Road Trip, Anyone?

This post regards a link that Mike posted, one upon which I'd like to elaborate.

I once drove around this fine country of ours. During the two-month trip, I visited thirty-seven states and drove approximately 12,000 miles (at a time when gas was $1.25/gallon). Most of it alone, some with company. Had a great time, saw many amazing sights and had loads of memorable experiences.

This guy did the opposite. He drove around the country in just over nine days, making it a point to touch every state (including Alaska and Hawaii, to which he made 2 rountrip flights during the last two days of his jouney). So really, he drove around the entire fucking country in just over seven days. Do you have any idea how insane this is??

Let's compare some of the statistics. My trip took two months and 12,000 miles, which conveniently works out to about 200 miles per day. That's not too bad. That's about 3 to 4 hours of driving, plus ample time for other activities (like hiking, playing baseball on the real field of dreams, or flooding the bathroom in a restaurant in the hometown of the grand wizard of the KKK). Additionally, there were days when I did a lot more driving than that, and as a result there were days when I did barely any driving. My longest driving day took me just over 500 miles, from Austin TX to the border between Arkansas and Tennessee, and the next day I spent walking around Memphis because I was so sick of being behind my steering wheel. Well, the real reason was because Memphis rules. But walking helped that day.

This guy had to average 1100 miles per day in order to meet his goal. That's the distance from New York to Miami or from Boston to St. Louis, every day, for a week. Un-fucking-believeable. That takes cojones... and a carload of military rations. Also, he barely slept, making the trip kinda risky to anyone else on the road, but I guess he was so amped up on adrenaline and the target of getting to all 50 states (note: he didn't need to explore every state; he just had to physically touch 'em all, even for a second... so of course he went to four corners, the only place in the country where one can physically be in 4 states at once) that he didn't need too much sleep.

There are other statistical comparisons that are kinda fun, too. My trip took about 60 days, which comes out to 1440 hours. If I drove 12,000 miles, that means that my average speed was 8.3 mph, even for the hours during which I was not driving. Using the same method of calculation, his average speed was 47 mph. Even while sleeping.

Overall, an impressive story. Insane, but impressive nonetheless. Part of me wants to yell at the guy for all the amazing things he missed by driving around the country on the interstates and never really stopping, but I know that wasn't his goal/motive so it's okay. My only real problem lies with this quote:

"I also listened to a lot of Country & Western music on the radio and heard Trisha Yearwood sing “There Goes My Baby” at least thirty times, which was fine by me."

He deserves a beating for that. But read his story; it's pretty amazing.