Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

37 Comments

  1. You survived driving across North Dakota…good for you.

      • Are you still expecting to stop in Seneca Thursday? Hopefully I’ll know by tomorrow if I can make it.

        • James, I’ll email you with the details of my situation When I get a chance.

      • I live in Ulsterland! And what is that hole in the middle of Deseret?

        • You would indeed be in Ulsterland. However, I have been asked by just about everybody else to rename Ulsterland, so it’s likely to be renamed. Probably to New Netherland.

          ND is correct, it’s the GSL.

      • Not across ND yet…..have some good cruising tunes ready and something to keep you occupied….oh wait you have a little one to keep you awake……well have some good snacks.

        • The little one is in the other car. I have the dog, but that’s about it.

          Instead of listening to tunes, I am listening to Atlas Shrugged (I’ve never read it). At my current pace, I will be less than half way through it when we arrive.

      • Long Island can’t be given an original name! Are we that something or other?

        • At least you are on the map….Wwill couldn’t be bothered with the two non-contiguous states.

        • Long Island is the State of Long Island. NYC is split between three states in Trumanverse, a move that nobody likes.

      • Any chance of getting the Trumanverse map laid over a regular map? That’d be really interesting.

        • You mean like this?

          I am surprised that you are from Ulsterland. I thought you would have thicker skin.

          All Hail Hanover.

          • I’m originally from Hanover. I think I’m now in Ulsterland, though the map makes it a bit hard to tell.

          • Fair enough, but I hope the irony of the situation doesn’t go unnoticed.

            As for Kazzy, I think a thank you for the link I provided is in order.

          • SN I do appreciate you supplying it so That I didn’t have to try to do it on the phone.

      • This would be a great map for an alternative history where the United States is a much more centralized republic as envisioned by Hamilton.

        • Will’s reliance on natural borders — rivers and mountain divides — makes a fair amount of sense. And I get a kick out of his use of pre-Columbian names.

          • As I have often noted, in the West the use of a river as a border is an invitation to trouble — instant fights over who gets how much of the water. Borders in the West really ought to follow the drainage boundaries. I’ll note, though, that Los Angeles simply doesn’t happen in such a case, because grabbing the Owens Valley or Colorado River water doesn’t happen across state borders.

          • In fact some of the Native American groups in California did follow the drainages, with terroririal boundaries along ridgelines instead of at the water’s edge.

          • I’ll note, though, that Los Angeles simply doesn’t happen in such a case

            Anybody got a time machine handy?

          • Michael, I think I mentioned that I discovered the Powell Map right after painstakingly making these borders. Had I to do it all over again, I’d be using some variation of JWP’s work.

  2. When we were driving from Seattle to Philadelphia, we got a ticket in North Dakota. I think The Russisn was doing a bit over 90 mph. The big, burly cop who pulled us over took one look at our car, a Ford Escape filled with stuff, saw the cages containing two cats, one pug, and a psychotic cockatiel, and took mercy on us. He wrote out a $20 ticket, despite our speed and the fact that, between the two of us, we couldn’t come up with a current insurance card.

    Best wishes on your journey.

    • I generally drove my drive across country to visit ND in San Francisco but I remember getting very annoyed at driving through Wyoming for some reason. It wasn’t a bad drive, the weather and scenary were fine but something about it really irked me. I kind of liked Nevada because the people there reminded me a lot of people on Long Island. Many of them probably came from Long Island at one point.

      • I’ve done the Wyoming route on another cross-country journey. The western part of the state was beautiful; the eastern part, not so much.

        • I think the eastern part, or at least parts of the eastern part, are underrated. The jagged hills are pretty neat. Like the Badlands on sedatives.

  3. I was admiring the collection of bugs splattered across the windshield. My annual trips back and forth across the Great Plains to do the handyman thing at my mother’s house has made me something of an aficionado.

    • I finally got the windshield cleaned today. Which is great, because I almost got into an accident because of it. Well, not “almost” but I had to slam on my breaks when entering an intersection because the sun was reflecting off the bug guts.

  4. OK, now I seem to have—for the first time—gotten hit by the comment-to-read toll. I see why others are so annoyed.

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