I feel like driving from Milwaukee to Pasadena 100 miles per day is the most Donald Knuth thing ever. IE, a huge task completed in the slowest and most deliberate way possible.
(BTW it appears that Milwaukee to Pasadena is about 2000 miles now, which works out to even less: ~70 miles a day. Or given that the interstate highway system was less developed in 1960, maybe it really was about 3000 miles then.)