The Backstory

Normal people enjoy their vacations. Engineers ask, “what if vacations were mathematically optimized?”. Sadly, we are not normal people.

We’re friends from college, where we both worked on the University of Michigan Solar Car Team. Racing our car in the 2013 World Solar Challenge in the Australian Outback was an epic adventure, and forever engrained in us a love for large-scale and over-planned travel. Camping trips when it’s still slightly-too-wintery to camp. Attempting to watch Michigan play football in all Big Ten football stadiums. Participating in scavenger hunts, or subjecting our friends to scavenger hunts of our own creation. Aaron takes a two-week road trip through the Midwest; Eric ups the ante and hops a plane to Tokyo.

This particular misadventure started in January 2018. While driving back from visiting a slightly-saner friend, we innocently asked: "What is the greatest number of U.S. states visited in one day?" Google pointed us to Gunnar Garfors, who in 2015 claimed 22 states in 24 hours. Engineers are easily sidetracked by interesting-but-terrible ideas, and discussions on how to theoretically beat that record consumed the rest of the drive – or at least until our phones died.

We didn’t think much of this plan after we got home, but as the long Michigan winter dragged on we started itching to travel again. The initial thought of beating the record without flights was quickly deemed impossible, though Barry Stiefel deserves recognition for setting the pre-Garfors record (19 states in 24 hours) with car alone. Knowing we had to think outside the box to beat twenty-two, we started throwing ideas at the wall and checking which ones stuck together. We could have picked up five states in the Oklahoma Panhandle, but then had to drive four hours to the nearest airport. Driving from North Carolina to Kentucky would have shaved hours off the route, except for the lack of roads crossing the pesky Appalachian Mountains. In the end, the most optimal route we could find was similar to the Garfors record: south through New England, then north up the Mississippi River. Our special modifications would hopefully be the difference required to squeeze in the extra state that he couldn’t.

Even with an optimal route, weather and traffic would be out of our control. Working to avoid snow, hurricanes, and summer vacation, we settled on springtime. Driving through metro areas would have to be late at night. Flights would have to be early morning to minimize risk of a delay, though scheduling of those wasn’t ours to choose. To our surprise, we found an affordable series of flights in May that met all of our requirements. Conscious that the odds of regret would be high, we bit the bullet and booked ourselves an ill-advised weekend of hopeful record setting.

Our friends thought we were crazy when we first shared this plan. Most haven’t changed their minds. Some came around and volunteered to help as ground crew at the various stops, but nobody else could be corrupted into joining our motley crew on the open road. With no margin for error, everything got planned in excruciating detail. Driver swaps. Bathroom breaks. Cameras and GPS units. This very blurb.

There is very little margin for error – one closed road or one delayed flight, and this all falls apart. Those are steep odds - but, as mentioned, we’re not normal people. Join us in this adventure on Twitter as the rest of the story unfolds. Stay tuned to see if we are successful in breaking the record for most U.S. states visited in 24 hours!