I was around for the great New York to Paris race and it is supremely easy to forget that most places didn’t have roads worthy of the name, including the United States. Highways didn’t really become popular until the 30s and now they’re everywhere. Frequently, to shock people, I’ll refer them to pictures of roads in Afghanistan or India or China, or other places we consider remote and exotic and they have the same damn white on green signs you see on I 95 (in a different language to be sure).
I keep trying to persuade TMC to join me on a grand tour of the Pan America Highway which she correctly points out is a near suicidal ambition undertaken only by idiots like Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond who have the might and force of the BBC (now Amazon) behind them and are only truly hated in Mexico and Argentina because of Hammond’s rather unfortunate remarks about the quality of their cars (and some other racist things) instead of the constant, consistent, and deserved reproach of any holder of a U.S. Passport for our continual interference in their politics.