I’ve seen the maps for some time, but never got around to generating them. But here goes.
Herewith, the countries I’ve set foot in…
create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands
The detail’s a little odd, but what this says is we’re strong in the Caribbean (some fascinating places that aren’t on the country list), fairly strong in the Mediterranean and Western Europe and South Pacific, and weak elsewhere.
Then there’s the states map:
create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.
I’ve done better there, with 34 of 51 states (inc. DC) visited.
My guess is that, if I did this again in 10 years, there would be another 2 to 6 nations (maybe more) and 2 to 6 states. Somehow, at the current rate, the possibility of speaking at least once in every state (noting that 4 or 5 of those in the map aren’t ones I’ve spoken in) is fading from improbable to highly improbable.
As to the big country just north of the U.S.: British Columbia (several times) and Ontario, but we’ll add several other provinces one of these years…
You are invited to our state [VT] pretty much any time. We can’t give you much of a speaker’s fee, but there’s some lovely hiking, great food and a river that goes right behind the house. Let me know if you wind up in the area for any reason.
I’ll let you know, but even expenses to Vermont tend to be high.
There are a couple of fairly populous states where I haven’t spoken, but only a couple: Other than New Jersey, they top out at Oaklahoma, the only other one with more than 3 million population. While I’ve only spoken in 60% of the states, those states constitute 86% of the population. Vermont, as you know, comes in just ahead of Wyoming… Although I did speak in Alaska, only a little more populous than Vermont, and it was a wonderful experience. Hmm. Looking at my speaking list, I see that Mississippi, Arkansas, Utah and Hawaii are the states I’ve visited but not spoken in, so “4 or 5” was a pretty good off-the-cuff estimate.
While my time availability for speaking (or writing, or whatever) has suddenly gotten a whole lot better (to the tune of 10 hours a week or 13 weeks a year, however you figure it), that also means my willingness to speak without full expenses and, usually, some sort of honorarium has necessarily gotten worse… Guess I need to rewrite my “speaking” and “writing” pages one of these months.
This post keeps getting reported as new via the newsfeed into my BlogLines. I haven’t figured out why unlees it is because the image is generated on the fly.
I haven’t seen that happen on my own Bloglines feed (which may be a different feed)…if it keeps happening past this weekend, let me know and I’ll delete the post.