I really like it when people do silly map stuff
I am an avid watcher of GeoWizard straight line challenges, so I was delighted to learning about yet another British person doing a stupid map thing: someone named Ed Pratt, who traversed the entire length of the Thames without leaving it and is currently releasing the trip episodically on YouTube:
Well... he traversed the Thames without leaving it to make progress downstream. He had certain rules which allowed him to camp on the banks and set up camera shots. This YouTuber has also done some other completionist challenges involving unicycles and other rivers. It's funny to see the kinds of things that someone who bills themselves as an adventure YouTuber might choose to do to further their brand... doing "all" of something seems to be part of his.
I have a certain fascination with dumb map challenges myself. I was very into Ingress back in the day, which involved a lot of extremely completionist-style crisscross treks across the metro area I lived in. Years later, my husband and I did a cross-country Amtrak trip, and that got me further fascinated with various travel-completionist challenges. Since then I've begun a long slow project of filming many roads in LA from end to end on a bicycle.
There is something very stupid-fun about seeing what people have decided is the whole of something. The fact that "what counts" is often so ambiguous is part of the fun. It gives you something to discuss or argue about with people, which is always a great conversation-starter. Satisfying humanity's arbitrary map-lines is a very gamelike experience. In that Thames source-to-sea video is that the source is not, actually, producing any water; the first half mile or so is sometimes completely dry. Where does it start, really? Those of us who are not water engineers can only go by consensus.
I find the same is sometimes true of what counts as "a street" when I try to film it end-to-end in Los Angeles. Do I start where the street naming starts? Or do I do all the connected roads until I run out of road? I get to choose; I go back and forth based on what's possible for me, or what I prefer on the day-of.
If I didn't have Type 1 diabetes I would certainly have dome things much dumber than I currently have. I'm nowhere near strong or smart enough to do a river end to end, or walk in a straight line down a country... but if I didn't need to be near refrigerated insulin every other day, I'd certainly be doing much more ambitious completionist challenges on my bike. I've planned some trips that are possible to me, but would need a lot of clear time (which I haven't had much of in the last 2 years) and a support team.
For example, I've had a dream to do the C&O trail on my bike, which is several hundred miles long but potentially possible for me if I could line up the insulin situation. There's a couple other overnight bike trips I'd love to do on the east coast of the US but could not manage without a support team willing to be bored on my behalf. And for over a year, I've been planning to eventually do LA to San Diego by bike as well - a trip which currently requires 8 miles of riding on a freeway shoulder. (People do, in fact, do this every day. They wouldn't if Camp Pendleton still allowed people to bike through it.)
The moment Type 1 is cured and I can get it for myself, though, I'm liable to do something truly stupid.