Category: Distance
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NOT as the Crow Flies
All due credit for the article today goes to a reader using the pseudonym “Wangi.” He sent me an email message offline noting an interesting situation, which by implication suggested the basis for another contest. I even stole the title of the current article from him. Thank you, Wangi! There’s nothing unusual going on here,…
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Just Keep Turning
I think it’s time for another participatory article. The 12MC audience seems to its like little puzzles and challenges. I had to drive to a local shopping center a couple of miles from my home yesterday afternoon to pick up my wife. An Interstate Highway stood between the two locations, acting as a natural barrier,…
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Practically Insignificant
I was pondering the nature of individual U.S. counties recently as I was going through the somewhat tedious process to create my 100th meridian map. My mind began to wonder. There are urban counties, suburban counties and rural counties. Every once in awhile, however, there will be an individual county that has a size or…
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Mystery of the Mexican Quadripoint
Does Mexico have a quadripoint? I’m not asking that as a trick question. Ideally this should have an easily verifiable solution. Either four Mexican states touch at a common spot — a quadripoint — or they do not. The answer however is considerably more elusive. I remain at a loss as I attempt to uncover…
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Time Zone Boundary Craziness
Please forgive me for another Time Zone article. I actually had another topic in mind so I’ll bump that one to make room for an unusual observation. Loyal reader David Overton commented on Making the Switch that the most recent Indiana time zone adjustment exacerbated an odd situation. Drivers traveling along a single 19 mile…
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Kansas Mountain Time
Loyal reader Mr. Burns pointed out that my intended Dust Bowl route will traverse a psuedo-geo-oddity. I’ll move from Central Time to Mountain time while heading due north. That happens in other places sporadically, although not as rarely as moving east from Mountain Time into Pacific Time for example. One can’t be too choosy in…
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Extreme Reservations
It started out as it often does through a chance encounter with a roadmap anomaly. I happened to be examining a stretch of highway online. Then I spied an uncharacteristically wide split between the westbound and eastbound lanes of Interstate 84 directly outside of Pendleton, Oregon. It seemed quite remarkable. A mountain ridge forced opposing…
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History Vegas Style
Going out-of-town for the holidays to a small town where temperatures never cracked above freezing provided lots of contemplation time. It also offered abundant exercise opportunities for my right thumb via a television remote control. I’m an historian by training, so as one might expect I gravitate towards the History Channel and its ilk. Has…
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Short Distance Namesakes
Something has been bothering me since I mentioned the town of Washington, Virginia recently in Flip-Flopping. It claims title to the oldest town named for George Washington, platted by none other than George Washington himself in 1749. I noted that many call it Little Washington to differentiate it from nearby Washington, DC which dates to…
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Atlantic to Pacific
Regular readers of the Twelve Mile Circle seem to enjoy vicarious road challenges. Those include shortest routes, fastest times, greatest distances over specific times, and things of that nature. I featured the highway path from Canada to Mexico a few weeks ago. Now I’d like to explore the other direction across the United States. So…