[lefra]

European here. Maybe I'm not typical, but I know that the contiguous US is about as large as the EU (around 4000 km from one side to the other). And if you need 24h to get to the other side if a state, you're either on dirt tracks in Alaska, or got stuck somewhere in the worst traffic jam ever. Texas is about 1000km wide, just like the larger european countries, that's a 10 to 12 hour drive.

[rmunn]

You're right, I was misremembering "it takes all day to drive across Texas from east to west" (or west to east) as 24 hours, when in fact it's about 12 hours: on Interstate 10 (going from the southeastern corner of Texas to the westernmost point) it takes about 12.5 hours according to Google Maps, and on Interstate 20 (which enters Texas in the northeast and heads to the westernmost point, joining up with I-10 along the way) it takes about 11.5 hours. So it's "all day" in the sense of taking from sunrise to sundown (more or less), rather than 24 hours.

(And if you drive across Texas's "panhandle", the squarish part in the north, from east to west, then it's only 2.5 hours. But most people are referring to the longest possible drive, not the shortest possible drive, when they say "it takes X hours to drive across (place).")

Anyway, thanks for the correction. I'll try to remember next time that it's "from sunrise to sunset" rather than 24 hours. As the (rather silly) poem goes,

"The sun has riz, the sun has set. And we still is, in Texas yet."