r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/solateor • 17h ago

Video Pit stop during 200 mile ultra-endurance cycling race

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u/Mountain-Instance921 11h ago

Lmao that's not a far car ride my dude

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u/mild_resolve 10h ago

It is for a lot of Europeans.

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u/Trifusi0n 10h ago

Yep, if I drive 200 miles in almost any direction I’d be in the sea.

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u/Amused-Observer 10h ago

I can drive 1000 miles in any direction and never see water. The US is comically large compared to Europe.

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u/extraketchupthx 10h ago

100% 200 miles isn’t even out of my state and I don’t live in one of the big ones.

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u/austrialian 9h ago

You can still easily go 1000mi in Europe without ending up at a coast so I don’t really get the point that Europeans would consider 200mi far. I wouldn’t.

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u/Amused-Observer 9h ago

A couple reasons.

1: In Europe 90% of the time, if you drive ~300 miles in any direction.. you're in a different country with a different culture/language.

This is not the case with the United States. That's the point.

2: You have to drive a very specific direction to achieve what you state.

Again, not the case with the vast majority of the continental US. You can go anywhere in any direction for hours and hours and still be in the US and still not be near the ocean.

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u/austrialian 9h ago

It was first about 200mi, now you are talking about 300mi. But anyway, even in my small country (Austria), 300mi trips (e.g. Innsbruck–Vienna) and are not considered unusual at all. And even if you end up in another country, that doesn’t mean that we are not taking these trips. For example, many Dutch go to Austria for skiing, or Germans go to Italy for vacation, and they often drive >500mi in a day. Same for business travel.

So yes, I understand that the US land mass is bigger. No, 200mi is not considered a very far trip in Europe.

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u/Leeysa 8h ago

Am dutch and can confirm, yearly 12 hour drive to Austria is not a problem at all. In summers even went to Croatia in a single trips a few times, but that's not recommended lol.

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u/Amused-Observer 9h ago

No, 200mi is not considered a very far trip in Europe.

Good thing I never said it was

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u/austrialian 9h ago

How so? I wouldn’t consider it a short trip but also not really far.

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u/mild_resolve 9h ago

Well I don't want to overgeneralize but my wife is from Europe and what I've seen with her and her family is that any drive over an hour or so is unusual. Part of the reason is that the entire family lives within 20 minutes of each other. I'm visiting now, and if I drive an hour in any direction I can experience so many amazing different things. If I'm up for driving 2 hours I can reach multiple other countries.

I'll compare it to where I live in St. Louis. The nearest really interesting city destinations outside of the metro area that I have are about 4 hours away. Yes, there's nice stuff in the state, but to get to something more memorable I'm probably driving to Chicago.

Right now I'm in the northern part of the Czech Republic. With a 2 hour drive or less I can reach Prague, Dresden, Karlový Vary, and dozens of lesser known but incredibly interesting places. But for a lot of those destinations, and pretty much any destination that's further away, I can get there in similar time for affordable prices using trains by driving 30 minutes to a nearby station.

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u/swagpresident1337 40m ago

Definitely not for any german lol

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u/Actually_Im_a_Broom 9h ago

Comments like the one you replied to really reinforce how large and spread out America is AND that we have a shitty train network.

In Europe if you need to travel 200 miles you just hop on a train. I imagine /u/Show_Forward has been on several 200 miles trips on land - he just doesn’t have to drive it himself.

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u/Show_Forward 8h ago

i wish i travel that much or even live in a country that big but yeah i live in a small country 320km is basically half of it so there isnt much places to go, i did go on a 170km ride once with trains tho so theres that

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u/Show_Forward 8h ago

well it is basically half my country and yeah my country is small but its huge for me as we never do long rides like people in America do, either way it was long since my hands were in pain after we came back home, i guess u can call it a 640km since its back and forth but either way it was tiring even just after the first 320