Kilometers Traveled

I began to wonder how many air miles we would travel if we actually ate breakfast in each country. So the table below is our hypothetical trip so far starting in Boston, MA and flying a great circle between the capitals of each nation. This is clearly not the most efficient way to order this journey from a financial perspective, but we chose our order and are sticking with it. The longest trip would have been from Indonesia to Brazil and the shortest was from Pakistan to Bangladesh. So far we could have circled the circumference of the Earth 2.85 times. Tune in next week for Egypt.

Departure	Arrival	Distance (Km)	Total Distance (Km)
United States	China	10863.7	10863.7
China	India	3785.79	14649.5
India	Indonesia	4989.48	19639
Indonesia	Brazil	16327.7	35966.7
Brazil	Pakistan	13821.3	49787.9
Pakistan	Bangladesh	2020.3	51808.2
Bangladesh	Nigeria	8924.33	60732.6
Nigeria	Russia	5812.19	66544.7
Russia	Japan	7502.95	74047.7
Japan	Mexico	11318.9	85366.6
Mexico	Philippines	14235.6	99602.2
Philippines	Vietnam	1754.37	101357
Vietnam	Ethiopia	7289.24	108646
Ethiopia	Germany	5340.59	113986

Created with Wolfram Mathematica 7.0

Project Data

Since we are away this weekend we have made some charts and figures that examine our progress thus far. Entries such as these will come when we are out town and do not have time to cook a breakfast. I should note that when making these calculations I have decided to include the United States even though we have not made a formal blog entry. I do this because I have eaten this breakfast for a large portion of our lives and so it can be considered covered.



Thus far in the project we have eaten breakfast from countries covering 64.6% of the world population. We have done this with only 14 countries. China and India alone account for 37% of the people so such a rapid accumulation is expected. We expect the research to become more difficult as the population dwindles.



While covering nearly 2/3 of the worlds population we have only covered 41% of the total surface area. The largest jump came with the inclusion of Russia which covers 18% of the Earth's surface. Since Russia we have only added 3% of the surface since then.



The last graphic we present here is simply a map with the countries highlighted. We immediately see several things. We clearly have Mongolia and Nepal surrounded. Africa and South America are currently very under represented. We are getting to Egypt soon but it will be a few weeks until we are back to South America.

Prospectus

Before we start, take a look at this: Friendly's Breakfast Menu - Sweet Creations.  Look at the pictures.  Look at Strawberry Fills Forever French Toast, for heaven's sake.  This is not breakfast.

Not too say it doesn't look delicious.  Double Chocolate Pancakes were clearly invented with me in mind.  But not for breakfast!  This is the food you eat for dessert, so that when your sugar high dissipates, you are ready for bed.

And I am picking on Friendly's a little bit.  This is really a universal problem.  We have our standard weekend breakfast foods: pancakes, waffles, bacon, eggs, sausages, etc.  It does start to get repetitive.  What else can you do but start adding some chopped apples here, powdered sugar there, a little whipped cream on top?

Well, I personally can't eat that much sugar that early in the morning.  So we came up with a plan.  There are over 200 countries on our planet, and they do not all eat bacon and eggs for breakfast.  We will take a culinary tour and try everybody's morning meal everywhere.  If we make it to the end of the list, we will have 236 new breakfasts*, and no ice cream.

* CIA - The World Factbook -- Country Comparison :: Population, accessed 3/26/10