Interesting Directions

7 responses to “Interesting Directions”

1. 
   Campbell

   April 4, 2007 at 3:08 pm | Permalink

   Hope your a good swimmer!

2. 
   Dan

   April 4, 2007 at 3:45 pm | Permalink

   Oh that's hysterical.

3. 
   Sean Corfield

   April 4, 2007 at 9:29 pm | Permalink

   This gave Jay & I a huge laugh tonight – thank you!

   I love that it will take 31 days – mostly spent swimming…

4. 
   barneyb

   April 4, 2007 at 9:57 pm | Permalink

   What's even more insane (and I didn't realize until now) is that the numbers are legit!

   At my best clip from my competitive swimming days (~5 mph), I could make the crossing in about 29 days. That leaves about 2 days to cover the other 3200 miles, which breaks down to about 70 mph average. I'd say that's pretty reasonable, since most of the US can be covered faster than that (without breaking the law). Obviously, no considerations for rest stops have been made, but c'mon, it's only 31 days, and you can pee in the ocean.

   What all this means is that they seem to have actually factored real-world swimming speeds (though clearly not for a 3500 mile swim) into their time estimations. It's unclear why, but it does warm my heart to know that Google's taking the time to make sure they cover all the edge cases. ;)

5. 
   Heather

   April 5, 2007 at 8:10 am | Permalink

   HA! That's hilarious. Good old Google, they think of everything…
   I'm amazed that with how precise they seem to try to be, they didn't have ferry/ship schedules or something like it on there to cross the ocean without having to swim for 30 days. ;) I guess no one's perfect.

6. 
   Rashid

   April 18, 2007 at 6:53 am | Permalink

   How fat were those fingers? http://del.icio.us/url/bd89fd2736831f218e0bc457110ce3da

7. 
   barneyb

   April 18, 2007 at 9:28 am | Permalink

   Rashid,

   Actually, my fingers are pretty skinny. However, if you're insinuating that my "fat fingering" was a thinly veiled copy of that post, you'd be inaccurate.