Greymalkin

One of a collection of such questions I read in one of those silly chain letters your friends send you. I don't normally reply to such emails but in the case of the friend that sent it to me, I wanted to share the information, and that question actually got me thinking.

The farthest one can get from home (assuming you're not leaving the planet) is 12,430 miles, which is the exact opposite side of the Earth. The furthest east I’ve been is Košice, Slovak Republic (Slovenská republika) [though it was still Czechoslovakia (Československo) at the time of my visit] which is 4,255 miles from home or 34% of the possible distance. The furthest west I’ve been is Honolulu, Hawaii which is 5,109 miles from home or 41% of the possible distance. As the exact opposite side of the Earth from my house is a point in the Indian Ocean southwest of Australia. The furthest I could get from my house and still be on land would be Augusta, a city on the coast south of Perth, Western Australia which would be 11,759 miles or 95% of the possible distance. Altogether, west to east I've covered 9,364 miles which is 75% of the circumference of the Earth, which may seem like a lot but it's a lot less than I had imagined; I've still got a lot more traveling to do.

Other interesting facts: if you wanted to go Around the World in Eighty Days to quote the title of Jules Verne's novel, travelled in a perfect circle, at zero elevation around the Earth at a constant speed, never stopping, you could make the trip going only 13 miles/hour (80 days x 24 hours/day = 1,920 hours, 24,860 miles / 1,920 hours = 12.95 miles/hour). Assuming it's 70 °F, it's 12:00 PM Noon and you want to keep the sun directly overhead all day long (maybe you're being stalked by vampires), you'll have to drive directly west at 1,036 miles/hour or 1.3 times the speed of sound (12,430 miles / 24 hours = 1,035.8 miles/hour, 1,035.8 miles/hour / 768 miles/hour = Mach 1.34).