Fifty States

I visited my 50th state recently. What started as a bet one late night in college became part of my movement through life– I’ve gone to bachelor parties where the groom chose the location to knock off a new state, choreographed travel plans based on what allows me to dip across a border for a few hours, and just spent a weekend driving through endless cornfields to get the last few lollygaggers in the middle of America.

Something that’s cool about doing all 50 is that I now have an image in my head of every state. That image may still be wildly unrepresentative of the true whole! But at least it’s based on my first-hand experience, not something I read or a video I watched. It has a certain depth.

The activity itself is completionist and arbitrary. But it also represents part of my self-image and the person I want to be, up there with other self-imposed milestones like skiing every month for a year straight or drinking 24 beers in 24 hours. Hiking 4 hours to take a handful of turns in the middle of the summer sounds like a great day to me. Doing that every month becomes a commitment that I can’t weasel out of. The commitment is the point, the pain part of what makes it a great memory and what makes the memory real. If the activity was easy then it wouldn’t be remarkable.

Looking forward to finding the next milestone. I’m sure it’ll be equally dumb.