__________ is/are overrated.

[JayhawkCO]

Speaking of travel, I'll put this out there for overrated things:

Traveling to countries (for Americans) where English is the predominant language. Very overrated.

[abefroman329]

Speaking of travel, I'll put this out there for overrated things:

Traveling to countries (for Americans) where English is the predominant language. Very overrated.

...it depends.

[thenetwork]

The Bahamas. I've never been there, but I'm not sure why someone would choose to vacation there over other Caribbean islands that aren't flatter than Illinois, like the Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico.

I imagine most of the reason someone would go stay on an island is because it's in the ocean, the surface of which is usually flat.

You haven't been to Illinois Island, eh?

[kphoger]

The Bahamas. I've never been there

A dangerous trend, there...  Just don't diss Saginaw County, MI.

[XamotCGC]

Louisville

I'm having fun with this thread.

[thspfc]

Louisville

I'm having fun with this thread.

How can it be overrated if it's almost never talked about outside of Kentucky?

[Rothman]

Louisville

I'm having fun with this thread.

How can it be overrated if it's almost never talked about outside of Kentucky?

Basketball...baseball bats...It's pretty broadly spoken of outside of KY.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Glenwood Canyon. It's pretty and all, but is it really this sort of mandated pilgrimage every roadgeek needs to drive, film, and promote their visit to?

[Max Rockatansky]

Glenwood Canyon. It's pretty and all, but is it really this sort of mandated pilgrimage every roadgeek needs to drive, film, and promote their visit to?

No, I wouldn't even rate it as a top fifty scenic drive I've been on.  It's great by Interstate standards but a travesty so many in the road community lack a creative knack to find more unique roads.  There is so many more interesting roads in Colorado alone to not bother slogging I-70 like everyone else in road media.

[Rothman]

Glenwood Canyon. It's pretty and all, but is it really this sort of mandated pilgrimage every roadgeek needs to drive, film, and promote their visit to?

Not a matter of scenery, but the engineering feat of it.

[GaryV]

The Bahamas. I've never been there, but I'm not sure why someone would choose to vacation there over other Caribbean islands that aren't flatter than Illinois, like the Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico.

I imagine most of the reason someone would go stay on an island is because it's in the ocean, the surface of which is usually flat.

I don't know, with waves and tides and tsunamis and all, maybe the ocean is less flat than Illinois?

[hotdogPi]

The ocean's flatness is determined by the depth of the surface underneath the water. Some parts are flat; some parts aren't. For example, the ocean near a volcanic island is not flat.

[Scott5114]

The ocean's flatness is determined by the depth of the surface underneath the water. Some parts are flat; some parts aren't. For example, the ocean near a volcanic island is not flat.

Yeah, but humans generally have no appreciation for variations in the ocean floor, since we can't exactly go there easily without special equipment.

[kphoger]

Glenwood Canyon. It's pretty and all, but is it really this sort of mandated pilgrimage every roadgeek needs to drive, film, and promote their visit to?

No, I wouldn't even rate it as a top fifty scenic drive I've been on.  It's great by Interstate standards but a travesty so many in the road community lack a creative knack to find more unique roads.  There is so many more interesting roads in Colorado alone to not bother slogging I-70 like everyone else in road media.

The bolded portion is the most important.  There are plenty of more scenic off-Interstate drives, but few Interstate drives rival Glenwood Canyon–and, honestly, some of those are just farther west on I-70 anyway.

[JayhawkCO]

Speaking of travel, I'll put this out there for overrated things:

Traveling to countries (for Americans) where English is the predominant language. Very overrated.

...it depends.

On?

[kphoger]

When cooking, "tasting as you go" is overrated (in most cases).

I almost never taste as I go.  On rare occasions–fewer than five per year, maybe–I over-salt something, but that's about it.  Most of those cases have to do with my having failed to account for reduction.

There are three things, however, that my wife and I have to taste-test multiple times along the way:  sloppy joe meat, chili, and coleslaw.  For some reason, finding the right vinegar balance is something that just never gets easier with practice for us.

[kphoger]

Speaking of travel, I'll put this out there for overrated things:

Traveling to countries (for Americans) where English is the predominant language. Very overrated.

...it depends.

On?

I must say, it's a lot more intimidating of an idea for me to visit a place where I can't even pronounce the written language (Japan and China, for example) than a place where I merely can't understand the written or spoken language (Turkey and Sweden, for example).

It only takes a little while for me to learn an alphabet (I've long been able to pronounce Greek, I taught myself the Russian alphabet at some point, and I halfway succeeded at Arabic).  But an entirely different writing system is a whole other beast.

[JayhawkCO]

Speaking of travel, I'll put this out there for overrated things:

Traveling to countries (for Americans) where English is the predominant language. Very overrated.

...it depends.

On?

I must say, it's a lot more intimidating of an idea for me to visit a place where I can't even pronounce the written language (Japan and China, for example) than a place where I merely can't understand the written or spoken language (Turkey and Sweden, for example).

It only takes a little while for me to learn an alphabet (I've long been able to pronounce Greek, I taught myself the Russian alphabet at some point, and I halfway succeeded at Arabic).  But an entirely different writing system is a whole other beast.

But I'd honestly say it doesn't matter. Almost everywhere in the world if you're going to any place that desires to have tourists, there are going to be people that speak some English. Also, universal hand signals for "eating", "sleeping", "how much", etc. are understood no matter what someone's mother tongue is.

The only place I've ever traveled where the majority of the people I interacted with didn't speak English at least a bit was in Tokyo, and I still spent four days there and had a great time. I guess for Japan it helps that they have picture menus a lot too.

I've bought tons of souvenirs, food in markets, etc. from people who didn't speak any English and you pretty much just grab what you want, go up to the "cashier", hand them some money, and they hand you change. It's not as big of a deal as some think.

[Max Rockatansky]

Glenwood Canyon. It's pretty and all, but is it really this sort of mandated pilgrimage every roadgeek needs to drive, film, and promote their visit to?

No, I wouldn't even rate it as a top fifty scenic drive I've been on.  It's great by Interstate standards but a travesty so many in the road community lack a creative knack to find more unique roads.  There is so many more interesting roads in Colorado alone to not bother slogging I-70 like everyone else in road media.

The bolded portion is the most important.  There are plenty of more scenic off-Interstate drives, but few Interstate drives rival Glenwood Canyon–and, honestly, some of those are just farther west on I-70 anyway.

Three Interstate corridors come to mind that subjectively I think beat Glenwood Canyon for scenery:

-  I-70 in the San Rafael Swell.  This segment also has the distinction of really being the only road through corridor as well. 
-  I-H3 is incredibly pretty and an engineering marvel unto itself with thing all those viaducts.
-  I-15 in the Virgin River Gorge is one of the few scenic corridors that exceeds the US Route before it. 

Some other notables that come to mind in no particular order:

-  I-84 along the Columbia River.
-  I-5 through the Sacramento River Canyon.
-  I-5 through Grapevine Canyon and Tejon Pass.
-  I-8 east of San Diego descending to Imperial Valley.
-  I-80 in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
-  I-15 through Cajon Pass.
-  I-90 Snoquamie Pass.

My issue with the prevalence of I-70 road media is two fold.  One content road creators who are freeway centric tend to overlook a lot of the corridors listed above.  Secondly a lot of road content creators come off as "samey"  hyping Glenwood Canyon to degree that they do.

Maybe it's me, but I could go visit Colorado and be fine not including Glenwood Canyon.  I've seen people in the road community complain or outright cancel trips because there was a Glenwood Canyon closure.  That all seems incredibly short sighted, as in they don't have the knowledge or desire to string a bunch scenic highways including Glenwood Canyon together.

Granted, maybe I'm just spun up after having a debate someone who is centering a Interstate-only trip around visiting a Buc-ee's.  So maybe I'm in not such a great frame of mind when it comes to mainstream road media right now.

[kphoger]

Three Interstate corridors come to mind that subjectively I think beat Glenwood Canyon for scenery:

-  I-70 in the San Rafael Swell.  This segment also has the distinction of really being the only road through corridor as well. 
-  I-H3 is incredibly pretty and an engineering marvel unto itself with thing all those viaducts.
-  I-15 in the Virgin River Gorge is one of the few scenic corridors that exceeds the US Route before it. 

I also love I-70 through De Beque Canyon.  As I mentioned, though, it's awfully close to Glenwood Canyon.

[abefroman329]

Speaking of travel, I'll put this out there for overrated things:

Traveling to countries (for Americans) where English is the predominant language. Very overrated.

...it depends.

On?

I agree that any country where English is the predominant language because a high amount of Americans travel there (see, e.g. The Bahamas) are very overrated.  But I wouldn't say that Great Britain and Ireland are overrated.  Or Hong Kong.

[kphoger]

Perhaps (and especially based on his subsequent comments) he meant not that the destinations are overrated, but that people put an overrated emphasis on making sure they can easily communicate in English at their destination.

[abefroman329]

The only place I've ever traveled where the majority of the people I interacted with didn't speak English at least a bit was in Tokyo, and I still spent four days there and had a great time. I guess for Japan it helps that they have picture menus a lot too.

A high number of Japanese people don't speak English, but they can still read and comprehend writing in English. Frankly, I didn't find there to be much of a language barrier in Japan at all.

I've bought tons of souvenirs, food in markets, etc. from people who didn't speak any English and you pretty much just grab what you want, go up to the "cashier", hand them some money, and they hand you change. It's not as big of a deal as some think.

And they'll add on the gringo tax, but you know what?  I don't blame them at all.

[JayhawkCO]

Perhaps (and especially based on his subsequent comments) he meant not that the destinations are overrated, but that people put an overrated emphasis on making sure they can easily communicate in English at their destination.

This is what I meant. The two weirdest questions I always got when I was traveling a ton internationally were:
A) Do they speak English there?
B) What's the exchange rate?

For A), who cares? You can get around just fine if you don't know the language.
For B), even more who cares. If it's 30 million widgets to the dollar, but a meal costs 500 trillion widgets, it's not like the exchange rate is good.

[formulanone]

My issue with the prevalence of I-70 road media is two fold.  One content road creators who are freeway centric tend to overlook a lot of the corridors listed above.  Secondly a lot of road content creators come off as "samey"  hyping Glenwood Canyon to degree that they do.

I think a lot of it is because more people will give attention to something with familiarity or because the subject already gets a lot of discussion. Naturally, Interstates or something happening in a Big City Metro gets more attention than a bunch of two-lanes out in rural South Dakota. (I only mention that because I've posted about both on social media in the past year, and I'm not very active in doing so.)

Glenwood Canyon's I-70 is "pilgrimage worthy" for similar reasons that Breezewood, Interstate 238, or Route 66 are over-discussed in our hobby. But that really doesn't take anything away from Glenwood Canyon versus the opportunity to take Highway 82 instead. Rather, because it's unexpected that a critical point in the Interstate System has a lot of fascinating beauty surrounding it. It still means that a very low percentage of the overall system can be regarded in such a manner.

Some are fine with just simplistic meme-posting about potholes, route/bridge renaming, or how much more terrible their traffic is compared to another city, because it gets quick likes and the comments rarely get better from there.