Some, though not all, wrap-up

A few weeks ago, I set off on an adventure to do two things: see America and meet Americans. The only planning I did was have money in the bank and a Greyhound pass that would take me just about anywhere. In other words, not much.

All things considered, then, the trip went well. It spanned twenty-five states and included a whole lot of nice, gracious, outgoing, and terribly friendly people. A hundred posts later, I think October Nick would be satisfied with November Nick's travels.

A sort-of recap of cities visited. Not driven through, but visited:

1. Halifax
2. Bangor
3. Boston
4. Washington, D.C.
5. Lexington, Kentucky
6. Nashville
7. Birmingham
   
8. New Orleans
9. Chicago
10. Denver
11. Salt Lake City
12. Albuquerque
    
13. Austin
14. Atlanta

And now, day-by-day distance covered in miles. Keep in mind, there were some rest days:

Day 1: 254 (Halifax to Bangor)
Day 2: 244
Day 3: 455
Day 5: 557
Day 6: 466
Day 7: 214
Day 9: 362
Day 14: 965 (New Orleans to Chicago)
Day 17: 1096 (Chicago to Denver)
Day 19: 592 (in air)
Day 21: 592 (in air)
Day 22: 479
Day 23: 849 (Albuquerque to Austin)
Day 26: 558
Day 28: 533
Day 29 and 30: 1,038 (Atlanta to Toronto)

Total: 9,254

Um. That's 14,806 kilometres. Or 493.5 kilometres a day.
That doesn't make sense. I can't fathom that.

Assuming the bus was always travelling at 70 miles per hour, the limit on the Interstate system, I was on a bus for just over 132 hours. Given the reality of roads, acceleration, deceleration, and construction, and traffic jams, bus time lasted much, much longer.

And all that doesn't include flying from Toronto to Halifax two days before the bus trip started.

This reflection stuff is fun. What to calculate next?

**

Oh, and please excuse the calculation of miles per day. It includes travel through the air, which it shouldn't for accuracy. But the point stands.

UPDATE: My friend Philippe reminded me that the Earth's diameter is roughly 12,800 kilometres. Take that, planet!

Map update: 19 November

I write this from Toronto, where my bus safely arrived this afternoon. Above is the completed map, roughly broken into the two halves of the trip (black = first half; blue = second half).

Below is the day-by-day map. It's a bit hard to follow in some places, and I spent multiple days in a few places, of course, but it at least illustrates how long (and short) some of the trips were. Check out Chicago to Denver, Albuquerque to Austin, and Atlanta to Toronto. Man oh man. Never do that.

The long (long, long, long) ride home

25 hours in total. Atlanta to Chattanooga to Nashville to Louisville to Cincinnati to Detroit to Windsor to London to Toronto (Yorkdale first, argh) to downtown Toronto. Don't ever do what I did after spending 32 days on the road.

It's fine to take one of these long trips, or even two or three -- okay, not three -- but the rides just don't end. Toss in some crying babies, some sickeningly irritable coughing from all sides, and the cramped space that is the Greyhound, and you get cabin fever almost instantly.

This, though, was one of the better looking parts of the trip. It's the Tennessee River just a few miles north and west of Chattanooga. Sorry for any glare.

Otherwise, not a fun trip. I did pick up a book called The Edifice Complex in Chattanooga (at the bus station, of all places) and got through some of it. Take a look at the review if you're interested. It's all about power and its relation to architecture, and vice versa -- really interesting stuff. I just couldn't get too far without getting annoyed by a shrill baby or gross cough or an unsettling bump in the road.

Remember "Fatigue"?

Yeah, that was lame. This is a bus trip. No flights home. There is nothing quite like seeing the country at 70 miles an hour, and 500 miles an hour from 30,000 feet up? That's just a cop-out.

See you at the finish line!

(*Which is, uh, undetermined as of this morning. Still negotiating with Toronto council and provincial and federal counterparts to close some streets and secure multi-level police presence. And I imagine most major national networks will be there, but we're still talking about financial compensation. Oh, the Queen has confirmed her attendance, though.)

Want to read a book?

Then go on a road trip. You'll read lots. Here is a list of what I've flipped through so far:

DelCorso's Gallery
Late Nights on Air
Dreams from my Father
Choke
How did the States get their Shapes?
In the Shadow of Watergate

Map update: 12 November

So I just got off the bus in Austin. It was an 18-hour trip across New Mexico and much of the Great State of Texas. By the way, it's just as big as it looks on the map.

Don't ever do what I just did. Somehow, the 23-hour trip from New Orleans to Chicago and the 24-hour trip from there to Denver both seemed easier to endure than today's beast of a ride.

Unfortunately, there were no real characters of note on any of today's three buses.

One woman going to Florida who didn't trust anything I said about our next destinations (that I was right every time isn't much of a boost. I just learned how to read directions as a child.). One drunk Texan who kept accosting people. A teenager coming back from Marine Corps training in San Diego. You know, same 'ol.

So that's that. Oh, and the blue on the map is sort of what I'm considering the second half of the trip, if only because I'm moving back to time-zone sanity (i.e. Eastern Standard Time).

America: Land of the free, home of precipitation

After almost three weeks of sun or only partial cloudiness, America decided to rain. And it's going to keep doing that for the next couple of days (according to the only people less trustworthy than politicians). Try as I might, I probably can't escape it.

Notice how New Orleans isn't raining. It's just asking for me to come back. That's right, me.

The beginning of the final week

It might look like this:

Denver
Santa Fe
Albuquerque (Sleep)
Oklahoma City
Austin (Sleep)
New Orleans (Sleep)

It's no more than 10 hours between any of those cities, which is manageable.

Cool. The southwest!

Map update: 06 November

As you can see, Greyhound doesn't always allow you to go in straight lines. That last 23-hour leg (24, actually, since we dropped a time zone) was something else. Turns out Kansas looks exactly how you think it would.

Tumbleweed.
Rolling.
Slowly.

Cars kicking up dust on dirt roads reaching to the horizon.
And the flattest horizon you can imagine.

Night and day are interchangeable 0n the Great Plains.

Next stop: Denver

First, there was the Music City.
Then the Magic City.
Then the Big Easy.
Currently, the Windy City.
Next, the Mile High City.

Americans are so creative.

VIDEO: Cincinnati, America's disappointment

I might be knocking Cincinnati for no good reason. I might just have been trying to fill time there by recording this uninspired video. But if someone can tell me something redeemable about Ohio's southern terminus, I'll be glad to hear it.

Sitting here in beautiful, downtown Lexington, the sun is shining again.

West Virginia: beautiful state

In a recent episode of FX's 30 Days, Morgan Spurlock returned to his home state, West Virginia, to work in a coal mine.

The show gave the impression that the state is all about coal.

Well, at first glance, that's pretty accurate.

We passed numerous coal refineries and pro-coal billboards today as we wound through the Kanawha River valley on the way to Charleston.

Most of the state itself, though, looks much like the picture to the left (not mine, unfortunately). It is in the heart of the Appalachian mountains, a very old range that is mostly tree-covered -- not many bare peaks, in other words. It makes for a very relaxing experience.

(Note: West Virginia tourism did not pay for any of the above.)

A wacky day on the road

Every bus today was late. Nothing out of the ordinary in these parts, as Greyhound Canada is much more reliable than its southern parent company that rolls along most Interstate routes.

Some highlights from today, a monstrously long day that started in D.C. and ended in Columbus:

• In D.C.'s waiting room, I talked to a gentleman named Mel. He likes Barack Obama and prefers him to John McCain, but is rooting for McCain, anyway. Why? If Obama wins, Mel says, he will be assassinated. The civil-rights movement will thus be set back a generation.

• Mel also believes that the Monica Lewinsky affair was a set up; that Bill Clinton plotted to kill former commerce secretary Rob Brown; and that the Pentagon strike on 9/11 was not carried out by Islamic terrorists, but "someone else" who actually received training in landing.

• The gentleman in front of me leaving D.C., a clean-cut chap on the way to Richmond, Virginia, proceeded to shield his eyes from light by, I kid you not, wearing underwear on his head.

• Someone behind me sort of mumbled his way through the trip, doubting the existence of New Jersey and requesting corroboration from his seatmate.

• From rural West Virginia until Columbus, I sat across from a drunk Texan who was drunk presumably because he attended two funerals this week in different parts of the country, and is on his way to see his sister who is (hopefully) recovering from triple-bypass surgery.

• A crying baby ruined the trip by crying, in my estimation, 60 per cent of the time. Moral of the story: Always bring some form of nourishment for an infant.

Eighteen hours through the Appalachians

Not everything always goes according to plan. Case in point: Columbus, Ohio was not part of the plan for Thirty Days. But the way Greyhound travels the land isn't always the most convenient.

As the map illustrates, West Virginia and Kentucky border each other. But in order to get from Charleston to Lexington, you have to transfer (twice!) in Ohio: Columbus and Cincinnati.

Even though the trip cuts through part of Kentucky no more than two hours from Lexington.

All of this made today a little longer, and it's the reason I decided to spend the night in Columbus.

Boston to Washington

Not much happened for 12 hours. But at the end of it all, I had made it Washington, D.C.
My mission for the day was to spot as many professional sports stadiums as I could from the windows of the bus. The final tally:

• Fenway Park (Boston Red Sox)
• Yankee Stadium (Chicago Cubs)
• M&T Bank Stadium (Baltimore Ravens/Stallions/Colts)
• I couldn't spot Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands. This was a big disappointment, mostly because it's the only thing in an enormous swamp. Er, New Jersey.

The Maritimes in a day

I slept from Halifax until Truro, so I don't know what that looked like. Deal with it.

I am pleased to announce that the first official guest character of Thirty Days across America made an appearance in Amherst, Nova Scotia.

Welcome to the show Mike Jakeman. He worked at an Irving convenience store for nine years, went to college in Halifax to study accounting, finished a three-month stint looking for work in Vancouver. He now lives in Moncton and is paying off student loans before completing his four-year program at a Halifax-area university. Either St. Mary's or Mount St. Vincent.

Go for St. Mary's, dude. Go Huskies.

Anyways, he was one of those typical Canadians. Thanks for appearing on the show on the blog in this experiment, Mike.

Here's something notable about New Brunswick. Saint John is one of the prettiest ugly towns in Canada. And hey, if you squint really hard and imagine you are in Vancouver on a sunny day, it's downright beautiful in Saint John. Yeah, we're talking Hamilton ugly.