Proximity

So, since I'm moving to California on Friday I've been looking up a lot of information about where places are in relation to my new home. For instance, Disneyland is about 6 hours away from Mountain View. Now, I don't consider this far at all. But I'm sure my mother would consider it an extreme distance.

The story of my parents' courtship places a heavy emphasis on the fact that their respective parents lived an hour apart. Therefore, to meet halfway meant they each had to drive 30 minutes, and they really felt that was quite the ordeal. When I first started dating my husband, he lived 20 minutes away (no biggie). Because I went to a countywide preparatory school for grades 6-12, it was not all that uncommon to have my closest friends live 45 minutes from my mom's house. She was disgusted at this fact, and pretty much never drove me to anyone's house unless it was a birthday party. I went to college 6 hours from home, and my mother only came up to drop me off originally, for graduation, and one other time because I needed a ride home after the end of a semester. She just felt it was too far to bother, LoL.

But she's not the only one. I've had several friends who don't want to drive two or three hours to a place and back in the same day. My husband and I certainly don't understand this point of view, as we have, on several occasions, driven ten hours in a day to get to and from a location. Even at 2:30am, we don't have a problem driving an hour and a half home from parts of Orlando. I'm not sure if it's because of the way we were raised (in a county where going to the movies or the mall was a half-hour drive), but distance is no big deal. Yosemite being 2-3 hours away (I forget which at the moment) is certainly no cause to make a fuss, and I imagine we'll head out there more than once in order to take in the full wonder of nature's beauty. For the next two days, his parents are about 50 minutes away, and it's been no hassle to run down there when necessary. I've been known to jump on I-95 and visit friends in Vero Beach and Fort Pierce at very little notice, no need to plan it all out a week in advance.

I guess my main point here today is that sometimes people make too big a deal out of going somewhere. West Palm Beach was less than an hour from my mom's house growing up, but in my memory the only time she went there for a reason other than the airport was to shop at CompUSA (where I demanded we go to pick up some stuff for college), and to look at the Kia dealership when I was shopping for my first car. It just isn't worth the travel time to her, I guess. Currently, Orlando is 60-90 minutes away (depending on traffic and where you want to go), and unless it's after 11pm, we don't mind heading up there to meet some friends. I even spent one summer working at a summer camp that was three hours away, driving there on Sunday mornings and back on Friday evenings.

What do you consider "too far" for a day trip? How far does your significant other have to be to consider it a "long-distance relationship"? Because for me, I think my limit is 5-6 hours on-way for a daytrip, and I'm curious to see how that fits in with the average...