![\"Juan](\"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/\/\/\/\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/pv1.jpg\" "\\"Juan")
![\"Dirk](\"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/\/\/\/\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/pv79.jpg\" "\\"Dirk")
I arrived home from a road trip on Thursday and proceeded to wrap up the online report for it just like I’d done ninety-nine times before.\u00a0This was my 100th trip; A seven day 1200 mile affair that involved both expressway and\u00a0two-lane, reached some big water, used\u00a0mom & pop as well as lower echelon chain motels, and included a little\u00a0live music, along with diners, narrow\u00a0roads, long bridges, and old buildings. All in all, a most typical trip.<\/p>\n
EDIT 30-Oct-2011: <\/strong>The collage has been\u00a0replaced with a clickable\u00a0version linking\u00a0each thumbnail to its associated\u00a0trip report.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The 100th trip\u00a0wasn’t supposed to be quite as\u00a0typical as it was. Most of its miles were supposed to be aboard a train that was cancelled at the last minute. Only one of the 100 trips has used a train for actual transportation and that trip also involved a commercial flight and an aircraft carrier. That’s atypical with a capital ‘A’. Just flying would have made that trip fairly unusual. Only eight of the first 100 trips involved an airplane.<\/p>\n So just how typical was\u00a0that 100th trip?\u00a0It clearly had many of\u00a0the typical components. In addition to those listed in the first paragraph, there was some old concrete pavement, some standing stone bridges plus the remnants of one; Some museums, some art, some historic landmarks, and a lighthouse.\u00a0It did not have any brick or dirt roads and there were no meetings, ceremonies,\u00a0or banquets. At seven days,\u00a0it was a little above the 4.74 day\u00a0average. The longest of the first 100\u00a0was\u00a0last spring’s Lincoln Highway Association Conference\u00a0outing of 25 days. There were twenty single day trips.<\/p>\n The\u00a0100th trip went east whereas more trips have gone west than any other direction. The score, using Cincinnati as the hub and applying some fairly unscientific judgement calls, is west 35, east 24, south 21, and north 20.<\/p>\n The journal for the most recent\u00a0trip is considerably denser than that first one in 1999. There are more words and a lot more pictures. The 16 day 1999 trip averaged about eight pictures a day. The just completed seven day trip averaged over 22 per day and that’s just the pictures accessed through thumbnails. Throw in those accessed by links embedded in the text, of which there were none in 1999,\u00a0and the average\u00a0goes above 25 per day. But\u00a0the reporting of the 100th trip seems to be the current norm. Its precise averages are 25.43 per day total and 22.57 for thumbnail style only. The corresponding numbers for that record setting\u00a025 day trip are 25.68 and 22.24.<\/p>\n A hundred trips in twelve years is an average of about eight a year but those first few years were pretty sparse. 1999 and\u00a02000\u00a0had just one documented trip each and 2000’s was a day trip. The count leaped to three in 2001.\u00a0The biggest years were\u00a02004 and 2007\u00a0with\u00a013 each.\u00a02011 has seen eight so far. Even now, despite what some may think,\u00a0I don’t really document every\u00a0time I leave the driveway and\u00a0there were certainly some undocumented trips in those early years.<\/p>\n I know there are plenty of other ways to slice and dice those 100 trips. I kind of wish I had a record of the mileage for each but I don’t. Nor do I\u00a0have an accurate measure of the fun I’ve had though I’ve estimated it at\u00a0infinity plus or minus two. The\u00a0next 100 will surely go beyond that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I arrived home from a road trip on Thursday and proceeded to wrap up the online report for it just like I’d done ninety-nine times before.\u00a0This was my 100th trip; A seven day 1200 mile affair that involved both expressway … Continue reading ![\"Collage](\"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/\/\/\/\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/collage100-150x144.jpg\" "\\"Collage")
<\/a>Wrapping up a trip includes selecting a single image to go into the pool from which images are selected randomly for display in the upper right hand corner of this site’s home page. Appearing at the top of this blog entry are Juan Delgadillo from the first trip and Dirk Hamilton from the 100th. Click the thumbnail to the right for\u00a0a collage of all one hundred.<\/p>\n