From a distance...

One thing that had never really struck me about the US until i'd visited was the sheer size of the place. I mean, this is a country that covers four international time zones (compared to our paltry one in the UK - still, at least we have the Greenwich Meridian as the zero line!) and which can house the UK a little over 39 times (heck, the UK is just smaller than Oregon here and that's not even the largest state). As you can understand, the perception of things over here is quite different. In some ways, this can be plain ridiculous - on telling a couple of people (not in the lab i should add) that i came from about 3 hours from London (after the cliched question asked to most people from the UK or England), the prompt reply was that they were surprised that there was anywhere in the UK that was three hours from anywhere else. It sometimes makes me wonder if some Americans see the UK as a desert island with a palm tree on and little else. It's either that or London bordered by a few miles worth of cobbled streets and thatch-roofed cottages (got to have those!).

On the whole, though, this perception is quite surprising. In the UK, Manchester to Yorkshire (about 2 hours) was quite a drive, over here it's barely to the next state and generally considered 'in the neighborhood'. On a plane, you can go from Glasgow to London in about an hour or so. Over here, New York to Charleston was 2 hours - and that's about half of the East coast distance. A recent acquaintance drove from California to Charleston - taking about five days to do so (with a couple of overnight stops). In five days, you could probably go from Lands End to John O'Groats a couple of times. With distances like this to deal with, it suddenly becomes easier to understand the American reliance on the car. Now if we could only get some decent drivers...