Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: New Zealand

  • Revisiting Street View Extremes

    Time moves forward, an unstoppable force. We all must face that awful truth as we age. On a happier thought, that allowed me to revisit a Twelve Mile Circle article from nearly five years ago. Maybe the conditions changed, or maybe not. Let’s find out. In February 2010 I wrote Streetview Beats a Deadhorse. Back…

  • Upstart Eclipses Namesake

    When I think of “New” places I tend to fuse together the full placenames mentally into a single phrase and begin to overlook the separate elements. I don’t forget completely that earlier entities inspired newer ones, although I mostly overlook the original namesake within the larger string. For example, if I considered Orléans in France…

  • Countdown to Midnight

    Today I following the normal progression of articles as they post on Twelve Mile Circle. I felt somewhat obligated to publish an article even though it fell on New Years Eve. Yes, I can’t stop even on New Years Eve. Readers in Europe and places farther east won’t see this until 2014. They’ve already flipped…

  • Keep it Moving

    Twelve Mile Circle examined freeways and motorways with the most lanes previously. That was a measurement of potential capacity. Would those massively-wide behemoths continue to reign supreme once someone posted actual traffic volumes? That wasn’t the case except for one notable exception. Comparisons weren’t easy although Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) seemed to be a…

  • How Invasive

    I had a conversation recently with my friend the birder. He pointed out various bird species that happened to fly within line-of-site of our gathering, while noting which ones were native species and which ones were transplants. That led to discussions of various invasive animals introduced into North America either by accident or by design,…

  • Zig Zag

    What was that 1980’s song, “One Thing Leads to Another?” Right. You know the one. Put that on in the background and use that as our Twelve Mile Circle theme song for the day. I mentioned my frantic search to resolve a Move the Road dilemma that the loyal 12MC audience resolved soon thereafter. I…

  • Named for Captain Cook

    This isn’t intended as a biography of Captain James Cook although his voyages throughout the South Pacific and beyond were numerous and legendary. Rather this is about places named for Captain Cook, strewn about the waters in which he sailed and the shorelines that he charted. He has an entire society named for him if…

  • Longest Natural Straight Line

    I once featured a stretch of completely straight railroad track across the Nullarbor Plain. It ran an amazing 478 kilometres (297 miles), in Australia’s Longest Straight Line. I’ve also focused considerable attention on the Canada-United States border. That one hugs the 49th degree of latitude north for something like 2,000 km (1,250 mi) — although…

  • A Plan for Rare Visitors

    I have a love/hate relationship with my relentless need to count. For example, I enjoy seeing visitors from so many different nations stopping by Twelve Mile Circle. I understand I should count my blessings yet it frustrates me to know that a handful of places have never appeared in my logs. One would think this…

  • Same City Name Distance

    I’ve been experiencing an ongoing conundrum. I have a huge pile of potential topics to cover on Twelve Mile Circle but I never get around to using them. I seem to get diverted onto whatever topic happens to be on hand and I forget about those I’ve held in reserve. Occasionally I’ll take a look…