We're on different coasts.
this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2024
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I live in Australia
Part of my family is in South America
The other part is in Europe
(I know it's a US community but it was hard to not flex)
Have you ever managed to get everyone together in one place?
I moved over 1,000 miles away to escape the hellish politics of my home state. My family all hates the politics there, too, but not enough to up and move.
My parents and 4/5 siblings all live 1000 miles away. It's cold where they live and I can't stand the long winters.
My extended family is in Europe.
My sister is in Tennessee. I'm in Utah. Our parents are in California. We're all a time zone apart. I'm an 11 hour drive from my parents. Or a 2 ish hour direct flight. 5-6 hour trip with connections and such. They're an hour from the nearest airport. My sister has a harder time making the trip.
Everyone I work with is much better to family and it's a little strange.
The lack of PTO is especially rough when my family is abroad.
About 3h30 by train (2 changes), roughly 350km
In the UK
Edit: lol, just seen the community name. Well here's an unsolicited outsider perspective
It's good you clarified the UK. 3h30 on a train in the US gets you to about the next town over 😢
It's not quite that bad, but I've really wanted to take Amtrak cross country, which should in theory be easy to do because of all our open land. And yet, it would take like a week or something ridiculous like that.
If I lived in mainland Europe the journey would probably be a bit quicker for a journey of similar distance, everything seems to go via London in this country and we've got some creaking infrastructure. However I've heard the trains in the US are particularly under funded, so this might be a tiny violin situation
We all lived in the same state except one uncle until I left (3-4 hour plane ride away) and then went further (15 hours+ across two flights). Mom and stepfather moved south to be warmer on retiring not far from where that uncle had gone. I still live in Japan and everyone else still lives in the state I grew up.
For me, visiting family is now a more time-consuming and expensive adventure, particularly because the one airport anywhere near mom only has a couple of flights a day.
As for the in-laws in Japan, a few hours away from SiL who lives in Tokyo and about an hour away from her parents by billet train.
Too damn close sometimes.
I loved my parents when they still lived, and will love their memory until my last day. But I was glad to live a few hours away by car.
For the last 13 years we lived about 2500 miles apart. You can make the drive in 4 days driving about 10 hours a day.
We recently moved back to our home state though, so it’s about 30 minutes drive to my in laws and 2 hours to my mom’s now
oh please, 2 days, for a measly 10 hour drive? that can't be further than 700 miles, lol. I make a 15 hour drive (~roughly 980miles) yearly for our family Xmas get together. ~~granted that IS mostly just all flat land and pastures but still, put on an audiobook or two and you're there before the second one ends lol~~
Not far enough
2500 miles.
>1000 miles (that's 1600 km to "edumacashiated" people) so ~2 days drive (or one REALLY long haul). And other family is 3x as far away. The USA is freaking YUGE!
My mother is about 20 to 40 minutes away, depending on traffic. My identical twin is in the same household.
Every single other person I might be related to is likely several hundred miles away, unsure. I only saw them all like 2 times. A family reunion on each side of the family.
7 hours from my Dad, unfortunately, and 7.5 hours from my in-laws. Most likely 9 hours from my Mom, but that's only if I trust the rumors. Still keeping the doors locked, just in case.
In order of proximity:
- MIL - she lives a bit over an hour away by car on the opposite side of the metro area that I live in.
- Sibling 1, their spouse, & younger child - live 4.5-5 hours away by car, depending on traffic & pit stops. Different metro area in my same state (state 1).
- Nibling 1 (sibling 1’s elder child) & their spouse - live about 17 hours away by car in a sizable metro area in state 2
- Sibling 2, their spouse, & only child - live about 31 hours away by car in a rural-ish community in state 3.
Nibling 1 & sibling 2 could be reached much more quickly by flying. Direct flights to nibling 1’s city exist, but traveling to sibling 2’s city would require at least 1 layover+connecting flight and either 1 hour or 3 hours driving in a rental car, depending on which nearby airport we flew into.
Deceased kin & how far away they lived at time of death:
- FIL - cohabitated with MIL about an hour away
- dad - 3 hours away by car
- mom - 4.5 hours away by car (after dad died she moved to the same metro area as sibling 1, but half an hour drive from sibling 1, where she continued to live until she also croaked)
9.5 hours, 10 hours, 30 hours, and 32 hours drive to various nuclear familial groups.
Depends on which parts of the family.
Most of the people on my dad's side are within an hour drive. Most of my mom's side is technically in another state, but it's only about a two hour drive. It would be less, but the fucking mountains.
Farthest away in state is a solid 3 hour drive. But, again, there's people in another state that are closer as the crow flies, but across the mountains so that it would take an extra hour just to get to where you could drive to them. It's one of those things where you can't get there from here, you have to go somewhere else first.
But I can hop on my scooter and be at my sister's in maybe five minutes. It's walking distance if you can walk that kind of distance in the first place. My brother is maybe a half hour drive.
My brother is about a 6 hour drive back in our home state. My parents recently moved states so they're probably closer to 9 hours away.
We're 10-12 hours away from family (10hrs is a pipe dream because that's only possible if we never stop). We end up splitting the drive over two days.
About 80 mins from my parents, an hour from my in-laws, and 45 mins from my brother-in-law and his wife & kids. All of my other family are farther away and irrelevant anyway.
If my parents and in-laws were younger, my husband and I probably would've left the country by now, but our parents are aging and they need us within driving distance.
I moved over a thousand miles away at 18 and haven't lived any closer than that in the decades since.
That sounds very intentional?
Yep. They aren't the worst people but they aren't great and I didn't want that BS in my life. I also wasn't much of a fan of the place I grew up so going somewhere far away and completely different wasn't a difficult decision.
My family has spread out a ton, so for me the closest is a cousin about two hours away, but for my immediate family its 10-12 hours.
parents, siblings: 16 hour drive
grandparents, their other children, their other grandchildren: 24 hour flight
I think the Australian lemming has me beat.
If you only count first cousins and closer, there's only a few that you can't reach in a day's drive. Most of those are within a half hour to 45 minutes. Depends on traffic and road conditions.
The closest of those is my mom and sister, and that's maybe five minutes away by car.
If you go out a level of kin, the closest is still in state, but all the way on the other side, that's my grandmother's great nephew, whatever the fuck that amounts to is the kinship chart.
But we're right up in the mountains, and as a whole, we're less bound by state than we are by basically being mountain folk. Both sides of my family have lived in or close to the Appalachians going back into the 1800s. At least the branches that kept records. We tend to not give a fuck about what state we're in as much as which side of the mountains because that's a bigger barrier to visiting someone.
brothers in the same town, sister is one over, two others in same region but far out hours. same with in laws. cousins about as far while others are in other states. brother in another country.
After the election, not far enough.