Distance and Time

A very significant topic in geography, is distance, of course. How far is one thing from another and how long will it take to get there.

When considering where to go to a store, how far are you willing to travel, or how much time are you willing to spend getting there? Let's say you need a gallon of milk for breakfast. How many miles will you drive to get the milk? Now, let's say you can only drink milk from free range cows not treated with hormones, and you prefer it not to be ultra pasteurized...Now how many miles will you go? The more specialized the product, the farther you will go to get it. Or you just don't worry about specialized products and take whatever is available where you live. Retail and other companies take this all into consideration when deciding where to locate their service. The area is referred to as a service area. A natural foods store, or car dealership is going to have a much larger service area than a grocery store or gas station, and a fancy restaurant is going to have a much larger service area than a fast food restaurant. People are much more willing to travel more than ten miles to eat at a fine dining establishment, but nobody would consider going that far just to get a cheap hamburger.

How long a journey takes is very important. 150 years ago, few people traveled from Sacramento to California for the fun of it, or for very many other reasons. That would take way too long. Eventually trains shortened the time for travel around most of the country, changing the way people viewed traveling. No longer would travelers endure dusty trails (or muddy ones), but they could sit semi-comfortably in train cars and watch the world go by. Then came automobiles, which made Americans feel independent and travelers sped from here to there as distances seemed shorter than ever. Finally the airplane arrived on the travel scene. Now anyone with money can go to Hawaii in a day, forget the long, exhausting and time consuming ship, it takes less than 24 hours now. Europe in two days? that would have been a miracle at one time in our history. Moreover, if you buy flowers and chocolate for your special person this valentines day (I'm not dropping any hints here), consider that the flowers may have been picked and rushed to your city from as far away as Ecuador.

Now California is laying out plans for a high speed rail to take travelers from Sacramento to San Diego in a matter of hours. Whether we should be spending money on such a luxury right now is questionable, and I'm not the person to answer such questions. However It is interesting to consider how quickly one could travel from Sacramento to San Diego eventually. For now though, I will be traveling to San Diego County by train tomorrow. It will take me about 16 hours, which I don't mind. For twice as much money I could have made it by plane in less than 2 hours, but what's the fun in that? Maybe my next post will tell a different story on how much I mind long train trips.