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So I read this thread about Iowa over in N&P, and it got me thinking about this weird quirk I have:

I tend to feel more unsettled, the farther inland I go.

I grew up and currently live on the East Coast of the United States. As such, I have never lived more than fifty miles from the Atlantic Ocean. It's been a kind of mental fixture, or a geographic constant: go east(-ish), and you'll hit ocean sooner, rather than later. I don't want to say that proximity to the ocean brings me comfort, but maybe it does?

Anyway, I first noticed this strange feeling when I took a trip to Penn State to visit a friend several years ago. As I drove west from New Jersey, I became acutely aware that I was leaving that geographic constant behind, and--strange as this sounds--it bothered me. It bothered me that I was putting two hundred miles of land between myself and the ocean. Perhaps it was because I was traveling through hugely rural and mainly empty section of Pennsylvania(perhaps it was just Pennsylvania, har har). It wasn't enough to make me want to turn around, but it was enough that I was aware of it.

So, when I read of rampant economic opportunity in Iowa or Alberta, like was posted in the N&P thread, I scoff; not only because I enjoy living the Godless Northeast with all the rest of the heathen folk, but because the idea of being hundreds, if not thousands of miles from an ocean is, well, offputting.

I imagine that I must be the only loon who feels this particular way, but I suspect that most people here have other quirks, as well, so I thought it'd be interesting to what other odd little things people do/feel. A caveat, though: phobias probably don't fit that well within the scope of this thread, as they can be decidedly more severe.

An evolutionary holdover, from when we had to get back to the sea, to spawn...?

Kanastrous wrote:An evolutionary holdover, from when we had to get back to the sea, to spawn...?

Alternatively its just afmiliarity. We are attached to what is familair and leaving behind the environs of the Atlantic Coast, even going from the middle atlantic and heading south or north one experiences noticeable geographic differences that drive home that you are anywhere but home. We grow attached to the known and it does take a bit of the pioneering personality to move to a truly different environment.

There may be lots of other things contributing to his discomfort, which he is unconsciously lumping in with the absence of the ocean. Even within the single (albeit huge) province of Ontario, I find that you can actually feel the shift in culture as you drive west. Everything is a little bit "off" ... people listen to different music, use different inflections in their voices, different patterns of speech, have a different way of looking at the world in general. Even the empty small talk is different. The types of vehicles people drive are different. It all gets welded into a large subconscious impression that something is wrong.

CmdrWilkens wrote:Alternatively its just afmiliarity. We are attached to what is familair and leaving behind the environs of the Atlantic Coast, even going from the middle atlantic and heading south or north one experiences noticeable geographic differences that drive home that you are anywhere but home. We grow attached to the known and it does take a bit of the pioneering personality to move to a truly different environment.

Funny you should say that; I have spent a summer out on the other coast, in California. While I didn't get as nervous on ventures inland (it's hard to be unsettled in light of the staggering beauty of the Sierra Nevada mountains), I definitely kept a tally of how many hours away from the ocean I was. Also, I've been up and down the East Coast over the years, from Boston to the Florida Keys, and all other things being equal, I feel I've drawn some sort of...comfort?...from being on or near the ocean. Maybe comfort's too strong a term.

I should visit Toronto, or Buffalo, or even Chicago, to see how being far from the ocean, but near a Great Lake, affects me. Maybe it's just large bodies of water, or perhaps, as DW said, it's simply the association formed with leaving major metropolitan areas for the rural areas inland, given that coastal areas are almost more densely populated. For comparison, it would probably do to examine rural life along the coast and urban life inland, I suppose.

I am incapable of just going somewhere and ‘hanging out’. To clarify, I’m perfectly all right with going out with some friends, grabbing some McDonalds, and loitering around our tables for ten or fifteen minutes after we finish – but there are often times when we just sit, and keep sitting, for up to an hour or more, discussing random topics. I need to be doing something, or at least have a goal or ‘next step’ in mind. Sometimes a friend will call me up and tell me he’s with X other friend, and will ask me if I want to meet up.

My response is usually something like, “Sure, what are we doing?” and response is, quite invariably, “Well, we were just going to wander around.” I can’t do that, and I really am not sure why. “Want to go to Union Square, hit up Circuit City, then walk down to Astor Place, check out a few shops, and then go to Piola for a drink?” will always get me to emerge from my hovel, whereas “Want to wander around for an hour or two?” will have me declining.

Funnily enough, my friend Zane does in fact refer to this phenomenon as “wandering aimlessly”. I fail to see the allure; maybe it’s just me, but nobody else seems to have a problem with it.

I grew up (and still live close-by) in Stuttgart, which is a very hilly city.
Whenever I am in a landscape without mountains or hills, I feel weird. Being able to see up to the horizon for kilometers is, well, not outright disturbing, but enough that I would rather not live there.

Dahak wrote:I grew up (and still live close-by) in Stuttgart, which is a very hilly city.
Whenever I am in a landscape without mountains or hills, I feel weird. Being able to see up to the horizon for kilometers is, well, not outright disturbing, but enough that I would rather not live there.

YES! I have the same problem. Flat land all the way to the horizon is just creepy. You shouldn't be able to see more than a mile (or less!) without a mountain blocking the sky. Or several of them, fading away in the distance until you can't tell what's mountain top and what's a low-hanging cloud.

OK, I actually have all of the quirks that have been mentioned here, to one degree or another. I grew up in BC, with majestic mountains on one side, and the Pacific ocean on the other. I'm OK with being in flat places away from the ocean... but only for relatively short periods of time (a few days here and there maybe). I'm sure I could never live anywhere that didn't have both mountains and ocean. I might be able to make do with hills and a sea, but I think that would be pushing it.

The aversion to wandering aimlessly is something that I have, but to a lesser degree than Maxentius. I need to have a goal in mind of some sort, or else I'm unlikely to get off my duff and go out. That being said, however, once I'm already moving, I often quite enjoy wandering aimlessly.

I am the same way with the ocean. I live in New Jersey, and the only places I really travel are up and down the coast. I don't know how to explain the feeling. It's not geographic claustrophobia, but I don't like being inland. I can't imagine being at a point in my life where it takes me more than an hour or two to hit ocean.

Same here, though I tend to feel dehydrated when I travel east of the Cascades. Too little moisture.

Big cities make me nervous. Also, I feel compelled to eat the wrapper from my straw when I get fast food.

The two are not related.

Another Jerseyite here. When I lived out in Monterey, Ca, it wasn't too bad. It was fairly easy to always have my bearings due to the proximity of the ocean to the west and the mountains to the east.

Here in Texas, however, with the relative flat landscape I find it less easy to orientate myself even when the sun is going up or down. Granted I've only been here three month so it's probably just part of the acclimation process.

Maybe it's because I'm English, where you can travel the entire length of the UK in a day, but I've never been uncomfortable wherever I am, from deepest darkest rural England miles from the nearest other living person to major metropolitan areas like Liverpool & London; to standing in the caldera of a dormant volcano on an island off the coast of north Africa; to pub crawling around lower Manhatten; to shopping in Pittsburgh with my girlfriend

On the other hand I can't just wander aimlessly, even if I'm heading out with my DSLR I need to have a goal in mind before I'll even leave the house, I might not even reach that goal, something I see may distract me & I'll head off that way to take some pics
But I just cannot wander around looking for something to take pictures of, I need a definite destination as the incentive to get me off my butt

I live near a New England town where there are still buildings standing in excellent condition from the late 1600s. It felt weird during some of my cross-country drives, as I would pass through towns where the oldest building couldn't have been put up earlier than 1950, and it was run down as Hell.

Even their state of decay was different than that of the old New England mill towns that never recovered from the Depression (especially ones like Fall River and New Bedford). In New England, the old mill buildings no longer made textiles, but other companies moved in (I recall one where someone gutted it, then built batting cages, laser tag, and a pool hall inside). So the decay seems a bit more superficial than out in the prairie where the rot is both inside and out.

Other than that, I hate going to NYC. The city is bad enough, but the real thing is when I have to drive home. Fuck Connecticut.

In my experience, the closer you get to London, the more selfish and assholish people seem to be. An example of this would be my brother, who lives on the Isle of Wight and works in Southampton, and every time he's up and we go shopping, he always notices how people will do small things like pull trolleys out the way for you after making eye contact or let you go first at a checkout because you're only buying a plant or whatever.

It might be confirmation bias; the cynic in me says that, but with the disproportionate coverage London gets in the media, there's a sense that the only country that matters is that which is in the M25, plus the stresses of city life, perhaps this makes Londoners more likely to be dicks.

Having just flown home from the multicultural styles of Sydney to the pale, my-mother-smoked-while-I-was-in-the-womb complexions on peoples faces in Hobart, I'm feeling unease. Every time I go away, coming back slaps me in the face that the jokes about this island being back county are justified.

LadyTevar wrote:

Dahak wrote:I grew up (and still live close-by) in Stuttgart, which is a very hilly city.
Whenever I am in a landscape without mountains or hills, I feel weird. Being able to see up to the horizon for kilometers is, well, not outright disturbing, but enough that I would rather not live there.

YES! I have the same problem. Flat land all the way to the horizon is just creepy. You shouldn't be able to see more than a mile (or less!) without a mountain blocking the sky. Or several of them, fading away in the distance until you can't tell what's mountain top and what's a low-hanging cloud.

Heh, I'm from Manitoba. Give me my big wide sky please!

Whenever I can arrange it, I want my numbers to end in either 5 or 0. If I'm transferring funds in my bank accounts, at least one of them has to end up ending in 0 or 5. If I'm doing a set amount of some task, I want to end on some multiple of 5.

Also, I like to eat tomatoes and french fries from the inside out. Yeah, I like to eat the insides first and then the skins.

Volume settings on stereos, televisions, and such devices must be a multiple of four.

I have to wear pants that completely cover my legs regardless of the weather. Its not because I've lived in cold places - I'm in the Californian Central Valley right now, and I used to live in Houston and Oklahoma，the latter for five years.

LadyTevar wrote:

Dahak wrote:I grew up (and still live close-by) in Stuttgart, which is a very hilly city.
Whenever I am in a landscape without mountains or hills, I feel weird. Being able to see up to the horizon for kilometers is, well, not outright disturbing, but enough that I would rather not live there.

YES! I have the same problem. Flat land all the way to the horizon is just creepy. You shouldn't be able to see more than a mile (or less!) without a mountain blocking the sky. Or several of them, fading away in the distance until you can't tell what's mountain top and what's a low-hanging cloud.

Flat land to the horizon isn't creepy, but it is boring. And if you keep driving, you just know you're going to smell manure fertilizer sooner or later. And it will take you five full minutes to drive through the fucking cloud.

Alerik the Fortunate wrote:Volume settings on stereos, televisions, and such devices must be a multiple of four.

I have the same quirk, although I'm satisfied if said numbers are simply even (multiples of ten are particularly comfortable).

I like the number 8, multiples of 8, and numbers which have 8 in them, and I try to incorporate it whenever I can.

I'm not OCD or anything like it, but I get annoyed when things aren't symmetrical, and will go out of my way to arrange things symmetrically whenever possible.

I don't like overhead lighting. I'll turn off the overhead light and turn on a desk or floor lamp whenever possible.

Reading through this thread, I realize that I actually don't have a lot of personal idiosyncrasies, apart from my fascination with womens' asses (and I don't even know that this counts; it may be near-universal).