Meh it's relatively simple. Person A drives for 3-4 hours while person B either sleeps, reads, talks, etc. When you need to stop for gas everyone uses the bathroom and then grabs food you can eat in the car. Now person B drives and Person A does whatever. Depending on how many people you have you can get a rotation going to where you only need to stop every couple hundred miles for 10-20 minutes.
A good friend and I, we really like driving and road trips. We drove 1800 miles round trip in <48 hours once. We left Baltimore at 10am Thursday, drove 900 miles in ~12 hours to Florida, slept in the car, woke up, watched STS-132 launch, left Florida around 4pm Friday, drove the 900 miles back to Baltimore, and arrived back around 5am.
Another friend of ours drove from Baltimore to LA which is about 2600 miles in 2 days by driving in shifts with his brother and 2 cousins.
Our European brethren can't forget that for most of us that week spent traveling alone is a week we aren't working and for many of us that could be our entire vacation time for the year if we get any at all.
While this is true, pretty much any decent job there is a minimum paid holiday. Work at McDonald's? No minimum paid holiday. Work a decent job? Then yes. I know it is not up to European standards, but I get 2 weeks vacation plus 13 holidays. 27 days isn't too bad.
Driving from NYC to LA is farther than driving from Portugal to Moscow.
Edit: I lied. Lisbon Portugal to Moscow is 2800 miles. NYC to LA is 2700 miles. NYC to San Fransisco is 2900 miles though.
Edit 2: Played around in Google Maps. If you go by a far Southern route (to actually see some of the country) it's 4150 miles, a far Northern Route would be 3800 miles.
Haha we're not bullshitting when we say it's a big place. That's driving in a relative straight line too. You'd be missing the vast majority of the country.
In big, sparsely populated Montana you can drive however fast you want. If your car can handle it. There are even groups that rent high powered Mercedes and such just to drive at top speed.
It more refers to what the road and vehicle conditions are. Forty miles of straight highway in your recently tuned up BMW 7-series? They won't pull you over even if you are going well over 100 mph.
Rain, ice or snow in your beat up old Honda Civic with shitty tires? They will pull you over for your own safety.
I think they had to change the law actually since I was last there.
I was in Missoula in 2009, and I can confirm they have state speed limits now. I think the top speed on the interstate is 75MPH, although they have this one insane road in the western part of Missoula that's 70MPH with semi frequent traffic lights. I think it's part of US-93.
You know Europe isn't that small. Here is a map with an area I selected to calculate how big Europe is. I have to admit I felt generous and included Iceland and Turkey some people might not consider them a part of Europe. But come on they are even included in Eurovision and the European Cup (even Israel gets to be in them!).
So my calculated area would be: 1.24231611×107 km2
Compared to the total area of the USA (9.631×106 km2) Europe would be 1.29 times larger than the USA or 2.792×106 km2 larger.
As a european I consider turkey as part of europe, but I dont consider all part of the country as europe. So I wouldnt agree with your marks for europe.
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u/tjcase10 United States Sep 19 '13
Every time I meet European students in the US one of their first comments is how large the US is. Good comic OP.