Sunday, August 10, 2008

East Of The Sun, And West Of The Moon

Everybody is east and west, north and south, of everybody else. Unless you live at the North and/or South Poles. Then everybody is only south of you or north of you; there is no east or west. There are no East or West Poles, either, and there aren’t going to be.

Who lies on the east/west line with Wilkes-Barre? Beijing does, same as Istanbul, Turkey, and Madrid, Spain. Naples and the heel of Italy are there, as well as Greece’s Agean Sea. We just touch the southern tip of Mongolia; didn’t realize that, did you?

Not too many islands in that part of the Pacific, but our straight line around the world does bring us above Reno and right through Salt Lake City (now those are opposites!), but landfall closer to Eureka, California. Continuing on, we pass a little above Denver, right through Akron and home to The Valley.

We are south of Ottawa and not much else, unless you count the very western tip of Greenland.

But what’s south of us? Quite a collection, including two major oceans: The Atlantic and Pacific, in one straight line. We leave the States somewhere around Virginia Beach, then tip our hat to Christopher Columbus when we cross San Salvador, thumb our nose at Fidel Castro when we pass Gitmo, keep our hands in our pockets when we go through the drug capital of Medillin, Columbia, drop down the east edge of Ecuador, continue somewhat east of Lima, Peru, then out into the Pacific until we hit Antarctica.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

...then out into the Pacific until we hit Antarctica.
What a lovely mental voyage this has sent me on.

August 10, 2008 11:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A few times I left the VB area aboard a destroyer and did more than thumb my nose at Fidel.....we gave cigarettes to his soldiers who were around the perimeter of the base, while Fidel hoped that they'd be on TV.

CJV

August 17, 2008 6:53 AM  

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