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May 21, 2012
My home territory
Up until last fall, when I finally had enough of the misery of taking two short flights to get to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving — with all the accompanying airport and baggage nonsense, not to mention the awful flight schedules and cost — I thought my effective driving range was about two hours, a hundred miles or so.
Then I drove to Pittsburgh in 6+ hours, without incident and with six (6) giant duffel bags filled with all manner of stuff I might need (but probably wouldn't) that I can't take on plane trips, leaving on Thursday and returning on Sunday.
The scales fell from my eyes at the markedly superior travel experience.
Since that time I've repeated that route, for this month's Pittsburgh Half-Marathon, and again the trip was smooth as silk.
And that was before I downloaded Stephen King's "11/22/63" as an audiobook, superb listening while on the road.
To mark my belated but happy conversion from airplane victim to car trekker, I used this website to create a 300-mile radius around my Podunk town (pictured up top), to give myself a better idea about what's now within my driving distance.
Lo and behold, if I find a good half-marathon in North or South Carolina, Kentucky, or even Ohio, I just might appear in your 'hood.
May 21, 2012 at 12:01 PM | Permalink
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Comments
Road trips rock!
Posted by: MsRadoo | May 22, 2012 9:07:32 AM
Fabulous book, 11/22/63!!!
Posted by: Marla | May 21, 2012 9:08:52 PM
Beware the radii! The correlation of distance and driving time works here in the middle, since it's a Cartesian gridwork with nothing much in the way, but the winding roads, traffic and coastal interruptions of the Eastern Seaboard can take much longer to go much shorter distances. Thus, the hop from NYC to DC may take longer than from your town to Columbus.
A more sensible approach (presuming you have a lot of time on your hands) is to build a "time radius" - Google some trip times to various places (Columbus, Philly, Charlotte, NYC etc.) and you'll have a better idea of what your painless travel threshold boundary in terms of travel time will be. Most likely the boundary be much shorter to the crowded northeast than to the west or south, and not at all in the Atlantic Ocean.
Posted by: Scott | May 21, 2012 6:31:12 PM
That last leg of the flight into (and, out of) your podunk town for the depo was one of the worst in my experience in cost, convenience and sheer terror (the new guard had the habit of flicking the safety on and off of his M-16 - and that small airport had lots and lots of marble insuring many ricochets should the safety-twit have discharged his weapon on full auto).
I've not actually had business in your town, but your map shows me that I've really been close dozens of times. Darn shame that my three big professional conventions the next 13 months are in San Diego, New Orleans and Boston.
5 k in San Diego end of next month!
Posted by: 6.02*10^23 | May 21, 2012 5:13:11 PM
that is a great idea! but i guess it sort of depends where you live...you could also use it to find fun thing in driving distance of a place ur going on holiday
Posted by: the one you don't know | May 21, 2012 12:47:26 PM
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