[OSM-newbies] Outline map of US and Canada - data files very large

[Richard Owlett]

My goal is an *outline* map of North America showing national, state, 
and provincial boundaries for U.S. and Canada. Think the map outlines 
your grammar school teacher handed you saying "Label the states."

In response to a previous post it was suggested to go to
www.informationfreeway.org/api/0.5/way[boundary=administrative][admin_level=2][bbox=-128,24,-65,52]

The result was, shall we say, "educational". I got what I _asked_ for, 
not what I wanted. The Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts aren't 
[boundary=administrative] ;/  {I will need [natural=coastline] etc.}

The file was quite large with what was much superfluous data. Also it 
was delivered in an uncompressed format. Coastline data in this format 
would be unwieldy, especially as I'm on a dial-up connection.

I followed up on links re extracts of OSM data. Those files are still 
just too large for dialup. Are planet.osm extracts for North America 
available on CD?