37 Cities, 32 States, and Lord Knows How Many Unnecessary Miles

Cheerful Charlie's Tour of the USA is at an end. Between early October and early June he visited, as the title says, 32 states plus the District of Columbia and a total of 37 cities--large ones like San Diego and Seattle, Minneapolis and Houston; smaller ones like Cedar Rapids, Iowa and Springfield, Massachusetts; and small ones indeed such as Wall, South Dakota and Virginia City, Nevada. The students got used to enormous cross-country jumps and routes without rhyme or reason--just excess mileage and wasted gas. Still, they dutifully marked in the origin of each postcard he sent, used concepts of scale and ratio to estimate the distance from one city to the next, and made helpful suggestions about ways to improve his efficiency.

We are still calculating the total mileage. But it ain't gonna be pretty.

Here is the Official T-Shirt of Cheerful's travels. Please note that the list of cities should be quite accurate, as Cheerful sent me his list for proofreading (and boy oh boy did it need it). He did NOT tell me, however, that he was going to include the three lines at the top, so I had no opportunity to do the proofing. The mistakes--OF COURSE--are his and his alone.



You can click on the image for a closer look...