Visiting States

[stoutfellow]

There's a quiz floating around, where you identify which US states you've visited and get back a map of the US, with those states picked out in red. Now, I'm a born nitpicker1, and my training in mathematics and linguistics only made things worse.

What does "visited" mean?

I have lived in the following states (5): Arizona, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Washington.

I have gone to the following states, with the intention of doing something not transportation-related there, and spent at least one night (13+1): Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin. (DC also belongs here.)

Same criterion, without spending the night (3): Indiana, New Hampshire, Virginia.

I've set foot in the following states, spending the night, while in transit (2): Arkansas, Pennsylvania.

Same criterion, without spending the night (5): Georgia, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico.

I've ridden through the following states, without setting foot in them (2): Kansas, Ohio.

Then there's that prenatal time in South Carolina...

So how many states have I visited?

1. When I was a kid - maybe about six? - my sister O. decided to quiz me on my ability to read a clock. She asked (something like) "If the big hand was on the eight and the little hand was on the four, what time would it be?" I answered, "The clock would be broken. If the big hand was on the eight, the little hand would be between the four and the five." For some reason, O. found that answer unsatisfactory.

Comments

[pompe.livejournal.com]

I think a visit should be at least 72 hours. On the first day in a place, people just run around between hotels and airports or check out standardized tourist thingies or the conference center. On the second day, people continue to do the things they do the first day, albeit more tiredly.

But on the third day, one begins to see and feel the place, begins to be able to do unstructured things like taking a four-hour walk, ride the subway to a station with a funny name or follow the advice of a local you met at the pub the evening before. That's the day a visitor really starts to note where he is, and starts to think about not the things he planned to do before the trip or by checking out the hotal brochures but the things he found to be interesting well after arrival.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Hmm. So a weekend trip (say to a convention or conference) or a day trip (to see some specific site) doesn't count, by your lights?

You make a good point, but I think you're introducing another parameter. (Could one be said to have visited California - which is over a thousand miles long, north to south - if one spends one's time, even as much as a month, entirely in San Diego? What if you're visiting family or friends, and spend the entire period in and around their house?)

[pompe.livejournal.com]

No, on all three. You haven't really visited Stockholm if you just go to a convention in Stockholm. You've visited a convention in Stockholm, not the city. You haven't really visited California, you've visited San Diego. Or your family.

I'll elaborate a bit on why I think like this, because I realize it sounds a bit too philosophical.

"Places" in mental geography are constructs of our minds to make us orient in the world. Some "places" are defined fairly easily because they are easily perceived. The city is such a place. It is a landscape, a cityscape, and while the exact borders of the city might be fuzzy, we all know the city, just as we know a mountain valley or a great plain, or our home or the street we live on. But a state is something fuzzy with exact borders, an administrative construct not primarily made by mental geography.

It is much easier to have seen a city than a state, because we can define a city ourselves much easier. Usually, the state is something someone else defined for us, but then it really is no place you yourself know by experience. Just a vision, a dream, an idea, an order from the Man...

You've visited California when you have defined from perosnal experience California for yourself, "your California". Not by plotting your coordinates on a map grid and seeing what administrative district your location was in.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

I think I follow you. Let me present an analogy, closer to my own expertise.

I can read French fairly well. I can (or could, at one time) speak it reasonably well, too; I once spent a month in France, traveling solo, speaking French almost exclusively. But there is a very real sense in which I do not know French; I can't tell a Norman accent from a Parisian, or either from a Nicoise. Slang, subtle distinctions, cultural allusions which any Frenchman would catch immediately - these would escape me.

All of which is rather far from the superficial discussion I was expecting. Trust a geographer to stretch one's mind on a geographical issue...

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

Applying the two night rule:

Arizona
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Florida
Georgia
Indiana
Kentucky
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Montana
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
Mew York
Ohio
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Dakota
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
Wisconsin
Wyoming

Alberta
British Columbia
Ontario
Quebec

One night:

Idaho
Illinois
Iowa
Nebraska

Less than one day:

Delaware
Louisiana
North Carolina
Oklahoma

[filkferengi]

You forgot to add the enthusiastic recommendation for Gafilk [http://www.gafilk.org/] in with the visit-to-Georgia part. We need to spread the filker love. Especially hereabouts; stoutfellow harmonizes rather well. :)

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

My criterion is generally that driving through en route to somewhere else counts as "visit" for purposes of these memes, but flying over or even landing for purposes of transferring between aircraft does not.

So, f'rinstance, I count the states I used to drive through to visit my sister when I lived in Alabama and she lived in Missouri. I do NOT count Montana, despite too much familiarity with the Butte, Bozeman, and Billings airports during childhood visits to my mom's family in North Dakota, because I've never seen any part of Montana *except* airports.

I realize that this isn't entirely self-consistent, but I guess I'm basing the distinction on the assumption that driving through a place gives you *some* exposure to it, while all airports are pretty much interchangeable.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Do trains count?

Trains at night? (I slept through Kansas.)

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I guess I'd say that in general, trains count--you're on the ground and thus can see what the countryside is like.

If you sleep through the whole state, OTOH, I'd have to say no.