“When you drive five hours in the US, you’re basically still in the same place. When you drive five hours in Europe, everyone’s talking funny, and the cheese is different.”
“When you drive five hours in the US, you’re basically still in the same place. When you drive five hours in Europe, everyone’s talking funny, and the cheese is different.”
Just half an hour in some places.. 😛
The British think 100 miles is a long way and the Americans think 100 years is a long time.
If I drive 5 hours from Mackay, I’m still in Queensland and just about arrived in the next major town. Driving to Townsville next month to see George Thorogood, five and a half hours with breaks going up on the Friday, same coming back on the Sunday.
We drive from Austin to Colorado Springs for reasons far too stupid to explain (oh, alright, the Inmos Christmas lunch in mid-January). It’s a bloody long time before we exit Texas, let alone anything else…
dearieme: nice juxtaposition. yes.
Judging by today’s commute, if I drive 5 hours I’ll have done about 30 miles.
Lockdown had its good points.
Mostly true. Europeans who haven’t seen it can have a hard time really understanding how *big* the US is. Of course, so can born-and-bred Northeasterners who never leave their corner of the country – Boston and DC are closer than, say, Paris and Munich.
Drove from Vancouver to Whitehorse, after 2 days driving I was still in British Columbia
Africa, the USA and the UK are all clearly the same size.
Each had one page in my school atlas.
Just half an hour in some places..
If you drive 5km in France*, the cheese will be different.
* probably true in some other places, too
Pedalled from Durham to Worksop in a day a few years ago and thought Yorkshire is one massive and mostly boring county, not doing that again and learned my lesson. If Scotland wants it I’m not going pitchfork against them.
Bike on the train to Donny and pedal from there is the better strategy.
A pal of mine from the University of Queensland was giving a seminar to a branch of the University of Texas. He put up a map to show where Queensland was. Then he said: On the matter of size, if you think of Queensland as a postcard you can think of Texas as the stamp.
For scale: Leaving Minnesota, USA, for Arizona, USA, in a few weeks. The 1850 mile drive takes 34 hours, mostly on freeways. That’s about halfway across the US.
You can drive for forty hours in the USA and the cheese will still be horrible.
You can drive for 40 days in the USA and they still only have 2 types – some version of rubber and something called “Swiss”, the rubber cheese with holes
dearieme. The old joke is that Australia is a lot like America except that after you’ve crossed the Appalachians you’re in Utah for the next 3,000 miles.
It is also pretty empty out there. Driving across central Nevada on US6, I was bored,so I started counting the number of cars I came across. In the 120 miles between Ely and Tonopah (home of Àrea-51), the number was 18.
You can drive for 40 days in the USA and they still only have 2 types – some version of rubber and something called “Swiss”, the rubber cheese with holes
Which is the one that comes out of a squirty can?
“Drove from Vancouver to Whitehorse, after 2 days driving I was still in British Columbia”
And once you hit highway 37 at Kitwanga, there was bugger all in the way of any cell phone coverage. 😉
Cheers,
“Which is the one that comes out of a squirty can?”
Neither.. The squirty stuff is processed vegetable oil with whey and salt for “taste” plus colourants.
So is most pizza “cheese”.
Drove from Perth in Oz to Albany (in Oz too) and it took 6 hours. It felt like a massive trip. Then you zoom out on the map and realise that the trip was just a tiny tiny part of Australia.
To paraphrase; Australia is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may walk down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts in Australia where you have to drive for two days to your local chemist.
I have a Garmin satnav that we used to take on holiday. Around here it shows roundabouts every mile or three on main roads. We took it to Oz, and turning onto A1 going north from Yeppoon, it showed the next roundabout 350km away, which raised a laugh. It’s a long way to Cairns from there!
In big, open places you tend to think of distances as times, but here in the UK we don’t think like that, as the time is often not a simple function of distance because of all the other traffic, road works, accidents, weather.
I drove through Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Yellowstone and Montana this summer. Long empty roads. Turns out even Japanese SUVs can crank up into the 130s MP/h when pushed.
Snag
Then you have a sherrif hiding behind a billboard
“Looks like we got ourselves a regular Ben Hur here,bo’ ”
I live ca. 50 miles from London, a coup!e of miles from the motorway. It can take me three hours to drive to Heathrow.
When you drive 5 hours on the M25 you’re still on the M25. Cheese? They call that stuff in the sandwiches they sell in the service area cheese? Good grief!
BiS: You could drive for 3 days on the M25 and still be on the M25. It’s a circular motorway.
Otto: I took that risk, and survived.
George Thorogood in Townsville? Civilized at last, eh? Enjoy yourself, George and the boys still put on a rockin’ show.
llater,
llamas
Doc: Will the Powerpuff Girls be there?
I hear Russia, China, Canada and Australia have a similar phenomenon. Strange, eh?