Hi- I've been posting here for a while now, and so I figured I should actually introduce myself! I live near Burlington, VT; I got my Ph.D. in the humanities and bounced around for a while, switched careers and became an actuary, and settled down and all that.
I grew up on Cape Cod, surrounded by water, and didn't travel much as a kid since my parents were pretty much paycheck to paycheck. But I grew up reading maps and loved the few times we did road trips out of state. I then was lucky enough to travel a lot all around the US during grad school for research and conferences etc. This kind of informs how I think of roads- I'm not an engineer or an idealist about how road systems should be etc., but I'm interested in understanding why roads are the way they are, which is super fascinating, and just marveling at how massive and grand and weird and contradictory the US road system is.
I'm now a little between traveling times in my life- not just due to COVID, but starting a new career with two girls under 6 and another on the way- but I've been planning road trips for when the kids get old enough to remember stuff. I'm the person in my family who knows the Interstate system and where roads go and stuff, and it's neat to see people who can kick my ass with their road knowledge. And if I make mistakes, it's usually because I'm in a two-parent, two-kid work from home/remote learning environment and just massively sleep deprived
