PROVIDENCE -- After their annual meeting last month, members of the Extra Miler Club set out on their first group trip, a modest afternoon swing through five counties. Didn't sound like much of a challenge for a crew that has flown into Alaska's Aleutian Islands, scaled mountainous Kalawao County on Molokai, braved the upper reaches of Door County, Wis., and felt the barren expanse of Loving County, Texas.
But just as they were speeding south on Interstate 95 in Reid Williamson's gold
" 'South County,' " the bearded Army management analyst from Annandale, Va., said. "Which I believe is a touristic designation."
Every Extra Miler's goal is to visit all 3,143 counties in the United States. Fewer than two dozen of about 300 members have gotten there. Most devote decades to the quest, spend thousands of dollars, run down their cars, hop prop planes, rack up speeding tickets, lie to their spouses, and become obsessed with geographical trivia. All in pursuit of a complete, though intangible, collection of county experiences.
Club president Mike Natale, who was sitting beside Williamson on the July 23 outing, dismissed the South County sign. An education consultant from the Pittsburgh area, Natale, 27, has been an Extra Miler half his life. He already had "completed" the five Rhode Island counties before the annual meeting, and reeled off their names as Williamson drove: Bristol, Kent, Newport, Providence, and Washington. South doesn't count.
Just what does count as a county is a popular subject of debate among club members. They generally agree on county boundaries and use the same black-and-white map to color them in as they go. But do they have to visit independent cities that lie outside county lines? What about Indian reservations? Alaskan census areas? Louisiana parishes? When a new county is created, such as six-year-old Broomfield in Colorado, do they have to return? Does flying over a county count?
Williamson arbitrated such disputes as club treasurer, secretary, and editor of the newsletter. He answered questions that arose during the meeting, when members rose one by one to announce their totals. Many were wearing blue club T-shirts that read, "The shortest distance between two points is no fun."
Those who have been to the county from which Broomfield was created don't have to return, Williamson said, but it counts from now on. Indian reservations don't count, although some members visit them anyway. (Lenny Fetterman, a retired mail carrier from Oregon, Ohio, has seen them all.) Parishes count, and so do independent cities and Alaska.