19 Best Ride ‘09

Car ride What did you see? How did it smell? Did you eat anything as you drove there? Who were you with?

I’ll put my own little twist on this because I don’t have a car and my Dutch driver’s license has expired so I don’t drive anyway. I’ll do “best travelling at ground level in some sort of vehicle”.

That the view out the window of the bus.  Me doing my part for the environment – using public transportation.  In fact, I wrote about the bus just a while ago.  I go back and forth to Madrid frequently, maybe ten times this year.  In fact, I’m going tomorrow again; which makes it twice just this month.
In answer to the prompt’s questions: I saw the countryside, it smelled fine most of the time, we stopped for tapas and refreshments three times along the way, and I was with 20-50 strangers (depending on which trip).

That, above, is my favorite trip this year.  The most interesting, the best, trip follows below.

To Boston, from Philadelphia, with a stop along the way in the Bronx, driving a 25 foot box van (a big old former U-Haul truck).

View Phl > Bos in a larger map

Went on this trip with my best friend from when I worked in New York. Saw Harvard University, ate at a diner (a midnight waffle), the most memorable smell was of diesel. 

What makes it the best?  Spending time with a friend, helping out pick up a stove and some antiques. Seeing Harvard was interesting; I’ll only ever see it as a tourist – being a student there was not in the cards.  Driving a giant truck was sometimes exceedingly interesting as well (always thinking about how tall it is and how much space is needed to turn corners). A word of advice – don’t go to Harvard in a 25foot truck – parking is hell. 

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I could do a Google Earth/Maps mashup of everywhere I’ve been this year.  That might be interesting and in the process I’d learn about something about the gEarth API.  I didn’t yet manage to figure out how to do a driving route on this personalized Google Map.