Moving to Rhode Island has been like nothing else, though. People here think driving 15 mins is a hardship. And the fact that I commute over an hour to Boston is like, incomprehensible.
My SIL lives in CT, on the Rhode Island border, and drives through the entire state of RI to her teaching job in suburban Boston. When her students find out she lives in CT they definitely picture, like, Stamford.
Also, if you happen to have grown up near Greenfield, I have been to the People's Pint on several occasions.
Lol. Maine is like this too. The whole state is Portland, and sometimes Bar Harbor. We've had people passing through Portland want to meet up with us, and it's like... you realize that we're two hours away, yes?
It's also one of those places where people assume that there's all of 12 people in the state and we all know each other.
You are also not really going to go to Portland and just side trip to Acadia for the day. We don’t actually keep all our attractions in an hour radius.
Maine is one of those deceptively large states, as I am reminded every time I drive to The County.
Moving to Rhode Island has been like nothing else, though. People here think driving 15 mins is a hardship. And the fact that I commute over an hour to Boston is like, incomprehensible.
My SIL lives in CT, on the Rhode Island border, and drives through the entire state of RI to her teaching job in suburban Boston. When her students find out she lives in CT they definitely picture, like, Stanford.
Also, if you happen to have grown up near Greenfield, I have been to the People's Pint on several occasions.
Yeah your SIL feels me. At least I can take the commuter train. Driving to Boston is brutal. And yes that’s very close to where I grew up (well, the closest actual real town anyways ) and I’m very familiar!
I was born and raised in NJ (Essex county, exit 148). I went to college in Peoria, IL. Once I was able to I brought a car to campus. Driving from NJ to IL and then IL to NJ for college/breaks was torture. PA was THE WORST. Like 6-8 hours to drive across. SO boring. I had a cute tee shirt that showed the drive to Peoria. It was like corn, cows, Bradley University, cows, corn. Pretty accurate.
When I first moved to TX all my coworkers said everything is 6 hours away. It amazes me you can drive for like 10 hours and STILL be in TX.
Until you’ve driven across Wyoming I don’t want to hear about boring. At least you saw cows and corn.
HA! I know I've been through Wyoming (and Nebraska and the Dakotas) but I was a kid so it's not the same as being the driver.
The cows & corn were Indiana and Illinois. I used to joke that driving across PA via the PA Turnpike was as follows: You go up the mountain You go down the mountain You go through the mountain
My son was born in the UK and has a consular report of birth abroad (CRBA) - and a US passport. When we went to renew his passport in the US the woman at the passport place was insistent that I needed to send in my sons green card, along with his CRBA and his US passport that we were renewing. No matter how many times I explained to her that he was a US citizen by birth and didn't need a green card, and wouldn't HAVE a green card if he was a citizen, which he clearly was since he had a US passport, she wouldn't believe me. I had to get someone else to come over and explain it to her.
My daughter was born in the US, and on her birth certificate application I put my husband was born in the U.K. When we got her birth certificate it said he was born in the Ukraine.
You are also not really going to go to Portland and just side trip to Acadia for the day. We don’t actually keep all our attractions in an hour radius.
Maine is one of those deceptively large states, as I am reminded every time I drive to The County.
(Former) County Girl here. My retirement goal is some expansive land with a new house in Monticello.
I was born and raised in NJ (Essex county, exit 148). I went to college in Peoria, IL. Once I was able to I brought a car to campus. Driving from NJ to IL and then IL to NJ for college/breaks was torture. PA was THE WORST. Like 6-8 hours to drive across. SO boring. I had a cute tee shirt that showed the drive to Peoria. It was like corn, cows, Bradley University, cows, corn. Pretty accurate.
When I first moved to TX all my coworkers said everything is 6 hours away. It amazes me you can drive for like 10 hours and STILL be in TX.
Until you’ve driven across Wyoming I don’t want to hear about boring. At least you saw cows and corn.
I enjoy Wyoming! Windmills, sagebrush, snow fences, and so many shades of brown... I-80 gets congested around Grand Island, NE and I don’t mind Wyoming so much.
There’s a meme I see often when people talk about Nevada. It has a photo from the northern part of the state and one from Vegas. And says “I live here” on the northern photo of sagebrush and mountains and “not here” on the Vegas photo.
My dad, who lives in New Hampshire, will mention to people that he is going to the West Coast to visit his daughters. People will say "Oh you are going to California?". Most people are baffled when he explains there are two other states on the West Coast. Like they cease to realize that Oregon and Washington are in fact, states.
When I studied abroad, nobody in Europe seemed to have any idea about either of them. We’d clarify by saying North of California and they’d say, Oh! California! Some of them had heard of Seattle but didn’t know anything else about it, what state it was in or where it was. That’s a little more forgivable than Americans not knowing. They cover states/geography several times in school!
I went to grad school in Binghamton, NY, and I always specify to people that I lived in "New York, but not New York City." Otherwise, people assume something very different from what my experience actually was!
All. The. Time.
I used to have an annoying coworker who LOVED Manhattan. She would vacation there a ton and was always excited to be able to take work trips there twice a year. I clarified to her that I was from upstate NY and she was like, "Wait... what's upstate NY?" The rest of the entire state that isn't NYC!
A lot of people just don’t understand upstate NY. I’m from downstate, but I always have to clarify that it’s not NYC, but rather LI.
I teach in Germany, and I’ve had a few students try to correct me that there are 51-52 states. And they really argue with me about this.
Driving across NE is the most boring. Ever. /gavel
Truth. A few years ago we drove from Co Springs to visit friends in Lincoln, and it was the most boring drive ever! We vowed that if we ever did it again, we'd do it at night, because it was actually better than the crushing boredom of doing it during daylight hours.
Moving to Rhode Island has been like nothing else, though. People here think driving 15 mins is a hardship. And the fact that I commute over an hour to Boston is like, incomprehensible.
A coworker of mine here in CO that grew up in RI has told a story that he broke up with a girl because she lived more than 20 minutes away and it was just too far. He commutes about that far now to work every day. DH, who moved from the Bay Area to CO used to argue with me that CO was a midwestern state. No!
Until you’ve driven across Wyoming I don’t want to hear about boring. At least you saw cows and corn.
I enjoy Wyoming! Windmills, sagebrush, snow fences, and so many shades of brown... I-80 gets congested around Grand Island, NE and I don’t mind Wyoming so much.
There’s a meme I see often when people talk about Nevada. It has a photo from the northern part of the state and one from Vegas. And says “I live here” on the northern photo of sagebrush and mountains and “not here” on the Vegas photo.
I enjoy Wyoming too. But it is truly expansive and empty in places. I recall stopping in Chugwater, population 55 at the time, to use the restroom. It had 4 town buildings and two houses in sight.
I was born and raised in NJ (Essex county, exit 148). I went to college in Peoria, IL. Once I was able to I brought a car to campus. Driving from NJ to IL and then IL to NJ for college/breaks was torture. PA was THE WORST. Like 6-8 hours to drive across. SO boring. I had a cute tee shirt that showed the drive to Peoria. It was like corn, cows, Bradley University, cows, corn. Pretty accurate.
When I first moved to TX all my coworkers said everything is 6 hours away. It amazes me you can drive for like 10 hours and STILL be in TX.
Until you’ve driven across Wyoming I don’t want to hear about boring. At least you saw cows and corn.
Or Kansas/Nebraska. I actually thought PA was pretty! Lots of hills and trees. But I agree, it is much bigger than I realized.
Being new to the east coast I am having the opposite reaction to a lot of people mentioned. I am shocked how close together everything is. I'm used to driving 2-4 hours to get to a city with a decent airport, big name concerts, etc. Everything here is so close! It's amazing.
My dad, who lives in New Hampshire, will mention to people that he is going to the West Coast to visit his daughters. People will say "Oh you are going to California?". Most people are baffled when he explains there are two other states on the West Coast. Like they cease to realize that Oregon and Washington are in fact, states.
When I studied abroad, nobody in Europe seemed to have any idea about either of them. We’d clarify by saying North of California and they’d say, Oh! California! Some of them had heard of Seattle but didn’t know anything else about it, what state it was in or where it was. That’s a little more forgivable than Americans not knowing. They cover states/geography several times in school!
Yes I don’t know all the province/states/regions of every European country so I wouldn’t expect them to know all our states.
My H has driven across the country (to/from CA from the northeast) several times, and also moved from CA to Seattle once and Seattle to MA once. He agrees with pixy0stix about Nebraska. My uncle, who lived in Utah and was from New York, also agreed with that assessment. From what I hear, the whole way through the state is nothing but flat, and the only "variety" is how close or far away the Platte River is.
Until you’ve driven across Wyoming I don’t want to hear about boring. At least you saw cows and corn.
Or Kansas/Nebraska. I actually thought PA was pretty! Lots of hills and trees. But I agree, it is much bigger than I realized.
Being new to the east coast I am having the opposite reaction to a lot of people mentioned. I am shocked how close together everything is. I'm used to driving 2-4 hours to get to a city with a decent airport, big name concerts, etc. Everything here is so close! It's amazing.
H is from Colorado and even though he’s lived out here for a decade plus he is still a little amazed that in 4 hours we drive through 4 states to my parents. He’s like you drive 4 hours in Colorado and you’re still in Colorado.
Because I drive from Philly to Boston to visit my in-laws, the worst state for me is CT. We're just in it for so long compared to the other states in between here and there. There's not much there. We always have to stop to pee. It always takes longer than you think. There's always traffic.
But to others' points, from here to my-inlaws is 300ish miles, about 6 hours, and I touch 5 states: PA, NJ, NY, CT and MA.
Driving all of Alabama from north to south is fairly boring too. Not nearly as bad as Iowa east to west though.
I'm about 3 hours outside Chicago. Over the summer a couple of us overheard a 60-something year old manager talking about going to Chicago for a meeting and how she was going to have to dig out some of her winter clothes because it'd be cold there....it was July. We had to explain that she would not be experiencing that big of a climate difference. Apparently she'd never been to the city in the summer and she genuinely thought Chicago was always cold.
Because I drive from Philly to Boston to visit my in-laws, the worst state for me is CT. We're just in it for so long compared to the other states in between here and there. There's not much there. We always have to stop to pee. It always takes longer than you think. There's always traffic.
But to others' points, from here to my-inlaws is 300ish miles, about 6 hours, and I touch 5 states: PA, NJ, NY, CT and MA.
The I-84 sucks in CT. I used to drive from LI to Boston a bit, and that was the worst part.
I went to college in Arkansas, from Massachusetts and now we regularly drive from Ohio to either Iowa (DH's family) or to Massachusetts (my family). We've gotten to the point where we have favorite rest areas. The small northeastern states are always so weird to DH.
Post by rachelgreen on Dec 2, 2018 14:01:57 GMT -5
I grew up going from the Chicago burbs to Waterloo Iowa to visit my aunt with my grandma once a month and my grandma made up a game to kill the boredom of a small kid driving through endless cornfields. Every animal spotted counted on your side and the first to ten win. A cemetery wiped your number clean. It wasn’t until I was an adult I realized, well duh, she knew where every cemetery already was and it would keep me occupied, lol.
Because I drive from Philly to Boston to visit my in-laws, the worst state for me is CT. We're just in it for so long compared to the other states in between here and there. There's not much there. We always have to stop to pee. It always takes longer than you think. There's always traffic.
But to others' points, from here to my-inlaws is 300ish miles, about 6 hours, and I touch 5 states: PA, NJ, NY, CT and MA.
The I-84 sucks in CT. I used to drive from LI to Boston a bit, and that was the worst part.
84 is the only highway I've ever driven on where you can be all the way over to the right, not move, and all of a sudden be in the left lane.
Also, my favorite New England example is from when I worked in Hartford, and my coworker (who was from TX) went to a tourism convention at one of the casinos. They did a raffle and one of the prizes was a weekend in New Haven. The lady next to him sighed wistfully and said, "I've ALWAYS wanted to go to New Haven." He shook his head and said, "so get in your car and drive an hour that way!"
seeyalater52, I'm not surprised at all. Someone on a flight once tried to figure out how he knew me, (he didn't) and when I said I was from western MA, he said, "Me too! I'm from Leominster." *headdesk*
Post by seeyalater52 on Dec 2, 2018 16:52:17 GMT -5
5kcandlesinthewind I LOL’ed at that. Someone in Boston one time tried to tell me that Worcester is in western MA. Bitch please, Worcester is practically a suburb of Boston.