Lev Lazinskiy

I've Visited all 50 States

In October 2016 I arrived in Sacramento, CA and set off on a project to visit every state capital and see what all the fuss was about. I’m flying back to San Francisco from Madison Wisconsin tonight which means I’ve officially completed the journey!

When I started the project I was working at CircleCI. I remember leaving for Emeryville on an Amtrak bus from the temporary transit center before Salesforce park opened. I couldn’t believe that I would end up living across the street from there, and that it would be turned into a park/housing. I’ve also come full circle (pun intended) and am back to working on CI problems.

It was also right around that time I met Aosheng. I think he thought I was a huge geek for doing this (he is right) but did not judge me too much and even helped me make some business cards. I could not imagine that 8 years later we’d be celebrating our 4 year wedding anniversary.

So much else has changed. When I started I was dealing with a bunch of crippling anxiety around driving that I slowly overcame. I was also smoking 1-2 packs a day with no hope of ever breaking free. My brother hadn’t yet met his lovely future wife, and their (soon to be four) children were just dreams. I didn’t know a single phrase in Chinese. My grandparents were still alive. None of us could really imagine COVID.

I’ve got so much more to say about the journey, but I wanted to take a moment to capture this feeling of completion before all these thoughts pile on to my existing massive backlog of writing.

People often ask me what my favorite state is. It feels impossible to answer this. There are not always huge differences between states, but regionally it sometimes feels like you’re in a different country. Each places offer something unique and special. It feels really nice to have this huge bag of memories that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. I’ve met some amazing people, seen some beautiful places, eaten some delicious food, been to way too many museums, read too many cheesy local history books. I love having the ability to build instant rapport with anyone I meet by pulling out a fun fact about their state.

It feels so good to finally finish this project. I don’t think I will make any more lists any time soon, but I do plan to continue to travel as much as possible. I look forward to revisiting many of these places over the coming years.

So what was the fuss? I’m years behind on answering that question, but I will, you can follow along: https://levlaz.org/tags/tralev/