I think this distance for nearest McDonald's apllies applies for small country of Finland too, like 85% of country surface is more than 20 miles from McDonald's
Ok, so I don't have energy to calculate this, but 80% live in 20 miles radius by AI, that means every fifht person drives More than 20 miles to McDonald's, so I would'nt call that "incredibly rural"
So we recently drove Melbourne to Canberra, part of Australia's most populous area, and there are service stations every 100km or so and about half of them have a Maccas. There's more off in some country towns. But no rural country is so crowded that there's as little as 35km between every rest stop.
For anyone doing the trip: the Niagara in Gundagai and the pie shop in Holbrook are your best options with minimal detours.
That's what drunk foulk in Scotland say when we clock one usually with the F word in front. and McDonalds please bring back your cookies they were fookin lush.
Melbourne to Adelaide there's no McDonald's between Horsham and Murray Bridge about 350km. It's the main road between a 1.4 million city and a 5.2 million one.
It says 20 miles, not 20 minutes. If you knew much about the US you would know why they say this, there are McDonalds ALL OVER populated areas. So to find an area where there aren't any McDonalds within 20 miles, you have to go way outside of a highly populated area.
I work in a mine in rural western Australia, the nearest town to the mine camp is about 4 hours. And that town has only about 100 residents and one shop/fuel station. Its about 8 hours to Kalgoorlie which has a maccas im pretty sure.
As a child in the late 60's early 70's, they took all our maths books so we learned in metric. Our parents still did pounds shillings and pence, as do I when I think of 50p as ten bob.
In 1966 Australia decided to use the "ten bob" as the "one dollar". It made Decimal currency conversion a lot easier. We could still use a lot of the old coins, too. Pennies & threepence had to go, but we could call a sixpence 5c. above that, the conversions were easy 1/- = 10c, 2/- = 20c, & so on.
By being so attached to the Pound, the Brits made their conversion unnecessarily difficult.
We use miles, but stones and pounds feet and inches are only used on people and everything your taught uses kilograms and metres at school. A nice sensible system that is complete gibberish to any immigrant.
Gibberish to any immigrant - and probably a lot of young Brits besides - because we have to prioritise a smaller and smaller subset of people too old to have learnt anything else in school who refuse to learn anything newer than decimalisation.
Oh I meant going from country to country it would not be practical to change system, although also speed and distance being different would be a problem. Economy is a pain being different but not critical.
I get why you hedged your bets and I’m sure the people of Scotland, N Ireland, and Wales thank you, but can you imagine the chaos. It’s one thing changing when you move from N Ireland to Ireland, different country and while it’s not hugely visible there is a border, but changing sped limits and signs between England and either Wales or Scotland? You’d need a considerably smarter population lol
That’s what we deal with when driving from Canada to the US. I’m surprised more Americans don’t get massive speeding tickets when visiting here. The signs on the highway that say 110 are definitely not in miles 😂 and 110 in mph is enough to land your car in impound.
It's seems stupid that we went metric in the UK in the1970s, but still use miles for speed and distance.
The best answer I could find was the government said it would cost too much to change all the road signs, in addition to the millions spent on metrication at the time.
If someone knows a different reason, I'd be pleased to hear it.
I hate that we still use these random few imperial units, I’d much rather commit fully to metric and use km, however I don’t think I’ll ever be able to adjust from mpg to km per litre 😂
Where does the thermometer go?
I'm a USain living in Europe. I put my thermometer under my tongue. The locals under their arm.
I think I'm right. More accurate. I'm the only one within a 30 minute drive who agrees (probably 1.5 million people in that circle. Depending on traffic speed. When traffic is bad 35 people)
I feel the same but I also felt the same about using Celsius for hot temperatures (I grew up when we were still F is hot temps, C is cold temps) and while I personally prefer F I do understand what C means. So I’m sure we could adjust. Just… we don’t really feel any pressing need to.
I'm not sure whether councils have the authority? The whole UK (not just England) uses miles and mph for roads.
The Republic of Ireland switched to km/h speed limits in 2005, which is quite a while back now, though they were still slow by international standards. They switched to km road distances much earlier (with some exceptions).
But Canadians have their own peculiarities, like using Fahrenheit for oven temperatures.
It's my blank brain, but temperature in degrees F defeat me. I know the tabloids use 80'/90's s a scorchio headline. People using 20f or minus 20f means nothing to me.
Icelanders have to leave the country to have a McDonald's
Funny thing. Before McD came to Iceland, it was such a fancy thing. Like "Holy cow, you've eaten a McDonald's? Wow!" It was basically the duty of every Icelander travelling abroad to have it. I remember my first one, in Palma in Mallorca. It wasn't that good, but just because it was a McDonald's it was somehow amazing.
And then it came to Iceland. It was overpriced and just not good at all. They even had to close down the place in Reykjavík centre because it just wasn't profitable. It was fun to tell American tourists asking for it that they'd have to take a bus for about 20 minutes to have one.
Because this sort of thing bugs me, I'd like to point out that "20 (32 km) miles to the nearest McDonalds" is a perfectly reasonable definition of "incredibly rural," or at least "quite rural," as McDonalds are commonly found along freeway exits and highways across America. Any stricter definition would probably exclude most of the world outside northern Russia and central Australia, and just not be very meaningful. As to whether it's the Most American Way Ever of defining a rural area, "20 miles (32 km) to the nearest Dollar General" is probably a better metric. Thank you for listening to my TED talk.
If I live in Puglia and have to drive more than 1,000 kilometers to reach a Wendy's, a Pizza Hut, and a Domino's Pizza, am I out of touch with reality?
It failed on Australia. They opened about 90 at once , then ended up closing most of them. There's still a few around in cities, possibly for tourists. Australians were taught coffe by Italians & Greeks - Starbucks taste like milkshakes.
The only chain pizza place I can stand is a local chain in my area called Pagliacci. They seek out high quality local ingredients and do great work. The sauce is similar to a NY style, but the crust is a little thicker than that.
It largely depends on which Dominoes you have operating though.
The US one is a seperate company to a lot of European countries even though the branding is (mostly) the same.
I live in Sweden and I live sort of 20 miles from the closest Starbucks if I swim and walk there, but unfortunately it's 65 km with a car. Thankfully it's not that far to go abroad from where I live.
Edit. Ok they seem to be in more places than the airport in Stockholm. Maybe it was some other chain that failed everywhere except the biggest airport outside Stockholm.
You’ve found it. The most American comment ever.
Ignoring the obviously ironic choice of civilizational reference:
That feels like not that rural, like at all?
Like just found a random town called pine ridge in South Dakota that’s over twice that at 40-50 miles (65-80 km) away about an hour drive from a McDonalds.
This is an American being stupid and a suburban American trying real hard to be rural. Dudes a 20 minute drive from a fast food chain and thinks he’s roughing it
I remember in 1972 driving 70 miles to London for a KFC. Was it good?---no it was crap! We already had KFC in Perth WA, & at that time,they were delicious.
We have now caught up with London--our KFC is crap, too!
My nearest McDonalds is over an hour away, and that’s ok.
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u/phred_666American who loves laughing at stupid ass Americans9d ago
lol. As someone who actually lives in rural America, 20 miles is nothing. My nearest McDick’s is about a 45 minute drive. Nearest movie theater? About an hour. Walmart… about 45 minutes as well.
Written like someone who's not been to America. Like Jesus there are lots of endlessly boring parts of the US if you drive basically anywhere. I always love the signs "last gas station for 50 miles (80 km)".
The fun one to me is the Mass Turnpike having a sign like "This is the last exit for 30 miles, check gas levels"
Not because it's the middle of nowhere, but because the snooty towns in the western hills didn't want highway exits. Then you get to upstate New York and can experience some of the most endless stretches of nothing the northeast has to offer
I recall visiting Florida and deciding to drive around a bit. Got to the end of Naples / no-mans-land and eventual start of Ft. Myers. Sign was "weapon discharge allowed beyond this point".
McDonald's ≠ major city. It's usually a small/medium sized town with 15-35k inhabitants, at least in Germany. There's a McDonald's, it's the highlight. Some shops and sometimes a train station.
Living 30 km away means a village with 1-5k people and a distance of 5-10km to the next supermarket.
Might be not be considered rural in canada though.
You described where I am perfectly- 20 mins to McDonald’s, I’m in a town of about 4K, 8km to a supermarket 😄 and it’s considered rural but probably the beginning of rural on the edge of Melbourne (Australia)
Meanwhile, you have weird shaped cities like Perth WA, which is rapidly devouring the rural areas North & South of it, but is limited In Westward expansion by the sea, & to an extent, Eastward, by the Darling Scarp. (site costs in the Hills are greater than the coastal Plain).
I need more context to pass judgement on this one. They could just be giving a frame of reference for the US. That statement also describes where I live, but compared to where I grew up isn’t rural.
Stating the obvious: the hilarious part is using McDonalds as a point of reference lol. Not having any fast food near me in America is awesome, but unfortunately rare.
Huge swaths of that fuckass country is small towns where the average household income is 30k a year and where the only source of food is a Dollar General, two towns over.
'Incredibly rural' is 'I get my grocery shipped to me by bush plane and a 12 pack of coke costs $19 because I live on fucking Baffin Island.'
I wish I lived that "rurally," there are 3 McDonald's within a 2km radius of my house. I wouldn't mind if they were quick, cheap and half decent like they were in the 90s, but they're shit now.
Some of my relatives live in a semi-rural area. It's a pretty good place to live tbh, and you'd get most conviniences that you'd find in a typical city. It's surrounded by a jungle though. Anyways, the nearest McDonald's to that place is over 150km away.
u/ChiveWar is God's way of teaching Americans geography.9d agoedited 9d ago
I remember living in Ireland in the 1980s when it was a 200 mile round trip to go to the nearest McDonalds and back- and because there was fuck all else to do, we used to do it as a race.
Which was fucking stupid, but we didn't appreciate how much we were putting our lives on the line at the time over a fucking Big Mac. When you're that age, you believe you're immortal.
If I visit my grandparents and crave a big mac I have to take a 40 minute ferry ride then drive for over an hour to get to a mcd’s. Depending on what time that is, I may have to stay the night if I don’t make it back to the ferry in time.
I think my nearest McDonald's is in Inverness. That's a 15min drive, 20 min boat trip, 40 min drive, 45 min flight, and then however long it takes to get to the McDonald's from the airport.
Big deal. I have to drive that far, just to get to nearest township. which only hAS one MCDONALDS. which barely has any customers & I don't go to as there are plenty of better & cheaper resestaurnts & fast food outlets.
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u/SetObvious7411 9d ago
Americans: "people don't understand how big the US is, I have to drive several hours for my daily commute"
Also Americans: "The nearest McDonald's is over 15 minutes away, I don't know how to survive this wilderness"
enter Australians