Impressions during the trip to the United States

San Fransisco Sausalito

 

Since March 3rd, I've been travelling to California, United States, and today is my last night of 14 days journey. My family and I moved from Los Angeles to Carlsbad, San Diego, Irvine, Las Vegas, Santa Barbara, San Jose, San Fransisco, Monterey, and finally, LA again. Even roughly calculating our route, we drove more than 2600 km. Considering all the national parks we visited, such as Joshua tree, Death Valley, and Big Sur, the distance we travelled will easily exceed 3000 km. Likewise, while messing around California and some parts of Nevada, consistent impressions about this country have been made.

 

1. This country is freakingly huge.

 

It took more than a week to get used to the size of the country. When we look at the map, we easily fall into the error of interpreting the scale as if it is the size of South Korea. However, the size of California is more than 4 times bigger than South Korea. Therefore, moving from one major city to another took 3-4 hours at least. I could easily understand why this country's autonomous driving industry developed quickly.

 

2. This country is full of cars!

 

The only transportation connecting huge countries is the car. Unfortunately, the public transportation system is poorly structured compared to other developed countries. Therefore, tremendously large and complicated roads and highways cover vast amounts of individual vehicles. By looking at these cars, I realized the electric vehicle industry's future will prosper because there are full of traditional cars to be replaced. By the way, I saw Kia cars more popular than that of Hyundai on the street, thinking Kia stocks could be better than Hyundai.

 

3. The people in this country are very friendly.

 

The most thing I was fond of America was that Americans are usually very friendly and bright. For example, when I was hiking a mountain in Joshua tree national park, almost every people I passed greeted me by saying "Hello", "Good morning", or "How are you doing?". Because I am a typical shy Korean, I felt awkward at first, yet I soon got used to following their vibe and energy. Also, one day I was walking on the pier of Long Beach in Log Angles. While passing the bridge, I found some seagulls and took pictures of them. Interestingly, once I brought up my camera, these seagulls started to sing loudly. Then, a man fishing near there came to me and suddenly told the stories about those seagulls. He said they are called four musketeers, as the same members come to the same spot on the pier daily. They know people are taking pictures of them, and whenever tourists try to take photos of them, they start to cry and grasp people's attention. Furthermore, he told me a fairytale-like story: one day, they were found with their legs tangled with strings, and a man rescued them. Since then, they started to appear on the same site and attract passengers. Believe it or not, the story was fun and helped me to get an exciting and long-lasting impression about the Long beach.

 

4. Why does the U.S. use weird units alone?

 

The hardest thing to adjust was the strange units the U.S. used. They use inch, feet, and mile when measuring distance instead of metrics units such as cm, m, and km. The difference was very uncomfortable when reading navigation instructions. When navigation informed us we should turn right 0.4 miles ahead, it took some time to reinterpret the units. Moreover, I eventually failed to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit instantly. (X°C × 9/5) + 32 = Y°F. How strange the formula is.