I was reading around various blogs and stumbled across this map... and it's stunning to see just how little travelled I am.
visited 13 states (26%)
Create your own visited map of The United States.
My world map looks slightly better:
visited 5 states (2.22%)
Create your own visited map of The World
...but largely it looks better because the whole of Canada counts even if you've only been to Ottawa. Which I have, so it does.
I can't explain it really. I don't really consider myself to be a narrow, untravelled, unobservant, slow-witted, heavily-browed sort of person. If I were to defend myself against imaginary cries of "poseur!" and "fraud!", I'd say that many places in the US I've been more than once, and many times that I've travelled to different parts of different states. And there are many, many places on my list of "places to go, urgent". So what's the problem?
In my defense, for a long time (ten years) I was involved with someone who didn't really like to travel. That rather cuts in to your options, if the furthest that you drive is an hour distant. Fortunately, GHR is much more adventurous (and she's better travelled than I am to start with). We already have plans for Montana (well, if the dinosaur dig happens this year, there's no way you could stop me), Tennessee, and New England. Chicago, again, with a side dodge into Indiana, just to count another state. My new goal is to fill up that map, just like I filled in those maps of commemorative state quarter dollars (there went ten years of my life that I won't get back).
I was thinking about this subject partly in relation to Stephen Fry's DVD set and companion book, Stephen Fry in America, which just wandered through our door after an Amazon UK splurge (along with the "B" and "C" series of QI, on which more later). Fry, the dirty great show-off, visited every state in the US for his little documentary (which looks like it will be bloody wonderful, I'll give him that). Sure, he spends more time on the conspicuously pretty parts of the country, and therefore misses some of the more interesting locales (Hello, Stephen! Birthplace of jazz and... er... other things! Right here!). But I can forgive that. If I were travelling to England, for example, I certainly wouldn't spend my time in Scunthorpe. Or Slough. Or Essex. You see the point (with apologies to those three fine locales).
So in the meantime, do I have to pick a resolution with regard to travel? Fine. Travel more. Easy. Off to pack my bags.
2 comments:
That's a nice visual for showing just poorly traveled we are. My US map looks more complete than yours, but my world map isn't much better.
I've got a couple of Middle East countries I "visited" while in the military. Not a lot of sight seeing on that trip. Other than that, I've been to Canada and Mexico. I guess I need to travel a bit.
Do you know the odd thing, though? I've known some very well-travelled people, who honestly don't seem to have learned anything from the places that they've gone. Antbus, I'm sure that we can think of some people in the "sales" job description who fit that model...
I also want to point out that my map was not large enough to show my visit to both the US and British Virgin Islands. So that counts for something too, I think...
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