I like the joke.
I was recently doing work on a cargo ship that happened to be in town (I do computer repair.) It was a crew mostly from the Middle East, and one asked how far away California is. I'm in Portland, Oregon, so by U.S. standards, it's a relatively close 300 miles. Of course, that's just to the California border. To reach a city actually worth visiting is another 300-330. (Sacramento is, according to Google Maps, 575 miles from my house, San Francisco 630.) Los Angeles is another 330-385 miles beyond that. (960 miles from my house.)
Even many U.S. citizens who aren't from the West Coast forget that California is 800 miles "tall" (1300 km.) Heck, I knew someone who lived in Texas, and his own grandmother didn't seem to fathom how wide Texas was, as they lived on opposite ends of the state, and she complained that he never came to visit. He constantly had to remind her that it was a 12-hour drive, without ever leaving the state. |
