Russia Is Big

Via Rox Populi a map of all the places I've been:

You can create your own if you're so inclined. Looking at the thing, it seems that my apparently well-traveled-ness is driven largely by the fact that Russia and Canada are so damn big. It's not as if I actually covered all that ground. If they'd used the standard Mercator projection rather than this more accurate (in terms of displaying area) projection, my voyages would appear even grander.

UPDATE: You can also do one for the USA.

Your map here. Mine bears a superficial resemblance to the 2004 election outcome, though it's a bit off. Somewhat more interesting is that I've barely ever been to a red county. Such blue states as New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland have vast red trackts to them, but I've only been to the blue parts. Even Norfolk turns out to have been in a Kerry county. Piscataquis County, Maine, seems to be the only Bush-majority jurisdiction I've spent non-trivial time in, though I must say that many other Maine counties counties don't exactly have a "blue America" ambiance to them. Which reminds me that I've been meaning for a while to muse over the apparent liberalism of the great state of Maine. Nowadays, you seem to find Democrats where you find either big cities or lots of black people (often the same places, but not always in the south) or major universities.

Maine's not so big on any of that stuff. And unlike, say, Vermont, it's not just a state that's totally inhabited by expatriate New Yorkers. If you drive around rural Maine you see lots of small churches everywhere and humble homes with American flags flying outside. These are the kind of places Democrats are always thinking should be voting for them, but where the much-vaunted cultural issues and the patriotism factor always seem to confound their dreams. But in Maine it works. And if it works there, why not in, say, Montana and other parts of the rural north?