I was listening to Logan Vath’s song, “Ain’t It Like Nebraska,” yesterday, and had this very weird thought: how much of my life have I spent driving across Nebraska? For whatever reason, I have vivid memories of some of those drives – especially that perfectly straight 70 mile stretch of freeway between Lincoln and Grand Island.
Because my main two “homes” in the US are California and Minnesota, and because over the years I have on many occasions had a better reason to drive than fly between them, I would estimate that, conservatively, I have driven across Nebraska at least 15 times. Given it takes about 6 hours on I-80 (with appropriate stops for gas or food), that means I’ve spent at least 90 hours driving across Nebraska. Since I’ve been alive approximately 441,000 hours, that means I’ve spent 0.02% of my life driving across Nebraska.
Of course, I’ve spent much more of life driving across other stretches. The 30 minute drive between Long Beach and Newport Beach is much shorter, but since it was my daily commute for a year, adds up to much more. Likewise the one-hour drive between Lansdale and Cherry Hill and other daily commutes from different times in my life.
Perhaps this should be contrasted with 0.46% (over 2000 hours) – the percent of my life I’ve spent walking between between Janghang and Hugok, in my seven years living in Ilsan.
Sometimes I think about strange things.
[daily log: walking, 6km]