Did you become a road enthusiast because of the internet?

[Crazy Volvo Guy]

I took an interest in roads well before I had access to the internet.

The internet just helped me find some like-minded folks.

[bugo]

The Internet is a wonderful thing.

I totally agree with your statement but the door opens both ways. The internet can be a very bad thing depending on how it is used or the repercussions of using it.

[SignGeek101]

I only joined last September, but have been here a few years longer before that.

My interest in signs actually started when I (randomly, don't really know what brought it up) started researching metrication of road signs in the US (we don't need to start a debate, that's what I did). Anyway, I found I-19 and AARoads and started browsing. That was in the summer of 2012.

Eventually, I started getting into fonts, standards, Clearview and the rest of it. Back then, the 'Road Related Illustrations' I recall was open to guests, and I could learn how signs worked. I enjoyed browsing through the 'Traffic Control' board and the 'Canada' board the most.

After my trip to Asia last summer, I seriously contemplated joining, I was fascinated with the signage in those countries, and it so happened that the room I was staying in just happened to be next to a BGS. I decided after awhile to join because I believed I possessed enough knowledge about signs to call myself a signgeek, and thus I joined.

Here's the picture of the BGS:



Of course, series D and EM, respectively.

[mrsman]

My interest formed at a young age as I became the navigator on family road trips and even labeled hallways in my house as different streets, even taping up road signs that I made on paper to navigate the traffic.

In elementary and high school, people knew that I was into this stuff, so I was always the one to provide directions to anyplace in the country.  People knew that I was able to give very accurate detailed directions (including which lane you needed to be in), way before mapquest came into existence.

I discovered the Internet roadgeek community through MTR and some websites that I found during my college days, when I first had internet access.  It's nice to find a community and with all the technological innovation, my accessibilty to roadgeek stuff has increased substantially.

One of my proudest roadgeek moments was when I was living in the Sacramento area and I was a passenger with work colleagues on a work-related field trip to San Francisco.  The HOV lanes on I-80 had recently opened and I knew about it becuase of MTR, but most of the others didn't.  I told the driver (who actually had a semi-supervisor role in my job) to beat traffic by using the HOV lanes, while he was concerned that he had to make it to the right lanes in order to take the exit for the Bay Bridge, and I told him to trust me on this and stay in the HOV lane.  He said that he took previous trips to SF and knew that he had to make his way to the right, but I insisted so he followed my lead.  He was delighted to discover the flyover ramps from the HOV lanes to the bridge and we beat a lot of the traffic that way.

[Desert Man]

Before the internet in the 1980s, I have memories of my first map: the Thomas Bros Guide, of Riverside county CA when I was a tender age of six. It took me quickly to become familiar with maps, my parents helped me understand them and I became a "map freak" in addition to "road geek" ever since. I also loved sciences like the weather, and the Weather Channel had maps, my love for meteorology and world climates, and knowing (or wanting to know more) about cities, states or nations in the wide, yet small world we live in.

[bandit957]

When I started a new school in 1st grade, the first thing I did when I got home was grab the Metro Graphic Arts 'Graphic Street Guide Of Northern Kentucky' ("in convenient book form") to determine what local municipality the school was in.

I might not have been the only young Roads Scholar in my area. One day when I was in grade school, another student kept pestering the school bus driver to drive up a newly built road. The driver eventually gave in. I didn't even know this road had been built until the bus went up there.

[SignGeek101]

My interest formed at a young age as I became the navigator on family road trips and even labeled hallways in my house as different streets, even taping up road signs that I made on paper to navigate the traffic.

That is so similar to me. We had a paper 'one way' and 'stop' sign around for awhile. I would have been 8 - 10.

[cjk374]

I believe it was my mom that got me started as a roads scholar. We would occasionally go for rides with no destination. Maybe get an icee or a snack.

As a child, I would play in the dirt and rub a road into existence, make signs using cardboard and popsicle sticks, and run my cars & trucks all over it all day. I even had a white colored dirt I used as my "concrete interstate" highway.

I road a bike all over this area from age 8 to 16. Then the bike became a car and I went to places I had never seen before. I still love long road trips to new places.
I found this site while looking up signs on Google and joined in 2009. I have learned alot about my strange (to everyone else) hobby since joining.

I am not an OG from MTR, but learning about the history of the road scholars of the past & present is fascinating to me. I have learned much, but there is so much more to learn.

[jwolfer]

I started as a kid thanks to my mom. She would cut open paper grocery bags and draw roads for my matchbox cars. This was in the mid1970s. We also made the trip from NJ to Jacksonville 2 or 3 times a year when I was a kid. I would stay up most of the night watching the road. Seeing the Delaware memorial bridge, the Baltimore harbor tunnel and all the state lines. When I was real young i remember having to exit i95 where it wasn't finished and each trip a new section opened.

I remember finding mtr when we first got home internet and finding others like me. It was amazing.. Roads are a good break from porn.. Just kidding..

Now all that's needed is the "nasty nymphos of of 95" where the sexy girls ( and boys, don't want to exclude the girls or the LGBT community) and they go on road trips to all the interesting road sites and tear down the  clearview wherever that find it!  Of course they would do it at seemingly random times throughout. Future as a porn producer? No I would be the star, doubt that.

[Buffaboy]

I have a fetish for traffic signals

[jwolfer]

I have a fetish for traffic signals

Nice

[KG909]

I'm younger than the internet but I loved before I knew what it was

[KG909]

I have a fetish for traffic signals

So you get yourself off to traffic signals?

[Buffaboy]

I have a fetish for traffic signals

So you get yourself off to traffic signals?

Well it depends on what suspension system or signal we're talking about. I like masts and yellow signals, but despise green signals and wires.

[KG909]

I have a fetish for traffic signals

So you get yourself off to traffic signals?

Well it depends on what suspension system or signal we're talking about. I like masts and yellow signals, but despise green signals and wires.

Yeah I agree, those are a boner killer

[Takumi]

what

[Pete from Boston]

A civil engineer drove me around for many hours at a time.  Boy, when my parents found out... (kidding). 

There were maps in the car, and I was bored, and just started soaking in the details.  Having a professional for a parent meant I had terms like "Interstate standard" floating around my head before I was ten years old.

So, no.

[noelbotevera]

Yes and no; I discovered this site by accident when I was looking for a video game walkthrough. I actually have a PA atlas from 2009. My roadgeek deals dated to 2012 when I searched up I-H1.

[iBallasticwolf2]

Yes and no; I discovered this site by accident when I was looking for a video game walkthrough. I actually have a PA atlas from 2009. My roadgeek deals dated to 2012 when I searched up I-H1.

How did you manage to find this site while looking at A video game walkthrough? 

[noelbotevera]

Yes and no; I discovered this site by accident when I was looking for a video game walkthrough. I actually have a PA atlas from 2009. My roadgeek deals dated to 2012 when I searched up I-H1.

How did you manage to find this site while looking at A video game walkthrough? 

I was trying to find a video game walkthrough on YT (don't remember what game).

[iBallasticwolf2]

Yes and no; I discovered this site by accident when I was looking for a video game walkthrough. I actually have a PA atlas from 2009. My roadgeek deals dated to 2012 when I searched up I-H1.

How did you manage to find this site while looking at A video game walkthrough? 

I was trying to find a video game walkthrough on YT (don't remember what game).

Oh ok. Somehow that lead you to some roadgeek thing that leads to AARoads? My best guess.

[SignGeek101]

Yes and no; I discovered this site by accident when I was looking for a video game walkthrough. I actually have a PA atlas from 2009. My roadgeek deals dated to 2012 when I searched up I-H1.

How did you manage to find this site while looking at A video game walkthrough? 

I was trying to find a video game walkthrough on YT (don't remember what game).

Oh ok. Somehow that lead you to some roadgeek thing that leads to AARoads? My best guess.

I originally got here in 2012 from looking at US Metrication. So, anythings possible....

I am an engineering student too so that probably helped me stay 

[busman_49]

The internet didn't play a role for me, is just helped to confirm that I'm not THAT crazy and that there are others with the same interest...or maybe that there are other people out there who share the same craziness...

I had a driver's ed manual that I carried with me to school in kindergarten, because it had pictures of signs in it.  Many of my drawings were of signs and traffic lights.  Basically, I've enjoyed all things road-related since I was a wee lad.

[sipes23]

The internet didn't play a role for me, is just helped to confirm that I'm not THAT crazy and that there are others with the same interest...or maybe that there are other people out there who share the same craziness...

+1

I hear you loud and clear.

[cpzilliacus]

I became a roadgeek in Kindergarten, maybe before, when I watched the Circumferential Highway (now I-495, Capital Beltway) being built and improved not far from my childhood home in Montgomery County, Maryland in the period 1962 through about 1965 (the Beltway was completed in 1964, but there was some work that went on after it was completed).

The mid-1960's was some years before anyone had heard of ARPANET or the Internet or anything of the sort.

I also remember the congestion at the American Legion Bridge (Cabin John Bridge then), which became endemic in the 1960's for traffic moving from Maryland to Virginia (the Beltway was 3 lanes each way in Maryland, but most of the Virginia portion was only 2 lanes each way, with a wonderfully wide and green median, that went away in the 1970's, when VDH widened most of the Virginia portion fronm 4 lanes to 8 lanes in one massive project.