Blrfl
Natural Rider Enhancement
This is a reply to something Joe posted in the Virginia thread that I think merits discussion by everyone:
Unless we're actually having a contest and awarding prizes, I don't see why we should be drawing up hard-and-fast rules about which states are "large" and should and shouldn't be split. 'Cause frankly, I think that's going to take some of the fun out of it.
Virginia is the 35th-largest state in area but is longer across its southern border than the larger dimension every state except Alaska, California, Texas and possibly North Carolina. The western U.S. has a lot of states that pack a lot of area into what's essentially a 300x300-mile square. That makes a round trip between any two points in one those states in the space of a day a very attainable trip. You'd have to pull a SS1K to get from Virginia Beach to Cumberland Gap and back via the shortest route in 24 hours.
It's 500 miles from Jacksonville, FL to Key West, and that state has three threads. The UK, where I was once asked how many times I stopped for a break between Leeds and Cambridge, has seven. (The answer, which my hosts in Cambridge found shocking, was just once, and only because I really had to pee.)
Alaska, Texas and California have pathologically large major dimensions as states go. On the other end of the spectrum, most of New England (other than Maine) is awfully close together and should be combined into one thread if you're going to base it on size.
What I think we should be doing is encouraging participation by letting the people who know each state best -- those of us who ride there -- decide on whether splits are worth doing and along what lines they should be drawn. The Northern/Western/Central-Southeast split for Virginia works very well geographically and in terms of road density.
End of rant. Discuss.
--Mark
I disagree.
Unless we're actually having a contest and awarding prizes, I don't see why we should be drawing up hard-and-fast rules about which states are "large" and should and shouldn't be split. 'Cause frankly, I think that's going to take some of the fun out of it.
Virginia is the 35th-largest state in area but is longer across its southern border than the larger dimension every state except Alaska, California, Texas and possibly North Carolina. The western U.S. has a lot of states that pack a lot of area into what's essentially a 300x300-mile square. That makes a round trip between any two points in one those states in the space of a day a very attainable trip. You'd have to pull a SS1K to get from Virginia Beach to Cumberland Gap and back via the shortest route in 24 hours.
It's 500 miles from Jacksonville, FL to Key West, and that state has three threads. The UK, where I was once asked how many times I stopped for a break between Leeds and Cambridge, has seven. (The answer, which my hosts in Cambridge found shocking, was just once, and only because I really had to pee.)
Alaska, Texas and California have pathologically large major dimensions as states go. On the other end of the spectrum, most of New England (other than Maine) is awfully close together and should be combined into one thread if you're going to base it on size.
What I think we should be doing is encouraging participation by letting the people who know each state best -- those of us who ride there -- decide on whether splits are worth doing and along what lines they should be drawn. The Northern/Western/Central-Southeast split for Virginia works very well geographically and in terms of road density.
End of rant. Discuss.
West Virginia has been a different state since 1863.
--Mark
. Next thing let's split the Carolina's & Dakota's up into north & south units and split Lubbock off from Texas
Actually that's a good idea too. 
