A Ball of Yarn: Stretched around the world from santa clarita

I've got to get a hobby...

I was looking at Google Maps yesterday, and instantly got distracted by some geographic points of interest. It got me wondering....

What if you stretched a ball of yarn around the world exactly at the latitude and longitude Santa Clarita is in? Literally..... Where are we in relation to L.A.? The state? The world?

Challenge Accepted!

Starting out North to South, in small increments to begin with, let's see where the SCV is in relation to the Los Angeles Basin. If you stretched the yarn from the Valencia Blvd. intersection with the 5 Freeway due south, you'd end up running it through the football field at Pierce College off Winnetka Ave in Canoga Park.

Continuing south, you'd cross the Santa Monica Bay and end up on an airstrip at San Clemente Island. And from there? Antarctica!

Heading North....

Here's where you win every bar bet and have free beers all night. Simply tell some geographically challenged beer-soaked patron that we in Santa Clarita live somewhat EAST of Reno, Nevada. They'll tell the bartender to cut you off, but you'll point to this map...

Santa Clarita is 72 miles further EAST than Reno Nevada is. To be exact, the ball of yarn would pass through the Humboldt State Wildlife Management Area, a few miles from the Tesla Gigafactory shown below.

Continuing further north, the yarn would pass within 60 miles of Spokane Washington in EASTERN Washington. About 60 miles east, but still... After that, the yarn passes through parts of Canada you probably don't want to visit.

Let's Go Back to the SCV and Re-Adjust...

Let's stretch a ball of yarn south from Shadow Pines Drive in Canyon Country... The yarn would go over the mountains, pass very close to Laurel Canyon Blvd. in the the valley, and continue south getting in the way of the jets taking off at LAX. Yes, Canyon Country is DUE NORTH of LAX.

Time to Travel the World at the SCV Latitude....

Heading east, we'd stretch the yarn to about 10 miles south of Lake Havasu, continuing through the deserts and pass 65 miles south of Albuquerque. Yes, we are further south than Albuquerque. That's why it's so hot here most of the time. The yarn next splits the uprights of Amarillo and Lubbock Texas.

Our ball of yarn (by now, the most expensive ball of yarn ever sold) would travel about 50 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee and about the same distance south of Charlotte North Carolina. Hopping the Atlantic, the yarn passes pretty close (20 miles) to the Rock of Gibraltar at the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea. You'd want to put on your flak jackets to un-spool the yarn through Tripoli in Syria, and Kabul, Afghanistan.

Your next recognizable stop would be in Hiroshima, Japan.

The final stretch would place the yarn 1 mile off the coast of Santa Barbara and then re-connect back at Valencia Blvd. having traveled 20,574 miles at latitude 34.378. Since our latitude places us many miles north of the equator, we shaved off 4,327 miles off the normal trip around the world at the equator.

So, you'd be pretty tired from a trip like that.

Created By SCV resident Chris Gallatin