Category: Distance
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Rapid Transit in 1844
I’ve slowly been overhauling the non-12MC part of my website to upgrade to Google Maps API v3. That’s the portion for which I obtained the howderfamily.com domain long before Twelve Mile Circle became the tail wagging the dog. As part of that I revisited a genealogy page I wrote about ten years ago. It looked…
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Race Across America
The recently concluded Dust Bowl Marathon Series continues to play on my mind. Five towns served as a home base during the event. Of course, each one of them rolled out the red carpet for us. Ulysses, Kansas stepped it up an additional notch above the high bar exhibited by the rest. They seemed to…
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Dust Bowl Adventure, Part 1 (Getting There)
It was a long time coming and I’d talked about it since last autumn. The Dust Bowl trip finally arrived. We flew to Denver, Colorado as our starting point. Certainly there were closer airports, however none of the others had non-stop flights or cheaper fares. I viewed it as an opportunity to capture some previously…
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Three Notches
Marks on trees served as road signs during North America’s colonial times, a period when much of the population was illiterate. Certain patterns of slashes or notches conveyed specific information about the nature of a pike or landmarks a traveler might find farther down down its path. Three notches served as a frequent glyph although…
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Impressive Pedestrian Bridges
Plans change. I gamble when I choose to mull over a thought and allow it to percolate in my mind. Sometimes the delay results in a better article. Other times, events overtake ideas not completely formed yet. Loyal reader “Rhodent” and I were communicating by email about a potential offshoot of “NOT as the Crow…
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Starting from Zero
I used the Zero Milestone marker in Washington, DC as the center of my circle a few weeks ago in Odds and Ends 6. It occurred to me that maybe I’d not talked about this marker before. That seemed odd in itself. That’s because I include it on all of my DC tours for friends…
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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…