Chris

“Go seasonal, avoiding hothouses and air freight. Local, seasonal produce is best of all, but shipping is fine. As a guide, if something has a short shelf life and isn’t in season where you live, it will probably have had to go in a hothouse or on a plane. In the U.K., Canada, and more northern parts of the U.S., in January, examples are lettuce, asparagus, tomatoes, strawberries, and most cut flowers. Apples, oranges, and bananas, by contrast, almost always go on boats. Adopting this tip religiously can probably deliver a 10 percent savings on a typical diet.”
― Mike Berners-Lee, How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything

“The total distance—11,741 miles—gave me sticker shock. Round it up to twelve thousand. Almost halfway around the world! It seemed slightly mad, but then it might do me good. To make such an epic road trip, discovering places I’d never been, rediscovering others, never knowing what I’d find beyond the next curve or hill, would be to recapture the enchantment of youth, a sense of promise and possibility. The cicada chirped incessantly in my head. I clicked back to the first map. Looking at it brought on a mixture of eagerness and reluctance. The buzzing grew more shrill. If you don’t go now, geezer, you never will. I listened to my inner cicada, and the uneasiness subsided. If I’d learned anything, it was that the things you do never cause as much regret as the things you don’t. But”
― Philip Caputo, The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean

“What finger-shaped Florida lacks in breadth it makes up for in length; Tallahassee is 480 miles from Miami (farther than New York City is from Cleveland).”
― Philip Caputo, The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean

“the first Airstream to roll off the assembly line, in 1936, was called the Clipper and was modeled on a design created by Hawley Bowlus, designer of Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis. An”
― Philip Caputo, The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean