I am currently sitting in a hotel lounge overlooking the Sea of Galilee, Israel, streaming Abigail Washburn from my computer, currently in Grand Rapids, MIchigan. Sounds great, and the cool factor is off the scale.
I visited Grand Rapids once - via train. I was four. I don't remember much beyond a vague memory of a late night train station. I didn't bring a computer, because we didn't have one. It being the late '70's, if we did have one, it might have looked like this:
@amclark2 Don't get me started on the train station in Grand Rapids :-). I have European expectations when it comes to trains. Grand Rapids to Chicago (a moderately sized city to a large one) has one train in each direction per day, slow and routinely delayed, and the train station for Grand Rapids (metropolitan area population = 775,000) looks like someone moved their garden shed next to the tracks and put a couple of chairs in it. I took the train to Toronto once (had to drive an hour to Lansing first to get it - trains only go in one direction out of Grand Rapids); comfortable but unreliable and slower than driving. If you came to Grand Rapids by train you did well to get out again.
@Plong42 re "small world" - yes indeed. This is not a large discussion board and was not assembled along geographical lines, and I already discovered Greg and I grew up within a few miles of each other in Lincolnshire, now I find you're in the same city. Been here 11 years now, over by the East Beltline. Not a bad place to live at all, despite the unsatisfactory trains.
When you think about it, that Bat-Computer did some mighty fine police work back in the mid-60s. There must have been a whole bunch of Bat-Geeks inputting Bat-Data behind the scenes, though. Or maybe he Bat-Outsourced that work.
An interesting discussion! I love amclark's picture of the PET computer. It was the first computer I ever used that didn't take up a whole room. We had just one in the whole school. My phone does a million times more than that computer could do but we thought it was amazing. That was in my teaching career, where now I wouldn't be able to teach without computers. I was telling this to some student teachers a few weeks ago - one can't imagine how teaching will change during their careers.
Now trains - yes I too have European expectations of American trains. I have already started trying to plan our big 'retirement' trip to North America. I don't sleep well on trains, so I naively thought that we could get on a train in Chicago going to California, stop somewhere on the way in the evening, stay a couple of nights and then get on a morning train. No way... we were able to have a reasonable choice between NY and Boston, so I thought everywhere would have regular trains throughout the day. How wrong can you be? I much prefer train to travel to going by air. If I wanted to visit, say, Brighternow in Germany by train I could do it with only a couple of easy changes within a day, even though we live on an island. A great form of transport in my view
Going from Chicago to California, with stops at night; unfortunately the best option for that might be renting a car. I do wish our train situation would improve here. It's not only the inconvenience of routes and stops - it's also prohibitively expensive, at least for a train-train. By which I mean, once we took an Amtrak from New Jersey to New York City, and it was about $80 per ticket. 15 years laters later, we wised up and made the same trip by New Jersey Transit, and the total cost round-trip was something like $15.
I often wish I lived in a city with good public transport, but people who don't have cars are missing out on the experience of being able to really crank out loudly any music they chooses without any worries of neighbors or significant others. Some things are just better in a car than on the headphones.
Yes, I've already come to the car hire decision - lots of driving distance though for a European! We're fortunate to be able to have a choice of car or train here. Little local public transport away from the major towns, but several train stations are not too far from where I live by car. I must admit though last time we hired a car in the States I struggled to get used to the automatic gearbox, just so slow moving away at junctions etc. And those speed limits in some states...
Yeah, distance is a very culture relative thing. When we lived in England with my wife's parents in Wales about a 4 hour drive away that was a major trip, only undertaken if we intended to stay for a few days. That's about here to Chicago and people go there shopping!
I can't really stand auto transmission either - that was my biggest hangup about finally getting a minvan - they don't come in manual. If you really punch the gas, they will get moving generally, which is not so good for the engine/transmission, but it's a rental so who cares? Well I guess maybe I should care since I bought my minivan as a used rental. But two years of rough driving is nothing compared to two years with two kids, a dog, and a bump in the driveway from the inlaws.
4 hours is a bit long for me for a day trip - although I guess Toronto might be close to 4 hours, and we used to do that relatively frequently for a daytrip. The border crossing's gotten more complicated though, and we have the kids, so haven't been in a while. So maybe that's the key - 4 hours is fine for a daytrip until you have kids.
When my stepson was at University we had to drive 7 hours to St Andrews from home (he was two years ahead of Prince William but never met him even though they both did Art History - different crcles of people!) A couple of times we had to do the journey there and back in a day - ugh! Four hours is a good limit here too, if you can stick to motorways it'll get you 200-250 miles away. From home unless I was going to France, eight or nine hours would get me virtually anywhere in the country
Every spring I watch in stupified admiration/puzzlement as my students use their one-week spring break to drive 20-something hours from Grand Rapids to Florida packed five or six to a vehicle, spend 5 days on the beach, and then drive 20-something hours back in time for classes to start the following Monday morning. Such an endeavour is both beyond my current stage of life and beyond my cultural horizon.
Closest I'm going to get to that in the near future is that my older daughter is going to university in Mississippi in August and we're going to drive her down. At 15 and a half hours (as Google reckons it) that's going to be the furthest I've ever driven in a stretch by about 200%. I'm half kind of looking forward to the adventure and half living in morbid dread of the discomfort and tedium. At least you can read on trains. My planned survival strategy is to download a Gigabyte or two of comedy shows to listen to in the car.
Distances this side of the pond really are just different. A year or so back I was sitting in Vancouver airport waiting for a connecting flight to Terrace, BC, where I was due to do some training at a school the next morning. I had a general idea that Terrace was further north, about half way up BC. There were announcements that gave the impression that maybe my flight was going to be canceled, so I thought, maybe I should rent a car. Fired up Google, it said 15 hours in a straight line. And that's only half way up BC. The only way you can drive that far in England is by circumnavigating the coastline. I experienced a sudden recalibration of geographical imagination; that still happens to me every now and then despite having been here quite a while. (Happily, the flight did leave).
Back in '89 my family had an exchange student from Switzerland. As we already had a trip to Florida planned before we agreed to host her, she got to come along. It didn't take her more than a couple of days of asking "how long are we driving today?" to which my dad would answer "about 10 hours", to stop asking.
Amazingly she'd only been with us a couple weeks when this happened and not only did she survive sitting in the middle of the back seat between my brother and I, but we are still incredibly close.
Thanks to driving everywhere growing up, I've been to all 50 states and had a lot of fun.
There's a whole new field of academic study here - based around cultural geography. Last summer we spent a week on both Guernsey and Jersey. We took our smaller car with us. In total we did far more miles on each journey to and from the port (about 130 miles each way) than we did on both islands together. Yet you need a car there to get around - even though they are so small. It is what the locals are used to - to them driving in England or France seems strange. In Switzwerland trains are defintely the 'king' of transport - we travelled there first time by tain and only ever went on the bus a couple of times - there are so many trains that run totally on time there (not like here!). But to me everyone of the 50 states seems like a mega achievement!
To me, given the size, it is mega just going to every state! Europe has just over 50 countries and I'm not even half way there yet, and the size isn't that different, especially when you take Alaska and Hawaii into account
I guess I never really thought about the exact number of countries in Europe, but just over 50 surprises me! That means I've got some serious work to do across the pond as I've only been to 9 of them. Unless Monaco and Vatican City count, then it's 11.
According to Wikipaedia there are 50 Sovereign States, but it is open to dispute.
There are currently 50 internationally recognised sovereign states with territory located in Europe, of which 44 have their capital within Europe
Some would say that some of the former Soviet states are mainly in Asia so doi not count. Kosovans believe that they are a separate country. Including Monacco and Vatican City I've been to 17 so I too have a long way to go!
Thanks to driving everywhere growing up, I've been to all 50 states and had a lot of fun.
You did NOT drive to Hawaii, young man!
That was a dream of mine when I was a kid, to at least set foot in all 50 states. Hawaii & Alaska are the only ones left ; )
Cultural geography. When I was in France the local office was yapping on about how Americans don't learn foreign languages. I just told them, "In America, you can drive coast to oast for 3 days without having to switch to a different language, unlike here in Europe." They'd never thought of it that way. I really think it's one of the reasons this country isn't more multilingual. There isn't as much need and the benefits aren't as obvious.
So maybe that's the key - 4 hours is fine for a daytrip until you have kids.
Ding ding ding! We have a winner! Actually smaller children are even better on long trips that teens, in case you're getting any bright ideas. (Your kids are still small, aren't they?)
@Plong, any more adventures with audiogalaxy & your iPad? Sounds cool. I wonder if they will drop the price from $600 to $49 like the iPhone.
"There isn't as much need and the benefits aren't as obvious."
That and, historically, the nation/culture with the most military and economic power tends historically to see less need to learn others' languages, but every need for others to learn theirs. America's not unusual in this.
No, I did not. That was a flight, as was Alaska, but I certainly would not have been to places like Kentucky, Mississippi, Arkansas, Wyoming, etc., if we hadn't been driving and able to stop and see the sights!
Interesting point about language. We in Britain are just as bad at learning languages as anyone. In Sicilly a few weeks ago I really tried to use my limited Italian, but most people replied in English
Comments
I don't think we brought it with us to Grand Rapids either.
But he was Commissioner, not Commodore. And that show was set in Gotham City, not Grand Rapids.
In the comic books, Batman's pet was Ace, the Bat-Hound.
Craig
Shazam to that.
@Plong42 re "small world" - yes indeed. This is not a large discussion board and was not assembled along geographical lines, and I already discovered Greg and I grew up within a few miles of each other in Lincolnshire, now I find you're in the same city. Been here 11 years now, over by the East Beltline. Not a bad place to live at all, despite the unsatisfactory trains.
Will keep an eye out for other Super Pets.
When you think about it, that Bat-Computer did some mighty fine police work back in the mid-60s. There must have been a whole bunch of Bat-Geeks inputting Bat-Data behind the scenes, though. Or maybe he Bat-Outsourced that work.
Now trains - yes I too have European expectations of American trains. I have already started trying to plan our big 'retirement' trip to North America. I don't sleep well on trains, so I naively thought that we could get on a train in Chicago going to California, stop somewhere on the way in the evening, stay a couple of nights and then get on a morning train. No way... we were able to have a reasonable choice between NY and Boston, so I thought everywhere would have regular trains throughout the day. How wrong can you be? I much prefer train to travel to going by air. If I wanted to visit, say, Brighternow in Germany by train I could do it with only a couple of easy changes within a day, even though we live on an island. A great form of transport in my view
Best super-pet ever: Underdog
Going from Chicago to California, with stops at night; unfortunately the best option for that might be renting a car. I do wish our train situation would improve here. It's not only the inconvenience of routes and stops - it's also prohibitively expensive, at least for a train-train. By which I mean, once we took an Amtrak from New Jersey to New York City, and it was about $80 per ticket. 15 years laters later, we wised up and made the same trip by New Jersey Transit, and the total cost round-trip was something like $15.
I often wish I lived in a city with good public transport, but people who don't have cars are missing out on the experience of being able to really crank out loudly any music they chooses without any worries of neighbors or significant others. Some things are just better in a car than on the headphones.
4 hours is a bit long for me for a day trip - although I guess Toronto might be close to 4 hours, and we used to do that relatively frequently for a daytrip. The border crossing's gotten more complicated though, and we have the kids, so haven't been in a while. So maybe that's the key - 4 hours is fine for a daytrip until you have kids.
Closest I'm going to get to that in the near future is that my older daughter is going to university in Mississippi in August and we're going to drive her down. At 15 and a half hours (as Google reckons it) that's going to be the furthest I've ever driven in a stretch by about 200%. I'm half kind of looking forward to the adventure and half living in morbid dread of the discomfort and tedium. At least you can read on trains. My planned survival strategy is to download a Gigabyte or two of comedy shows to listen to in the car.
Distances this side of the pond really are just different. A year or so back I was sitting in Vancouver airport waiting for a connecting flight to Terrace, BC, where I was due to do some training at a school the next morning. I had a general idea that Terrace was further north, about half way up BC. There were announcements that gave the impression that maybe my flight was going to be canceled, so I thought, maybe I should rent a car. Fired up Google, it said 15 hours in a straight line. And that's only half way up BC. The only way you can drive that far in England is by circumnavigating the coastline. I experienced a sudden recalibration of geographical imagination; that still happens to me every now and then despite having been here quite a while. (Happily, the flight did leave).
Amazingly she'd only been with us a couple weeks when this happened and not only did she survive sitting in the middle of the back seat between my brother and I, but we are still incredibly close.
Thanks to driving everywhere growing up, I've been to all 50 states and had a lot of fun.
Craig
Mega is the folks who go to every county in the country. Iowa alone has 99 counties, so that is quite the undertaking.
Craig
Craig
You did NOT drive to Hawaii, young man!
That was a dream of mine when I was a kid, to at least set foot in all 50 states. Hawaii & Alaska are the only ones left ; )
Cultural geography. When I was in France the local office was yapping on about how Americans don't learn foreign languages. I just told them, "In America, you can drive coast to oast for 3 days without having to switch to a different language, unlike here in Europe." They'd never thought of it that way. I really think it's one of the reasons this country isn't more multilingual. There isn't as much need and the benefits aren't as obvious.
So maybe that's the key - 4 hours is fine for a daytrip until you have kids.
Ding ding ding! We have a winner! Actually smaller children are even better on long trips that teens, in case you're getting any bright ideas. (Your kids are still small, aren't they?)
@Plong, any more adventures with audiogalaxy & your iPad? Sounds cool. I wonder if they will drop the price from $600 to $49 like the iPhone.
That and, historically, the nation/culture with the most military and economic power tends historically to see less need to learn others' languages, but every need for others to learn theirs. America's not unusual in this.
No, I did not. That was a flight, as was Alaska, but I certainly would not have been to places like Kentucky, Mississippi, Arkansas, Wyoming, etc., if we hadn't been driving and able to stop and see the sights!
Craig
I used to use AG years ago when it was a napster-type service, the iPad app was the first sort of "cloud" I recall seeing.