be for someone to make it fashionable to make the opaque walls of buildings reflective…
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There was a brief fad for concrete counter tops with recycled glass chips (preferably multiple colors). Didn’t last.
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There’s some groups that collects glass, breaks it into small pieces and uses it in wetlands to help erosion or some sort of thing.
https://glasshalffull.co
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Recycled glass is also useful in making glass because it lowers the needed temperature.
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Glass sorted by color can be recycled. There is no significant market for mixed glass.
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Mixed glass often costs more to process than just plain sand.
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Trash service in our Georgia county (comfortably GOP-red-not-USSR-red, with Green sprinkles) instructs us to separate cardboard boxes (folded flat) from the rest of the trash, but then it comes ’round Fridays and they pitch it all and the cat-litter and kitchen scraps in the back of one and the same truck.
On the other hand, it lets us throw more trash out than the bin itself holds, week after week.
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Apparently cardboard makes good weed cloth substitution barrier. Bonus it eventually breaks down, then just add another layer, years later, put bark dust over. I haven’t tried it. Neighbor does. Don’t see a big difference in weed shortage but then she’s putting it under gardening dirt. Her yard is not a good place to judge effectiveness of the process.
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Did that to our front yard.worked great, even on Bermuda grass except in one spot near an edge. Mulched with what beloved spouse got free by asking a tree trimming grindemup truck.
Unfortunately that means I can now only metaphorically yell “get off my lawn”.
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Worked back in Washington. Not as much use in the new place, so I’m having to suppress my urge to hoard boxes.
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Internal dialog, on repeat: ”Oooh, this is a nice cardboard box.” “No! No more boxes!” “But…” “No!!”
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Oh, used cat litter goes to building a clay barrier along the causeway. Cat turds go in the ash pit.
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Tucson went to biweekly recycling pickup about a year or so ago. Our bin fills up in one week – so half of ours ends up in the regular garbage can. My descendants may appreciate that if they turn out to be miners. After seeing the Penn & Teller show on it several years ago, I feel no guilt.
But I am glad they stopped burning everywhere. I don’t know how my best friend in middle school could stand it living less than a half mile from the city dump.
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That happens here in some locales in California. The categories are Trash, Recycling, and Compost. The latter is supposed to include both lawn and garden clippings, and food that can’t go down the garbage disposal.
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We have this in Lane County, well at least western half. Yard Debris biweekly pickup, Recycling, Garbage, both weekly. Recycling weekly pickup required comes under “depends”; usually biweekly or even triweekly, would work. Even garbage usually can go biweekly, and we have the smallest available weekly pickup can. But none can go to monthly only.
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In Eugene garbage can go monthly. It’s a pain because some months have four weeks and some have five.
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I know. Mom has monthly garbage (with Apex). They just swapped out allowing her to use the red box for recycle to the gray with green lid can. But there is only one of her living there. There are 3 of us (also Eugene). (Specifically north Eugene. Mom is just off Irving. We’re between Irving and Irvington. We can see Irving Elem from the house.)
Yard debris is usually full except winter (except second rose cuttings). Soon will be using the yard can to move leaves from the backyard to the street. Can will also be packed with leaves. Before the Giant Sequoias came out, the needles went to the street too.
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We have all three, with yard waste picked up from piles of regulated dimensions in the street by a big scoop vehicle that the little kids all get up early to watch.
That yard waste got one composting location up in the hills in trouble when they ignored their compost pile and it went sour, making much stinkiness for local well-to-do homeowners to enjoy. Now they pay someone to monitor it more closely to ensure it cooks properly.
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(riffing off David Burge)
It’s also a practical example of value being relative. Recycling glass (“cullet”) started the day after they first started making glass. Various other sorts of recycling have a long and honorable history as well. (Heck, racetracks are even able to sell horse… waste, eg to mushroom growers.)
But attempts to arbitrarily decree “This stuff has value as a recyclable!” are going to fail for reasons that are obvious to those of us with a clue about economics.
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There’s a local vineyard that also does horse boarding, or maybe it’s really a horse boarding operation that does some grapes too. In any case they have very, very large composting piles of what they get out of the stables, several long mounds fifteen feet tall, twenty or so wide, and a hundred or so feet long. Anyone is free to go take some of the result for personal use, though they frown on commercial operators taking advantage of their generosity.
It is important, however, to figure out which end is the “new” end and which is the “old” _before_ you start loading up your containers…
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Welcome to San Francisco.
Meanwhile in Wyoming, “Uh… Why are you washing the trash?”
Big country.
If the blue-hivers could keep their mittens off the rest of us, I would not begrudge them their wierd rituals.
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Meanwhile in Wyoming, “Uh… Why are you washing the trash?”
“So that it doesn’t attract bugs” *throws the rinsed can in the garbage.*
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
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Youve gotta keep em seperated….
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(Glances at map of Spain) I can see how your folks might get the impression that Berkley is just a morning’s jog from boulder. In their world, everything is, pretty much. I have been amazed and amused for many a long year, at how enclosed the bubble is that encompasses most lives. The most self-absorbed New Yorker in their Manhattan high-scraper can’t see past the haze of the other side of the river. To them, The world outside simply is a place-name on a map. It isn’t real.
I did always wonder when I was young why Spain didn’t conquer Portugal centuries ago though. I think there be mountains? IDK, I didn’t have topographical maps as a kid, but did know enough to understand that, when land equaled wealth the kings, nobles and other robbers risked everything to get it under their control.
Oops, gotta go, I’ve used up my quota of commas for the morning.
Cheers!
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Spain did, and then they had a divorce. Several times, IIRC.
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Our hostess has mentioned the time that the Portuguese threw the ruler imposed on them by Barcelona out of a window.
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I wonder if that’s why so many world leaders have offices on the ground floor?
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Does it still count as defenestration if it’s a first floor window? I should think that velocity would count for something.
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Defenestration out a first floor window is considered normal brawling.
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I have been perusing posts on youtubey made by people from other countries who come to america and note the differences. One they all remark upon is when relatives come to visit and want to see The statue of Liberty, The Grand Canyon and Disney World, and other sights all in one weekend and can’t understand why it’s impossible. Nor do they understand that it takes hours to get from one place to another.
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British family in Orlando: “We’re going to drive to Miami for lunch.”
Me: “It’s noon. If you leave right now, rent a car, and drive straight through, you can eat dinner in Miami. Plan on staying the night.”
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I had one occasion to leave Salt Lake City far too early in the morning (worst hotel bed in existence), arriving at Omaha around 10PM. Once in a lifetime experience, thank God. (Should have stopped at Lincoln, or Grand Island, or North Platte, or even Cheyenne). Later trips, Salt Lake City to Sidney, Nebraska were common. Post-checkin trips to the Mother* of all Cabela’s included.
((*)) Wiki says not the first, but Sidney’s the HQ, and the store is huuuuge.
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With the speed some cars pass me on the Florida TurnPike, I think they’re still trying that feat.
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We drove from Disney World to Cape Canaveral. Took about 3 hours going and coming back. Not the distance, 57 miles is nothing for us. Dang toll booths, which surprised the heck out of us westerners (we had cash and change, ’90s). Yes, there are toll roads, into the national parks, but only when entry booths are staffed. If you enter before booths are open, no toll. Most, not all, do not check to see if paid when you leave if the booths are open (Yosemite is one that does check.) We have the *lifetime senor pass so no toll either way.
(* Hubby does anyway, I’ll get mine when I don’t have his. Which happens if he is not on the trip. In turn, means he has died. Never is fine with me.)
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We did that Orlando to the Space Coast one too, about 15 years ago – the rental had one of the RF transponders in it to transact with the toll road, so the tolls added onto our bill when we returned the vehicle.
We intended to do it again last time we were there right before the lockdowns hit (like, the week before) but ended up not going, but according to what I read I believe they now do it by plate readers or similar, which works out the same, billing through eventually.
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“What you’d asking to do is drive from Gibraltar to Warsaw, or Helsinki, or St Petersburg in the same day”
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“Lost in the Pond” on the tube of you is a very good show. He’s pretty good at snark – for both sides of “the pond.”
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Yeah, I thought of him myself.
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When my elder sisters were in high school they would host German exchange students for a few weeks during the school year. Something that always seemed to come up year after year was the the Germans mocked us USAians for “not knowing our own country” due to not having visited every state by age 15.
1 of my sisters and 1 of the students really hit it off and kept in touch (via letter… this was in the dark ages pre-internet, donchaknow?), and she came back for a summer visit a few years later. My eldest sister got married during that time to a guy from Utah, so the wedding and reception were in Chicago, but then we all piled into the car and drove to Utah for a 2nd reception for all his friends and family as well.
Astrid was with us and was beside herself at the fact that we’d driven 1500 miles (over 2300km), only been in 5 states that was mostly farm fields the entire way, there’d been no border controls — just “wave at the sign” (this was pre-Schengen/EU) — and that we never got within 800 miles (1400km) of a coast. She finally began to “get it” and actually apologized to us all for having teased us in the prior years about “not knowing our country.” She simply hadn’t realized just how huge it was (and is).
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And this where a GLOBE is useful. And a bit of string. “Alright, we are here. Where you want to go is…. here.” -cut string- -Put string over Europe- “Do you see the issue, yet?”
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Fun exercise—(that I haven’t, tbh, done). Measure the coast line on, say, a globe (with string or just pencil tics on paper); then use a large-scale map; then a smaller scale map. The length of coast-line keeps going up. For example, measure the coast of Maine on a globe with a string. Then use a map of New England; then use a map of Maine. Even ignoring the islands that you gain from one map to another, it is said that the length of coast line goes up.
I forgot where I read that.
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Sounds like fractals in action.
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It is fractals in action. The question of how closely you hug the shore, where you cut across the mouth of the river, whether you deem a bay to be ocean or part of the land. . . .
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A globe shows it accurately, but check this website:
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/maps-distort-how-we-see-the-world
A real eye-opener, especially comparisons regarding Africa.
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Very interesting. And less annoying than the, “true importance of countries,” map that turns up in relatively liberal churches, which stretch South America and Africa all out of shape while shrinking Europe and America to show the former’s “cultural importance.”
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Showing actual size relationships shouldn’t be a vehicle for any agenda; it simply doesn’t matter. For example, the size of Great Britain relative to Spain and France, or India, had zero to do with the relative global influence of each at various times.
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String on a global, and compared to a flat map, is a great way to demonstrate great circle routes to kids.
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Heh, I have an Aunt and Uncle who one day, mostly out of boredom, decided to drive from L.A. County to Tijuana for tacos. Said Uncle is currently stationed in Germany and when he tells people there this story, and they are shocked when he says it took 6 hours round trip.
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We’ve driven from Eugene to San Diego (hubby regularly did this drive from Corvallis) straight through three times. Fourth time, actually Eugene to LA, I said “Oh, H*** No! Not with a 4 year old!” We flew. Hubby drove. I got sick. Second time we went we took the dog. Going through LA and San Diego proper, she was growling at the cars too close on the freeways (timing sucked). Hubby still does these type of drives during their winter golf trips. But they are going from golf coarse to golf coarse on the way. First day, get vehicles loaded with 3 or 4 golfers, drive to hotel, dinner, breakfast, golf, drive to next hotel. Repeat 4 or 5 times. Those who do not go early, fly to the final destination. Some who did not fly down, fly home. Been a couple of times hubby drove home on his own. This last time I few to Phoenix, he picked me up from the airport and we took 4 days to come home. I would have been happy to take another day, but once he hit the Oregon border … To be fair, he’d been gone from home for 18 days. Plus our first trip in 6 years without Pepper, who medical alerts on me. A huge reminder on the difference she makes. (She tattles to dad. She is retired from long vehicle travel because of her seizures. Wasn’t risking her on an airplane. She’s a smaller dog so wasn’t expecting this early of a partial retirement. But what it is.)
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If the person I’m talking to is from Asia, I tell them that the Continental US is roughly the same size as China. That tends to drive the message home (and is true).
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I’d love to take some of those folk around Yellowstone. “Okay, it will be a couple of hours to get to Old Faithful.” “It’s that far away?” “Unless you’re driving in from the west gate, yes.” *then show Yellowstone on a map*
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Oh ye optimist you. Wait? Is that two hours with or without animal jams? Without? Add another hour, at minimum. This is not counting that when the roads are open to vehicle traffic it is also road construction season (and there is a lot of road construction going on after the 2023 summer floods). More if it is a bear or wolf jam (because who doesn’t actually stop and watch, take pictures, if allowed?) Then there was the bison jams that took us 4 hours to go from Mammoth to W. Yellowstone, one late evening. First one was 3 hours from just north of Sheep Cliffs to Norris Junction. Second an hour between Madison Junction into W. Yellowstone. Both cases just a crawl until park units used vehicles to encourage the bison to move off the road. Bison love those nice hard wide trails the US citizen’s paid to put in for them. Going to Yellowstone? Pack your patience x 4.
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It’s three times the size of the Roman Empire at its largest.
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Yeah, they haven’t a clue. Part of their insularity is the incredibly high cost of driving in most of the world. It limits them to walking, or traveling along bus/train pathways. Which are severely limited. So, they may travel, but it’s mostly to destinations that governments want them to visit. Americans travel – a lot. We regularly drive 35-50miles just on weekly errands.
We also drive a lot farther for work opportunities. I commuted to a job 2 hours away by car for two years. On Monday , I’d get up around 4 am, drive to work, then check into a hotel for the next four days. On Friday morning I’d check out, and drive home for the weekend. My experience is not unusual.
People living in rural areas will regularly make 1-2 trips to the city each month, stocking up on groceries, clothes shopping, haircuts, hardware stores, and other items needed for the next month. The only groceries needed in between would be fresh produce and dairy. I used to make a girls day out of such trips; we’d have a nice lunch, stroll around sight seeing, and go home for dinner.
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Los Angeles to Boston is further than Lisbon to Moscow.
Seattle to Miami is further than London to Bagdad.
New Orleans to Minneapolis is further than Rome to Copenhagen.
Napoleon marched his Grand Army from Paris to Moscow. If he’d started in San Francisco and gone the same distance east, he wouldn’t have made it to Kansas City.
It’s a big country.
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There used to be a sign (but it kept getting pilfered) at the beginning of I-40 West in Wilmington, NC:
“Barstow, CA
2,400 miles”
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The segment of I-10 that runs through Texas is longer than the segments from the Texas state line to the eastern and western termini (San Diego, CA and Jacksonville, FL IIRC).
There’s a story that an English war bride arrived in Houston to join her rancher husband, and as they’re driving out of town, she’s expecting to arrive at her new home any minute. He warns her that it’s a bit of a ways. After a few hours, he turns off the US highway and onto a local Farm to Market (FM#) road. They stop at a little diner for lunch, then continue for a few more hours and finally come to the gate of the ranch. She looks around for the house, and he tells her “About an hour thataway. We’ll be home just in time to get supper.” At which point she says, “I see, those stories about everything being big in Texas weren’t just jokes.”
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Any 420 mile marker is probably short-lived.
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A friend who escaped Kabul was anxious that I come see him in Seattle, and I had to tell him I was still as far off as from Kabul to Tokyo.
The scale of a country a continent wide isn’t even on most foreigners’ instrument panels, let alone their radar.
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was he able to escape again from Seattle?
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Hasn’t yet had to, afaik.
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Yup you can drive from Boston to Seattle (or vice versa) using a single road, Interstate 90. Total distance 3045 miles (or 4932 KM for those that want metric). Google says 44 hours (nonstop) for the trip I presume that’s at posted speed limits. 12 hours a day of hard driving and you do it in just shy of 4 days.
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Southwest NH to east AZ – six days, ten hours a day. (Okay, with stops for meals and a bit of sightseeing. Probably a net of eight hours actually on the highway.)
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I won’t say EXACTLY where I am, but I can get to the I-90 “GOLDEN SPIKE” (as it were) in under an hour. That’s where, when I-90 was made, east met up with west. It’s just a bit west of Blue Earth, MN.
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Most of my trips to visit relatives in the Midwest entailed driving an hour to get to I-80, then a few nights on the road, then an hour or less to say Hi! Modulo the relatives in Michigan. I’m allergic* to toll roads, so take I-94 instead of the Indiana stretch of I-80 when practical.
Not-so-fun fact: a rental 1980 Datsun with three people on board needed to have the A/C turned off to deal with the hills on I-80. “Hills”, you say? South of the Irish Hills in southern Michigan, but by Flyover County standards, that’s a billiard table. Last Datsun I ever rented, even worse than the Mercury version of the Pinto I rented. (Rental agency mottos, circa 1970-80: Hertz, “We’re number 1”. Avis, “We try harder”. Budget/National, “We don’t bother”.)
((*)) Misspelled “too cheap”, plus saw the abuse in some areas. “We’ll make it free when it’s paid off!” Try the other leg, it has bells on.
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I can reach the giant “Eyeball” in Dallas in less than a hour. If that hour is around 7 AM on Sunday.
(Yes, eyeball, not the Reunion Tower…)
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I swear, the longest part of the drive from RedQuarters to Ft. Worth or the reverse is the last 20 miles into Ft. Worth. I left at 0545 from Ft. Worth’s western edge and traffic was already heavy.
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Right now I have to actually go into the Dallas office at least once a year. The office space was downsized during Covid to save money. Not that any of my team is in the area, most are in other states.
But the commute before Covid was 90 minutes, mostly on DART Rail, one way. So glad I can miss this, especially during the State Fair.
If you have to go to the Fair, talk to the old timers, we know all the tricks. First one is: Don’t
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Eyeball? Sauron moved there?
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I think Sauron was born in Dallas.
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The Donks will soon add horns to the Washington Monument. The Eye reappears after Harris gets inaugurated.
(grin)
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Yeah I can reach in about 30-45 minutes (at the right time of day) either down I-95 getting on in Weston MA, or down US RT 1 through the Ted Williams Tunnel basically at the start. The furthest west I’ve been on it from here is Rochester NY. I think I drove a bit of the other end when I was out in the Seattle area for business in the 90’s.
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I’ve made that trip many times. Often take side routes (94, etc) just to break up the routine. Also 80 and 10 routes from one side of the country to the other. I recall driving from NYS to Tacoma the year after St Helen’s blew up (change of station from RAF Alconbury, UK, to McChord AFB, Wa), and starting to see ash about 2000 miles down range, and watched it increase over the miles.
Also driven I-5 border to border several times. And I’ve driven from NH to Huntsville Al & San Antonio so many times I could probably do it in my sleep. But better to let someone else drive then. ;-)
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Beware that on being dropped off by your glorious Eagle, you’ll be falling into a cesspit of liberal turds and hungry Haitians stirred by JOY™ and HOLISTIC KNUCKLEHEADS™ into a Amerikan version of Caldo Verde.
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I honestly can’t see the eagle doing that, unless she was also decked out like Grimnoir’s protagonist in his power armor and magicked Browning M2 HMG.
Which would, hilariously enough, complete the Mormon trifecta too.
You’re right, a eagle might just do that just for the giggles…
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Now I want to see that, so much.
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No, Jake’s present from John Browning was a unique bullpup configured BAR chambered in .30-06. Even Jake can’t tote a .50 BMG. :-P
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I have to think that an eagle would know our Sarah. He’d say “Strap in and man that Gatling! You’re the door gunner for this trip!”
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maybe next time invite them to come visit you in America? That way they might begin to understand?
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They’re in their nineties and the next generation in their seventies. Won’t happen.
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Texas alone is ginormous:
El Paso is closer to San Diego than it is to Houston
Beaumont is closer to Tampa than El Paso.
Brownsville is closer to Mexico City than DFW.
Texarkana is closer to Atlanta than El Paso.
Corpus is closer to Cuba than Denver.
Austin is closer to New Orleans than El Paso
The North Texas county I reside in is almost as large as Rhode Island.
And that’s before we consider the American Siberia, Alaska.
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They used to say a couple of decades back, “Driving across Texas at 55 isn’t a trip, it’s a career.”
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Larry is right said
Heck there are several national parks larger than Rhode Island 🙂 . Stand at the northern border of Providence and it feels like you could throw a rock into Massachusetts.
this text from https://data.census.gov/profile/Rhode_Island?g=040XX00US44 is baffling
How the F*CK is it the 51st largest state? There are only 50 states and it has been that way since before I was born (and I’m 63). For a moment I wondered if some excrement for brains was trying to count D.C. but its only 68 sq Miles, Rhode Island is 1500 Sq miles (including water, slightly over 1050 including only land).
Oh and the bordering New York thing is weird until you realize Block Island is part of RI not CT and theoretically shares a water boundary with Long Island NY. Sometimes I wonder if New England shouldn’t have been consolidated as a single state at some point say 1789, although at that point MA and CT had relatively large populations compared to the rural south. Of course we’d be short 8 senators but given the qaulity of our states senatorial representation I must agree with Sir Gilbert and think they’d none of them be missed.
NOTE to Moderators: The original version of this comment went into moderation because I didn’t realize my second quote included three HTTP references. Please feel free to nuke the original…
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The ignoramuses were probably counting Puerto Rico.
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Or Guam if it hasn’t tipped over or capsized.
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Lighbringer campaigned in 57 states, so…
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Nice of them to have a “feedback” link on that page. I took advantage of it, and I was only a little bit snarky.😉😎😎
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I got an answer; it seems it probably was PR that some moron was considering.😒
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Too many contentious groups of colonizers to have a single state, or maybe two, out of New England. Even the Green Mountain state didn’t want to have anything to do with NYS or New Hampshire. Although considering how the government in Maine is going, they should have stayed a part of Massachusetts.
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Indeed Rhode Island was started by folks fleeing the State religion of Congregationalism in CT and MA. Heck the New Haven Colony was originally part of New Jersey’s colonies. And yes Vermont actually was disputed land between NH and NY and told both of them to take a long hike off a short pier. It was an independent nation for a brief period.
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Note for those whose history education was neglected: Maine was not a colony. Maine was part of Massachusetts until the Missouri Compromise, where it was broken off as a free state, and Missouri admitted as a slave one. And the war crept nearer, just as I creep nearer to a contentious topic.
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The War That Shall Not Be Named, Nor Even Mentioned Except Obliquely.
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Seems like everything in the entire state of Rhode Island Is 23 miles from Providence.
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Westerly is 44 miles by road (cant get a decent as the crow flies, but probably nor more than 35 MI), Newport is 33 miles by road but you have to go the long way around Narraganset Bay to get to the bridge to the island. It really is a SMALL state both of those are well within an hour of Providence probably less than 45 min with good traffic.
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Or, the brag:
“I can get in my pickup and drive all day and still not be off my ranch.”
“Yes, I had a truck like that once.”
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Driving the I-84 through Oregon there are off and on ramps for Ranches and Farms (noted by “no services available”). Oregon isn’t the only state, and is in the minor leagues by comparison.
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I heard it as:
“I can take a morning train in Texas, ride all day long and when I get off in the evening, I’m still in Texas.”
“We’ve got slow trains in England, too.”
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Larry is right said
Heck there are several national parks larger than Rhode Island :-) . Stand at the northern border of Providence and it feels like you could throw a rock into Massachusetts.
this text from https://data.census.gov/profile/Rhode_Island?g=040XX00US44 is baffling
How the F*CK is it the 51st largest state? There are only 50 states and it has been that way since before I was born (and I’m 63). For a moment I wondered if some excrement for brains was trying to count D.C. but its only 68 sq Miles, Rhode Island is 1500 Sq miles (including water, slightly over 1050 including only land).
Oh and the bordering New York thing is weird until you realize Block Island is part of RI not CT and theoretically shares a water boundary with Long Island NY. Sometimes I wonder if New England shouldn’t have been consolidated as a single state at some point say 1789, although at that point MA and CT had relatively large populations compared to the rural south. Of course we’d be short 8 senators but given the qaulity of our states senatorial representation I must agree with Sir Gilbert and think they’d none of them be missed.
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I have mentioned elsewhere, Los Angeles to New York is Moscow to Madrid.
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Old poetical musing on distances in Texas –
The sun has riz
The sun has set
And still we is
In Texas yet.
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In 1987, in honor of my naturalization, my wife and I bought a new car and set off on a big loop around the country. (We took a detour through Canada to avoid Gary, IN.) The typical day was traveling part of the day and sight seeing the other part, a new state each day. That held more or less until we got to Texas: first night in El Paso, second night in Beaumont. That was a long day and still not enough to pass out of Texas.
The whole trip, even cut short (family stuff) and skipping MS/AL/FL, took 6 weeks.
I’m from Holland. For us, most any other country is big, but in fact most states are bigger than Holland. Even NH isn’t much smaller — Google says MD is smaller but next up WV is larger than Holland. Never mind all the big Western states!
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I35 in Texas just plain sucks. I usually take alternate state roads instead. Prettier country, and it usually doesn’t add that much more time to the trip compared to the I35 parking lot.
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You’re going to give us a big(ger) head.
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I entered into a refreshing dialogue about Buttigeg’s plan for cross country rail lines. Of course this is the same TSA that took a billion dollars and built 2 EV chargers, but I digress.
The leftist that I was arguing with — er, having a refreshing exchange with — insisted that they loved the idea of sitting on a train and enjoying the view. In return, I said hooray, but we Americans don’t want to do that. (He’s a leftie and hates America, so I’m not going to let him in our club.) We want to drive across country with our minivan and our passle of kids, stopping at peach stands and Buc-ees, and visit Mount Rushmore or Yellowstone or the Corn Palace. Is there any brighter dividing line than the mighty American automobile trip versus sitting in a train with hundreds of others, unable to direct your trip the way you want?
Not getting on the train car. I’ll die on a pile of hot brass first.
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I’m a die-hard train buff (but not a foamer!) and as much as I would love to see cross-country long-distance passenger rail travel return to its heyday like in the 1930s-late 1940s, I’m also a realist. It’s just not feasible, not in the era of jet airliners. Depending on whether you’re comparing center to city center or platform/gate to platform/gate, high speed rail is only competitive with a jetliner inside of 200-300 miles. Any longer and the jet will win get you there faster every time. High-speed rail works in Europe and Japan because the distances are so much shorter, and in China because the PLAAF owns the majority of Chinese airspace and civilian traffic is restricted to a small number of winding, convoluted corridors.
Not to mention the enormous infrastructure costs associated with building dedicated high speed rail corridors. The engineering is way too complicated to get into (and to be honest I don’t understand a lot of it; I was an English major for a reason), but the short version is you can’t just drop a bullet train on “regular” tracks and expect it to go 200+ MPH. We’ve tried that twice now (soon to be three times) on the Northeast Corridor and it didn’t work.
So this pipe dream of a high-speed bullet train running from New York to Los Angeles? It’s just that. A pipe dream.
And while I’ll happily get on a passenger coach, especially if it’s being pulled by a steam locomotive, I’ll die screaming and covered in someone else’s blood before I get into a box car or cattle car.
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This. We (my husband and I) have been known to take short train trips purely for the ride. (A hundred miles and back, that kind of thing. Not even staying overnight, just disembark and get ready for the return trip.) And in my post-trip review, I said that Amtrack was a great way to travel….AS LONG AS YOU DON’T CARE WHEN YOU ARRIVE. Delays, delays, and more delays. Exchanging our tickets because there was one delay of over eight hours. Leg cramping because we pulled into a siding due to ISSUES. (Walking up and down the aisle helped, but so were others.)
I also heartily agree with your last sentence.
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Once we did a round trip San Antonio to El Paso and back. ONCE. And afterwards realized that the Texas version of passenger rail is called Southwest Airlines.
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The last time I rode on an Amtrak train was a couple of years ago. I don’t even remember whether it was late or not, but it was a situation where I did indeed not care what time I got there, so it didn’t matter. I do remember noticing just how many Amish people were on the train; I presume their rules don’t allow them to travel by plane so train is their best (only?) option for getting from one city to another relatively fast.
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Amish can even travel by car if they hire a driver (because that makes it impossible to drive off on the spur of the moment, which is the real danger of cars). I suspect that it may be that train stations are more convenient than airports.
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We see Amtrack regularly on the N/S rail near us. Joke: Amtrack screams by at 4:30 PM going north. “Oh. Look it is the 1 PM train!” 🤣
Honestly. Real experience. Not quite that bad. Mom is using it to go between Eugene and Vancouver WA when she goes to stay with youngest. VS one of us having to driver her up (she’s 90, mid-Nov 2024). While she drives, she does not need to be driving I-5 through Salem, Portland, and Vancouver, or long distances. Only one trip with lots of delays. Also, won’t work for southern Oregon I-5. At some point it goes east to K-Falls instead of Medford, Grantspass, and Ashland.
Only train rides I’d consider are the one across Canada, which is a get on, off, stay, on, off, stay, unlimited between W/E (regardless of which way), tourist attraction. There is a N/S Canada/Alaska version but a bus or cruise experience on the rails.
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Eugene, actually – https://www.oregon.gov/odot/MCT/Pages/Rail-Maps.aspx
I’ve done the bus from Ashland over to KF, and caught the train back to Bay Area CA. My trip was actually on time. OTOH, once my son was riding up to Eugene, and his train was delayed over ten hours. Freight laybys and then train crew(s) timing out; they literally had to sit about 2 miles east of Eugene while a new crew was ferried over. Weird labor rules.
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Yes. Ironically mom’s last train was delayed just north of Eugene because of freight (3rd delay that trip). Seriously, she could see the new Psychiatric Prison just south of her car. That is when she usually calls and tells whomever (this time it was sister/BIL) is picking her up, where the train is. If we time it right then we see the train coming into town, hopefully after we’ve crossed the tracks at the Washington/4th street crossing, to pull into the Eugene station.
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Right. Engineering a track for 200 mph requires different curves, different rails, etc.
Add to that the fact that a lot of US track is unsafe at any speed. I remember a cargo spur track behind a former office. It would carry propane tanker cars at times. I’d watch the occasional train creeping by at 5 mph, with the cars swaying madly as they passed over sections where the tied no longer existed due to rot. Sometimes that was at a rail splice, and at some of those half the splice bolts were missing. No, that train was definitely unsafe at 5 mph, and arguably at any speed down to (and possibly including) zero.
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Most of the idiots talking up trains live in the Boston, NY, DC green zone. Trains work better than planes over most of that route and run all the time, mostly well — I’m on one now. That it won’t work outside that limited area entiterly escapes them. The rest are stupid psychopaths.
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Donkuloids! Bringing you the finest nineteenth century solutions to the twenty first century.
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About a dozen years ago, I was planning a trip from the Left Coast to visit family in the Midwest. Since Flyover Falls is halfway between the major EW train routes, I’d have had to take a train to Portland or Seattle, thence east to Chicago. Since I really need a CPAP machine, I’d have to go with a sleeper (probably an ADA unit, for 110V power). It was cheaper to drive and use hotels.
When we moved here in 2003, I had to take a train to San Jose to get a rental truck for the stuff I didn’t trust to the movers. (Alas, that tragic canoe accident…) Besides the train being 3 hours late, it was cleverly scheduled so that the most interesting scenery (getting out of the mountains near Weed down to Redding) was traversed in pitch black. Even if the train had been on time, in late October, nope. That’s also when I discovered the futility of trying to sleep in a seat without CPAP.
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That’s a shame. The California Zephyr is scheduled to have the Sierras and the Rockies mid-day, while you cross Nevada in the dark. The Coast Starlate is another matter.
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I did one trip, and Mom did a round trip; flew Chicago to San Jose, train to F-Falls, then reverse when she left. “Coast Starlate” is way too appropriate; I think it was regularly 3 or more hours late each time. My trip was in late October, Mom’s end of August, so weather should not have been an issue for her.
Air service from here was spotty (when we moved here, there were turboprop flights to and from Portland. For a while, they tried Reno and somewhre in Cali, perhaps SFO. Now, it’s nothing. If you don’t have a charter, private aircraft, or access to an F-15*, you are out of luck.
((*)) Or whatever the USAF uses for refueling.
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Last time I rode an Amtrack train, about half-way through the trip the engine broke and the train sat at the station for 3 1/2 hours waiting for another one.
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I get how you feel about your parents. I live in Texas, escaping Michigan after college. Whenever I went to visit my parents in Ann Arbor (my hometown) there was a layer of socialist smug over the area that was so thick I felt choked. Always felt better after leaving Washtenaw County.
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That’s about how I felt whenever I’d visit my little brother in Boston. Felt like I was trapped in hostile territory, literally. The fact that he all of his friends were academics didn’t help either.
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Tell me about it :-) . I’m a quiet little Sixth Column lurking here on the north shore of Massachusetts. Once not so long ago New England was rational for example look at this clip from 1954’s White Christmas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P0ovii4DI8 .
Communist/socialist regimes seem to have a life span of 70-90 years we’re due for a seismic shift of some sort
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Our daughter did graduate study in Europe, and the friends she made there later visited us in the U.S. These were upper-middle-class folks, from a special grad program intended to produce diplomats and high-level bureaucrats for the EU. Their amazement at the sheer distance between things was enlightening. As was their bogglement that our state — not the largest, and just one 50th of the U.S. — was bigger than their country (one of the largest and most prosperous in Western Europe), in both land and economy.
They also couldn’t understand how teachers could own a nice detached home on a wooded quarter-acre in the suburbs. They kept delicately probing to find out if we came from a wealthy family with a trust fund. Nope, said our daughter cheerfully, they paid for it from their salary. That’s what we do in America. :)
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Remember, the people in Europe are the descendants of those that were satisfied with the Status Quo. Most of the people that came to the United States, and preceding settlements, looked at the Horizon and said, “I can do better over there.”
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Remember also that Europeans live in countries where the people are called “subjects” rather than “citizens” and have no meaningful Constitution.
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For example, of “not meaningful”:
“The constitutionality of Acts of Parliament and treaties shall not be reviewed by the courts.” — Constitution of the Netherlands, article 120.
In other words, while you might think that the Dutch Constitution limits what its government can do (it doesn’t really, the words don’t construe that way), that doesn’t help you because you have no remedy even if the government blatantly violates the Constitution.
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And those constitutions keep being changed when ever the then government feels they should be changed.
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The correct answer to that, of course, is for the lawsuit to say “Since the government has decided that the Constitution means nothing, article 120 means nothing either”. And when that gets thrown out, make a big stink about how you can’t pick and choose. Though that won’t work, because Europe, but at least you tried not to decorate lampposts…
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But there are so many, many lamp-posts in desperate need of decoration! Many of them waaay overdue.
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And some who maybe felt obliged to take care of family who could not or would not emigrate… (possibly my grandfather, the only one of four siblings who came back from America, maybe to look after their parents).
Damn.
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https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTIzNzgwOTU.MTE2NDcyNTE*OTExNzY2OA(NzQ0NTU0OQ~!PT*ODA0MjI1Ng.MTEyMjUyNDc)Mw
don’t know if that will open right, but nice size comparator site. Protugal fits between Corpus and DFW.I’ve mentioned the German kid who visited with friends of ours and his first impression was “Big”. The trip when finished was like driving across Germany east-west 6 times. He’d never been out of Germany.
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It’s similar N-S to Alabama, with 60% of the area, twice the population, and about the same per capita GDP.
The last speaks poorly of Alabama.
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I do use Amtrak to go out to see my brother and his family in California (my state isn’t well served by the airlines and it’s a two- or three-day drive) but I have to drive three hours to get on the silly thing, and I always get off very frazzled (I can’t afford a sleeper and they’re always booked months in advance, so I have to ride coach).
One reason we don’t have passenger rail service much in this country is because the train companies themselves don’t want it. They prefer freight, which doesn’t mind being put on a siding for hours or days, and doesn’t require that its feet be warm and its martinis cold. Also, the population away from a few coastal corridors isn’t dense enough to support it.
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They also remember the bad old days of regulation under the Interstate Commerce Act, which wound up forcing railroads to run passenger service even when the services lost money and didn’t actually carry any passengers, and prohibited them from abandoning money-losing freight routes, even when those routes had no customers. And prices for shipping goods were fixed, preventing railroads from remaining competitive with privatized truckers and airlines. The Interstate Commerce Commission wielded the ICA like a hammer and still treated railroads like they were run by the robber barons of the 19th and early 20th century. It wasn’t until Conrail was established in 1976 (and was government owned and operated until 1987) that the Federal Government realized just how badly the ICC was screwing over railroads and implemented changes.
TL/DR: passenger rail traffic was a major component in why so many railroads went bankrupt in the late 1960s and 70s. The surviving companies do not want a repeat of that experience. Which also explains in part their current contempt for AMTRAK.
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This, alas. My daughter was in the habit of going out by train from San Antonio to Los Angeles to help my sister with care of our invalid mother. There just aren’t enough travelers going between locations to justify the trouble.
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“Not dense enough”. That’s the crux of the matter. Passenger rail service is semi-functional in Holland (at least in some of it) because Holland is very dense. For the same reason, it’s semi-functional between Boston and DC. But in most of the rest of the country you can’t afford to build railroads that get you close enough to where you want to go.
“[the private automobile] takes you from exactly where you are to precisely where you want to go, whenever you want, in comfort, relative safety, and total privacy — at a hell of a lot less money per passenger mile than any BART or Metro system. Look it up: I’m right.” — L. Neil Smith, in “the Venus Belt”
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The only reason why airlines are competitive with private autos is that airliners are an order of magnitude faster than cars. Even then they’re only competitive, rather than clearly superior. And less so once you throw in the <spit> TSA.
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Yep – TSA, waiting for the baggage folks to finally get your stuff to the carousel, asking the agent why your and all the other passengers’ stuff is not on the carousel, waiting for the next plane to get in because your entire plane load of baggage went on the wrong plane…
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And yes it was practical to wait for the next plane only because the misload had been discovered while our SJC-SNA flight was still in the air.
I think our plane’s baggage went to Sacramento. The horror, the horror…
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That Smith quite is one of the best, but I still I prefer: “public transportation is for losers”-Homer J. Simpson.
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We were on a tourist train for BIL wedding to current wife, 33 years ago (can remember because our, then 2 year old, *son was not invited, he’s now 35). The train ended up stopped because one of the passengers in another car got sick because car was too hot, because A/C in all but one car (wedding one) failed. It was not fun.
(*) Another reason for being memorable was we were gone overnight. Normally not a problem. He’d stayed with grandparents (my side), and one aunt and uncle (other one was in CA still, also both my side). Mom and dad had a medical trip travel, sister was in Portland which made as little sense as the sister in CA. Not a huge problem, he stayed with great-aunt and uncle, their youngest (20 months older) was thrilled. But still. (i.e. Trauma for mama.)
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Portugal, slightly smaller than Indiana; with a reported population of about 10.3 million, not quite as large as Georgia (the state.) 65% of the population is urban.
As for the train vs plane efficacity, there are two criteria to consider. One, which one goes where you need to go? Obviously, trans-oceanic travel is going to be by plane, not train. Two, what is the value of your time? I hate to say it, but on average, the value of each person’s time in America is far greater than the value of each person’s time in the rest of the world. Rail is more cost effective for them, not for us. That also applies to the plane versus boat for trans-ocean travel. Note that should the Democrat (socialists) succeed in destroying the American economy, rail and boat might very well become more cost effective.
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Over at Kim Du Toit’s blog he recently posted a pic of an “oversize” person on a plane from Helsinki to Copenhagen and commented that he should take the train instead.
Since I am aware there’s the Baltic Sea in the way, I suggested that a ferry might work better than a train, then decided to go googling for alternate routes.
Flights were about 3 hours and cost $60-130
Ferries were 16-25 hours and cost $180-250
There was a train option, but it was 35 hours and cost $330 (and went through Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Germany before finally getting to Demark.
Anyway… based on all of that, I can see why someone would choose to fly instead of take another option. And with how cheap the flights were, I can’t see why he owouldn’t be willing to buy 2 seats — it’d still cost less than the ferry.
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Interesting. Those are prices though. The real question is what the actual costs are. Government intervention totally screws up those figures.
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There may also be a northerly rail route. Denmark and Sweden have rail connections via the Oresund Bridge, but you would then have to travel all the way around the Gulf of Bothnia to get from Sweden to Finland.
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Between Sweden and Finland the best option are the ferries, unless you take a cabin they aren’t all that expensive, although long, from Helsinki 16 to 17 hours, from Turku around 12.
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Sympathy for those of us who love your constitution stuck somewhere in Europe or other parts of the world outside of the USA because we are not deemed good enough to legally emigrate there, while there is not enough of us in our own countries to change things where we live.
While your country now seems to have no problems allowing in a flood of illegal immigrants who have already proved they don’t care about your laws by coming in illegally…
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And this went into a funny slot… I was trying for the end of the thread and as an independent comment, not as a comment on somebody’s comment.
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*Waves northeastwards* I thought about trying to contact you when I was in Finland this summer, but got distracted by other things and forgot to ask Sarah to pass the word.
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:(
Well, if you ever come here again…
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One of the factors in planning family vacations when Darlin’ Daughter was younger was educating her on the size of the US.
Her grandparents had been taking her to all of the east coast tourist sites between DC and Maine. Good, I did not leave anything on the east coast and see no need to ever return. But I was concerned that she would get a skewed perspective.
So our driving trips were to Mt Rushmore, Yellowstone, and, one summer, a loop across northern US, down through Nevada (I advised them to stay out of CA, if nothing else because of certain tools I had packed in the truck), to Phoenix where I joined them (limited vacation time) and then back through Texas and then back home.
She had just gotten her driver’s license, and got a lot of road time in. Decided she didn’t like long distance driving, but she certainly understands how big this country is.
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Interesting. I am a follower of a FB private group that is *Travel America*. Another one regarding Hiking & Backpacking. Two questions came up.
First: How to get a HS graduate college student from Florida to western US (forget exactly where), scans parents. Issues: Fly or Drive.
Problems with Flying. < 21 cannot rent a car, even with a driver’s license, vehicle insurance, and credit card with their name on it (whether actually theirs or just signature allowed).
Problems with driving: < 21 cannot get a hotel room, not even if parent calls for reservation.
Solution: Camping and Youth Hostels.
Second. Two brothers taking PCT from Mexico to Canada. Oldest, 18, is going the entire way. Youngest is only going about 1/2 way, then is bailing to go home for summer season, farming, to earn money. What were the best options overall given the 18 year old can’t get a hotel room before the fight out (parents, once know kid is off trail can get the plane ticket, but can’t get a hotel room because < 21 checking in alone).
Solution: Trail Angels. Even a suggestion that parents fly out and join sons on part of the trail, before bail out, then the parents and younger bail out at reasonable location to use Trail Angels to get to hotel with airport shuttle. (Trail Angels are those who support those on the trail with rides into nearest towns for resupply, etc.)
It is difficult for HS graduates, generally younger than 21, to just go on road trips. Which makes it easier to understand why nieces, with friends, road trips did not start until oldest of the 4 was 21. (Rented a camper van. 2 Days camping, 1 day in hotel, repeat.)
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That’s a pet peeve of mine, even though it hasn’t affected me personally for decades now. Eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds are treated as adults when the Authorities find it convenient to do so, and as children when the Authorities find THAT convenient instead.
Pick one. Stick with it, both the good and the bad. Doublethink is always wrong.
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I agree, but I think these age restrictions are corporate/insurance imposed, not government.
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Some are, but ages for voting, drinking alcohol, buying/carrying firearms (different for rifles/shotguns vs handguns), signing contracts and several others are all gov’t-driven. And differ significantly, for no rational reason.
And we won’t get into pre-adolescents “choosing” their gender… :-x
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Oh, I agree! I hated how my age was always used against me when I was younger.
If I wanted to, oh…watch an R-rated movie, or drink a beer, it was “No! Oh, NO! You’re a CHILD! A sweet, innocent KIDDIE-WINK! This will ruin your innocence!”
But if it was something I didn’t want to do, it was “Grow up! Stop fussing! You’re practically an adult!”
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If I wasn’t clear, Darlin’ Daughter was either with both of us (her mom and dad) or with her mom on each of those trips.
But that looks like good information to know for folks that still have kids under 21.
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I need to go out to the terrace and invoke Ayn Rand’s name of power, and call out in the name of the George, for the eagle of freedom to come and fly me home.
Not the superhero the Big Two are giving us, but the superhero we need.
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My wife is French and even after several years in-country she still will ask why there is not a government regulation around xy or z … her default assumption is that everything in life should be controlled by some government rule or regulation … the French are happy to be ruled by “experts” even after those experts prove to be crazen power hunger despots …
During COVID when she was still in France when I would point out the latest lie from the French government her default response was “It must be worse than they as saying and don’t want to panic us so they have too lie” … the default assumption that the Government was looking out for her vs grabbing/expanding power is ingrained in the population of France …
Suprisingly she has somewhat embraced the 2nd Amendment … we do live in a rural area and the realization that there is nobody to call for help in the short term (within an hour) has made her realize that self defense is necessary … (plus we have an assortment of bity things in our forest, bears snakes etc)
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The more rural parts of France seem to have a relatively strong (for the number of regulatory hoops involved) gun culture, mostly shot guns and hunting rifles. The latest Murder In (police procedural anthology) episode I saw even had a guy affiliated with the local creative anachronism types who made his own ammo. Was presented as a disgruntled kook but not a murderer.
They have a lot of convoluted restrictions on this or that category of firearms, but the most important difference between their gun culture and ours, and one that speaks to their lack of anything resembling a Second Amendment, is that a civilian carrying a loaded weapon in a public, inhabited place is basically never allowed. Hunting, fine, if it’s the season and you have a license for it. Gun clubs and shooting ranges, also fine, in fact you’re required to belong to one in order to own any kind of firearm worth talking about. Out in the streets of a town, nope, no carrying.
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In Holland, and possibly other countries as well, hunting is done by the aristocracy. Here it’s a popular hobby of the working class. In Europe, working class people who hunt are known as “poachers” and are outlawed…
“In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorize the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty.” — Saint George Tucker, 1803, Law Professor at William & Mary, soon to be a Virginia Supreme Court Justice, in Blackstone’s 1768 “Commentaries on the Laws of England.”
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Trophy/sport hunting (wild boars, etc) seems to be that way in France as well. (not necessarily aristocrats or bazillionaires, but more of a “major local businessmen do this for the funsies with expensive reproduction Winchesters”.) I had the impression competition shooting was somewhat more middle class. The shepherds and cattlemen in the mountains also seem to go armed if they think they need to, and if the local “ecologues” (ecological ideologues) will let them. I was lumping them under hunting.
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I once ran across a nut who claimed that there was no such crime as “poaching” in the U.S. I pointed out our hunting laws and the penalties therefrom, plus a case of poaching where the guy was fined an enormous amount. The nitwit said (paraphrased) “Nope, that’s not poaching, that’s just hunting in the wrong place or out of season.”
I walked away at that point, because it was starting to sound like someone who won’t call a mandarin an orange.
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He probably thought(?) that poaching consists only of taking game belonging to the local lord. At least, that’s what I’d assume from his answer.
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Yeah, I got a similar vibe that the person thought poaching didn’t count unless you were doing it like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M3oTt7P0rM
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😆
That’s what I’d guess. But only he can say what weird definition he was using.
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People can legally get shot for being on private land they are trespassing on.
Just because it is forestland does not mean you can be on it. If it is private land the answer is no. One of the reasons why there are locked gates.
Even BLM and USFS roads have locked gates. Generally seasonal to prevent idiots from being where they get stuck and die. But they do get locked.
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Hunting in Germany, as of 2019, required owning huntable land, being part of a hunting club, doing conservation work, passing a test that covers every safety and ecology and regulation concern for every huntable species (huge question bank, fewer questions selected for the test), and hunter safety training [well, duh!].
Very Teutonic and thorough, in other words.
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I can believe it. I feel very sorry for all those Bavarians farmers pverrun with imported trash pandas.
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Christopher Nuttall (a Scottish Author) has just released a new book titled Conquistadors.
Basically, our world (roughly speaking) is invaded by an empire from an alternate Earth.
While, it’s a good book I noticed some “flaws”. One of the slightly annoying one is the invaders “landed” in Texas and Chris’s characters refer to Texas as south of DC.
Of course, generally speaking Americans would think of Texas as west of DC.
Chris is a good author but as a Brit, he doesn’t “see” the US as Americans “see” it.
Oh, this book is a first in a new series so while the Americans have won a major battle, the war isn’t finished especially since a second invasion force “landed” in Saudi Arabia. [Grin]
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The liberty found in the U.S. is as intoxicating as any narcotic known. Unfortunately, others in the world haven’t had the experience for generations, if ever.
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My sister-in-law was born and raised in Germany. She came to the USA in the 1990s, after marrying my brother (serving in US Army at the time).
She is American now, in outlook and citizenship. She says that the couple times she has returned to Germany since then, it feels “strange” to her. They live in a rural community in Eastern Utah now.
Her brother, an Engineer living in Berlin, came to visit a few years back. They took him on a road trip to northern California (not the Bay Area…that’s CENTRAL California) and southern Oregon (where my family is from). All across Nevada, he was amazed that nobody lived there…or the next 50 miles where there was nobody living…or the next 100 miles. So much open space!
He also had been told that Americans had cut down their forests. He realized this simply wasn’t true upon seeing the timberlands of California and Oregon (again, where nobody actually lived).
We are certainly a big country, and not all of us want to live in the infamous “15 minute” cities.
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Even the east coast where trees were all but stripped for masts and farming, have come back into forestland over the last 100 years have returned because the land is good timber (usually hardwoods) and not particularly good farmland, or rather not as good for extensive large tracks like further west.
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on 15 minute cities….I grew up in a valley town of 4 separate polities. By bike on a good day I could go from north to south in just unser 15 minutes if I risked life and limb at two road crossings. Took almost an hour going back because jt was uphill the entire way.
I loved that place, miss it every day and wished I could have raised my kids there.
But it was too small for me. I wanted more and bigger….but not cities.
so not really a 15 minute city and already too small.
To walk from our house to my high school.was 25 to 30 minutes. A mile and a quarter. So even just the one town was too big for.a.15.minute city.
What they envisionis about 4 square Manhatten city blocks….except the buildings have to be much much taller to hold everyone and everything.
Except arcologies are not workable
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Plus the thing where people in China are trying to raise pigs inside skyscrapers… it’s not working well.
I mean, even raising lots of chickens inside a building, on an industrial scale, is difficult. Trying to have floors and floors of industrial sized barns, on top of each other?
Particularly in a country that has a lot of trouble with city running water, city sewage systems, wifi, and consistent electricity?
The funny thing is that people in India apparently do manage to have dairy barns inside apartment buildings, because A/C is more important for your cow than for humans. So if a dairy-raising family gets allotted an apartment or a house, they move the cows into the house and the humans stay wherever they’ve been living.
But then they take the cows outside to graze. They don’t leave them inside 24/7, even in the A/C.
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I read once on this blog that there is a lot of ruin in a country. This is true….and especially so for us.
I know a young man who works for a state government. Without going into whether the job is neccessary or not, herenis the central issue. State government. Authorized onky within the state. The department, the entire bureaucracy get less than 5% of its budget from the state. The rest is from the Feds. Tbere are two people in his department alone who do nothing but write grant requests to keep money flowing. So everyone in the state essentially works for the Feds….and our taxes are still skyhigh.
Multiply that by all the state departme ts in this state, than all the ones in all the states, the territories etc.
Now toss in NGOs, Religious nonprofits who can get federal funds, foreign aid, UN dues and payments etc. If the US stopped all.of that cold…..
Which might happen involuntarily and watch what happens then. China nor Russia nor Islam will conquer the world. They will disintigrate and die in food riots and cannibal hordes and petty warlord.
Think Lucifers Hammer.
As for what happens after that remember Washingtons advice…no foreign entanglements.
Or Rorsharchs comment…”and when they look up cry save us save us! I will look down and whisper….no”
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I can’t even express how much I want exactly that to happen. Turn off the tap, *especially* to the NGOs and foreign entities, and then just…let…it…burn.
Yes, it would be horrifying and cause a lot of suffering, but there’d be less of both, in the long run, than continuing on the present course. It *will* happen one way or another, and I’d prefer that it didn’t happen because the US finally collapsed; if the US goes down, the whole world falls with us and it’s probably centuries before humanity claws its former prosperity out of the ruins.
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Rorschach is the hero. :-P
That’s the kind of movie it is.
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This might help. There are more of us ants than there are grasshoppers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTfe8sP-KPM
Bring back the guillotine.
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I guess it’s better to be on the road to serfdom than to have gotten there already.
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Even people living in this country who should know better. But it surprising that they do not. See a lot of “We’re from big city and we are flying into Seattle. Have 5 days to see: Washington/Oregon coast, N. Cascades, Olympic, Rainer, St Helen, Crater Lake, Sequoia, national parks.” Um. Okay. Doable. But all they are going to do is drive.
Other examples: Glacier, Yellowstone, and Tetons, are in only two states. Um. It is a full day drive between Glacier and Yellowstone, at 70 MPH on highways, not freeway. Not as bad as Texas, but Montana is not small.
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No, it’s not. Even if you fly in to, oh, Great Falls, it’s still a long way to anywhere.
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I am fully aware, yet even our trip from Waterton, Alberta Canada (20 minutes to the border crossing, and getting across) to West Yellowstone (420 miles) was a long dang day driving. Did not say it but “Are we there yet?” Was awfully tempting. (Part of the problem is I seem to have a 60 – 90 minute bladder. Plus we had Pepper with us, which means she has to have a walk too. Plus stop at least once for a meal even with snacks in the car. FYI, it is 13 hours, just driving, between W. Yellowstone, MT or Jackson, WY, to Eugene, OR and the Idaho section is 80 MPH posted speed limit, plus we are cutting across Oregon (more or less) diagonally.
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We used to get calls from relatives in Indiana whenever there was an earthquake anywhere in California that made the news. “Nope, didn’t feel it, it was down in LA.”
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Yellowstone is a case of “yeah, you can do a lot in a day, but you have to PLAN and pick your battles.” (We did because it was the “day to do things” for the summer camp that’s eight miles from the east entrance. And we listened to their advice, and still got back to camp close to 11PM.)
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And slow way, way, way, down after dusk.
Do not want to hit a buffalo, elk, or heaven forbid a bear or wolf. Bears and wolves, just because the driver will be vilified, even if not technically speeding (45 mph normally, 35 recommended at dusk and night driving), minimal damage. The other two? Will be stuck until someone comes along to go get help (cell service? Ha Ha! Serious? If you are really, really, really, lucky. If driver was that lucky, then they wouldn’t have hit the animal.) Will need a replacement vehicle. If rental? Hope have good insurance.
Buffalo eyes do not reflect in headlights, like elk, deer, and bear. Will NOT see them until direct in headlights. Will. Not. Been there. Done that. We avoided one because someone in oncoming lane following buffalo on road flashed lights. We yelled “Animal!” and slammed on the breaks. No sooner stopped and a huge bull stepped into headlights. One can go on the Yellowstone FB groups and find pictures of vehicles whose drivers were not that lucky.
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There is, or was, a very nice lodge between Grand Teton and Yellowstone. Would like to go back sometime.
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Oh, yeah. 2013 I got up around dawn in Medora, ND, just a bit east of the Montana state line, and started driving generally westward to Glacier. It was dusk when I arrived.
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Happy New Year to our Jewish friends. What’s that saying, next year Jerusalem? Rushahoma is in full swing here in NYC right now
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The map of the US and Europe superimposed may be helpful.
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Ah, The True Size (dot com)!
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Pink is Spain, red is Portugal, blue is France, greenish is Germany.
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Very nice.
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I bet it feels like being back in the covidiocy.
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Yes
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Seems Kackling Kamela has finally made a public statement about the hurricane.
Looking completely lost and bewildered.
Oh, and where’s Pothole Pete? Not doing anything about the dockworkers’ strike, that’s for sure.
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There’s a great meme floating around it starts with a pic of Obama at the top with him saying “I need a dumber VP than me.” Followed by Joe saying the same, to Kamala to Walz with his stupid deer-in-the-headlights look.
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She looked lost and bewildered, like she was reading a book report somebody else wrote when she had not read even the Cliff’s Notes version, let alone the actual book, in her “I am clear eyed” statement on the Iranian attack on Israel.
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Telling people not to fly drones into flood zones to look for people. Leave it to EMS professionals.
“Never give an order you know will be disobeyed.”
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Dorothy, what they’re relying on is setting up a geofence that tells the drone firmware “do not fly in this area”. You know, what the Secret Service SHOULD have set up to keep that assassin’s drone away from the venue, and didn’t?
https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/geofencing#:~:text=Drone%20management%20during,in%20that%20area.
Of course, that’s overridable with tools, knowledge, and time…. all of which are likely to be in short supply in the NC mountains…. except for all those retired Sneaky Pete’s from Bragg.
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@ ObsidianKnife – the meme you mentioned is at the bottom of this post, comes from Trump’s TruthSocial account originally IIRC.
https://instapundit.com/675732/
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I once, for grins, drove the shortest route from Pensacola to Key West. For European readers, both are in the state of Florida. This morning I went on google maps and got driving directions from downtown Madrid to downtown Paris. Yep, it was a 50 mile shorter drive.
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The wait is over; RazorFist’s Rant on the VP debate is up:
Huh. If I paste or drag-and-drop the entire URL into the comment window, WPDE goes into a neverending circle-grind. Dragging the last part in, then typing the first part, is working so far. See what happens when I hit ‘Comment’
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I am so mad I’m shaking.
https://x.com/graduatedben/status/1841858630376681872
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Well, at least now we know what Pothole Pete is doing. :-(
What I said on today’s post, I forgot Evil. So, yeah, they have achieved Peak Stupid And Evil — until they find something even stupider and eviler.
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It IS possible to program a drone to ignore geofencing like that. Just sayin’.
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Nailed it. Big nails!
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