You Know You're A Roadgeek If...

[corco]

You can drive in fast moving, heavy traffic and take well positioned pictures of road signs without ever having to waver your concentration from the traffic

[mightyace]

You can drive in fast moving, heavy traffic and take well positioned pictures of road signs without ever having to waver your concentration from the traffic

I guess I don't qualify then. 

[ctsignguy]

Your walls are covered with maps from states youve never been to.

Your walls are covered in signs from states you both have been and never been to....

[Scott5114]

Your story about "the one that got away" involves a rare state-name shield and dead camera batteries.

[SSOWorld]

if - when confronted with construction on a road - you think "oh man - wait - lets go that way anyway."

[akotchi]

. . . when the first part of the new Rand McNally atlas (or other) you look at is the "updates" section.

. . . when you nod your head and smile at every previous post in this thread.

. . . when one stop on your honeymoon is the project office for a major interstate highway project.

. . . when overhead guide signs, especially diagrammatics, are referred to as a "work of art."

. . . when one spends lunch hour, at a profession in the same field, posting to threads such as this . . .

[mightyace]

. . .  when one stop on your honeymoon is the project office for a major interstate highway project.

How did you manage that? 

[ctsignguy]

. . . when one stop on your honeymoon is the project office for a major interstate highway project.

Hmmm, i might do that.....or better yet, try to stop at a local State garage! *can easily imagine road dust all over my tuxedo with a few specimens under my arms as my blushing bride murmurs "Mom told me there would be days like this...but why TODAY?"*

[akotchi]

. . .  when one stop on your honeymoon is the project office for a major interstate highway project.

How did you manage that? 

Purely by accident.  My grandmother offered us her house in South Florida for the second week, and it was two miles away from the I-595 construction.  Fortunately, 20 years later, it appears my wife has forgiven me . . .

[mightyace]

. . . your first thought when seeing a "ROAD CLOSED" sign is to drive past it as far as you can so you can view and photograph what's going on.

. . . when following a detour, you mutter "Why are they sending us this way?" and proceed to take a more direct route.

[Hellfighter]

...when you bring your camera with you just to take pictures of road signs. 

[Bryant5493]

... when you get in a car accident and are pissed more about not being able to videotape a particular road element than anything else.


Be well,

Bryant

[Michael]

. . . your first thought when seeing a "ROAD CLOSED" sign is to drive past it as far as you can so you can view and photograph what's going on.

I've done that since I was a kid!

. . . when following a detour, you mutter "Why are they sending us this way?" and proceed to take a more direct route.

I've done that on a detour near Oswego, NY.  A bridge over a creek near Fruit Valley on NY 104 was being replaced.  This map is the route of the official detour.  I took this route instead, and got ice cream at a lakeside restaurant along the route too!

[Hellfighter]

. . . your first thought when seeing a "ROAD CLOSED" sign is to drive past it as far as you can so you can view and photograph what's going on.

I do that all the time! 

[r-dub]

-You think spending money on an DC->AC converter, suction cup mount for your camcorder, video capture card for your laptop, battery chargers, and extra batteries is perfectly normal. (Not to mention the camera and camcorder)

-You have to have XM, Sirius, or a serious MP3 player available since you know you'll be out of radio range hunting for abandoned alignments

-There is no direct route home--even within your home city

-You think YouTube sucks because of its copyright issues when you put music over a video

-You're willing to pay for a website to showcase your roadgeekery

-You were able to figure out how a construction project was going to look when completed and draw it out to explain to your parents -- at 5 (true story)

-On a roadtrip to an out-of-state destination, you're pissed when you aren't able to get that picture of that one good sign and you know you won't be back that way

-You learn very quickly that flash photography through a windshield is a losing battle.

-You spend more time doctoring your road pictures than you do on your roadtrip. (mostly reliving the trip, but fixing that bug splatter is of utmost concern)

-Your family vacation roadtrip picture galleries have more picts of the roads than of the actual family and tourist traps you visit

-You've crashed a GPS. (also true story. Laughed my rear off when I saw a windows error message pop up on the damn thing. Tried to take a picture, didn't come out)

-You lament those pictures that don't come out

-You get really annoyed at that perfectly placed pothole that interferes with that one great shot.

-You know your local oil change center's employees by first name--and they know yours

-You know where all the rock chips are in your windshield and how to position your camera to avoid them

-A peeling letter or number on a brand new sign intrigues you more than it possibly should.

[agentsteel53]

-You think spending money on an DC->AC converter, suction cup mount for your camcorder, video capture card for your laptop, battery chargers, and extra batteries is perfectly normal. (Not to mention the camera and camcorder)

in related news, you can be completely self-sufficient in a car for 6 days.

[SSOWorld]

you're pissed off because you're either:

• on a business trip - and thus can't clinch roads due to the car not being supplied by you
• are forced to fly since you don't have enough time to drive to the location

[florida]

-You've been drawing traffic light assemblies on paper since a young age.
-You would make 'faces' for every phase of a traffic signal, as a young, young child in the car seat.
-You'd ask your dad to take you the "long way home" (going west on US 92 from A1A to I-95, to FL 400 to home) after spending the day with him, and beg him to drive you places so you could see them.
-You could name every single intersection (on main roads) which had a traffic light in your city.
-You would draw maps in school to pass the time....and then make exit lists for the fictional places.
-You would trace all the roads in a road atlas with different colored pens.
-Your friends ask you for directions and call you a "human GPS".
-At work, you'd be the "go-to" guy for directions.
-You spend hours and days going through county, state and folding maps (spanning several years) to document additions and deletions, realignments, etc.
-Your quest in life is to figure out the history of your state's road system.
-You constantly check certain sites for updates in galleries and such.
-You constantly check your DOT's site for updates of the route log.
-You've gone to your DOT's headquarters, rifled through old files, and persuaded them into giving you copies of maps with planned/proposed routes.
-You cut out route shields you've taken pictures of, and make a collage out of them on posterboard.
-You have 'taken' an ancient route sign (or two) just because nobody else would appreciate the importance of it, thus saving it from the scrap pile.

[rickmastfan67]

- you were giving directions to your parents when you were 10

Try 7. 

-You would draw maps in school to pass the time

Try doing that @ restaurants, around 5. 

-Your friends ask you for directions and call you a "human GPS".

My mom does that all the time. hahaha.

===

- Curse @ the local TV news reporters when they say a US Highway is a State Route.

[tmthyvs]

...at age 5 (or so) and after a trip of 2100 miles, the first thing you tell your grandparents is "We took highway 16 to highway 93, and highway 93 to highway 1, and highway 1 to highway 39, and highway 39 turned into highway 52, and highway 52 to highway 94 and highway 94 to highway 494, and highway 494 to highway 35, and highway 35 to highway 3, and highway 3 to  county road S41, and county road S41 to highway 20, and highway 20 here"

...you look at the preceding description and figure out where I lived and where my grandparents lived.

...you think you have a better route

[tmthyvs]

...when you study maps in third grade and have a test problem of drawing a map showing certain things, you draw a to-scale complete street map of your hometown and lose points for not drawing houses on the map because real maps don't have houses on them

[Mr. Matté]

...at a restaurant, you point out that the I-65 shield on the wall is not made to MUTCD specifications.

[agentsteel53]

Your grandparents live around Cannon Falls, MN.

don't know where you live, because I'm guessing you approached the Minn/St. Paul area from the west, but ND highway 1 hits the 52 *after* it runs into I-94... and I don't see a highway 39 anywhere in the area!

... or how that all becomes 2100 miles.

[florida]

-You see someone's bank card state, "Fremont National Bank" and ask them if they're from Nebraska. 

[74/171FAN]

-you draw roads on maps from school that have nothing to do with roads
-you notice errors on maps in textbooks about the original interstate system