The Numbers

Some Stats and Figures. This list is by no means comprehensive and I may have others to add later. But this is what I thought up and was able to calculate or estimate for now.

MILES

First of all, the mileage. From the odometers, you’ve see that I put 24,207 miles on Pre. But that’s not the total miles I have accumulated as other modes of transportation were used. Limiting it to the major modes of transportation, here is the full list of my non-exact travel miles:

Pre – 24,207 Miles
Round Trip Flight between San Francisco and Philadelphia – 5,014 Miles
Round Trip Drive from Haddonfield to BS Wedding in Saybrook, CT – 399 Miles
Sceinc Drive with M&D to Delaware – 109 Miles
Round Trip Drive from Haddonfield to Hoboken – 174 Miles
Round Trip Drive from Phoenix to L. A. w/ Mr.T - 745 Miles
Flight from Seattle to Minneapolis – 1,382 Miles
Drive with BS in B-girl’s Car from Minneapolis to Seattle – 1,995 Miles

I think that’s it.

So, if you care to calculate the Road Trip based on miles travelled by car, the total would be: 27,629. That would be the equivalent of driving coast to coast 9 times.

Or if you want to include the flying miles, it would be: 34,025.

TIME

I was on the Road Trip from April 9th through August 25th. Call it 4½ months, or 140 days, or as I prefer, 20 weeks.

On an average day where I was truly on the road (meaning waking up on the road and going to sleep that same night on the road), I estimate that I averaged:
5.5 hours sleeping;
10.5 hours Road Tripping;
3.5 hours blogging and emailing;
1.5 hours plotting and planning
2.0 hours either fueling myself (food) or fueling the Pre (gas)
0.9 hours watching TV – if anything it would be less
0.1 hours talking to Mom;
0.0 hours of naps.

I gained 3 hours by moving to the Arizona time zone…I don’t know what I did with them.

EXPENSES

This is a big topic, and will require a lot more information, such as final credit card bills and bank statements. But let’s just say a lot!! I will break this down in the future, but I’m going to need a printer, spreadsheets, and a super computer that can perform high speed calculations, as well as a full week of time off – good thing I’m still unemployed.

SOME OTHER STUFF

Highest Elevation: Rocky Mountains National Park, CO off of Rte 34 near Lava Cliffs at 12,183 feet (above sea level).

Lowest Elevation: 9th Ward, New Orleans, LA at -8 feet (below sea level).

I took 2,634 pictures during the trip - WOW. (If I were to print them all out, it would cost me $237.06 using the .09 cents per print when ordering more than 1000 prints from Photoworks. If anyone knows of a cheaper service, please let me know.)

The most pictures on any one day was 98 at Yellowstone on Day 104. The fewest was 0 on multiple days.

Surprisingly, I gained 3 pounds. I started the Road Trip weighing 182 and finished weighing 185. I know I was eating a lot of decadent foods, but my activity level (compared to none) was way up. I’m actually a bit surprised I gained anything…it’s probably because of the change from fat to muscle.

I think I crossed the Continental Divide a hundred times. So many of the great drives criss-cross the divide and it is not a straight or singular line.

Bugs killed – judging from one square inch of Pre’s windshield, and calculating for wind shear, angle of impact, and time on the road, I come to 17,486,157 plus or minus 5. Gophers killed – 1.

I’d say that on a true day on the road (previously defined), I would meet about 25 people. Of those, I would have a conversation that lasted more than 5 minutes with about 6 of them. About 1 of them would walk away with my website address…but mostly, I tried to hear what they had to say.

I wrote a whopping 111 blog posts, and received 309 comments (including my own). I’m a bit surprised I got so few comments on the post indicating the end of the Road Trip...no congratulations? I would estimate that for every comment I got on the site, I received 2 emails from people directly (the shy people). All this was very time consuming, but also very motivating.

My number one fan was TreasonPal. This would have been followed by a tight knit group including Buz, YoungAunt, Battlestar and 6Pack. From what I can tell by the limited website diagnostics available, there were about 40 people checking out the site on a daily basis (at the end of the trip)…but I think this number is inflated because TP was checking in 38 times a day.

One question I asked people a lot was: “So, do you love your job?” The only people who really answered yes were 5 park rangers, 3 glider pilots, and one small town cop way down in Texas.