What hobbies have the most and least overlap with the roadgeek community?

[noelbotevera]

Two-person Ticket to Ride gets dull.  Multiperson is a lot more unpredictable and fun.

Ticket to Ride Europe is objectively the better game because building the 8 car long tunnel is a blast.
I'm a bit late to the board game discussion, but I recall spending 5 hours on a Friday night playing a LOTR board game with random people. Quintessential college experience, would absolutely do again.

Party games like Codenames and Secret Hitler are always fun. Board game purists, I said it. You can have fun without needing to spend 5 hours debating the rules.

[Molandfreak]

I suspect that my hobbies are not shared by many others in the road geek community. My main two interests are playing musical instruments (mostly piano and bass) and discussing/debating apologetics and Christian theology. Other than those two things, I dabble in a lot of interests (weather, cars, working out, and sports, among other things), but I don't obsess to the point of making them hobbies.

I'm also a multi-instrumentalist. I play the harp and euphonium primarily, and also sing. One of the reasons why I had a hard time finding a good career path was because my interests vary so much.

[JoePCool14]

Unfortunately I won't be making it to HarmonyCon 2025, sadly, mainly due to college. In fact, I don't think I'll be making it to any cons next year.

Ah. Sounds like I oughta bring a sign with me this time to make up for it then.

[snowc]

Not much of a kidder. SpongeBob and Garfield are two things that overlap with roadgeek

[JayhawkCO]

Two-person Ticket to Ride gets dull.  Multiperson is a lot more unpredictable and fun.

Ticket to Ride Europe is objectively the better game because building the 8 car long tunnel is a blast.
I'm a bit late to the board game discussion, but I recall spending 5 hours on a Friday night playing a LOTR board game with random people. Quintessential college experience, would absolutely do again.

Party games like Codenames and Secret Hitler are always fun. Board game purists, I said it. You can have fun without needing to spend 5 hours debating the rules.

I'm probably what you are calling a board game purist and I really like Secret Hitler and Codenames. My favorite game in this genre is Decrypto. That said, I like the meatier ones even better.

[freebrickproductions]

Unfortunately I won't be making it to HarmonyCon 2025, sadly, mainly due to college. In fact, I don't think I'll be making it to any cons next year.

Ah. Sounds like I oughta bring a sign with me this time to make up for it then.

Honestly, I've thought about buying shields from Rice Signs of highways closest to the con(s) I'm planning on going to that year, getting them signed by folks at those cons, and putting them in the charity auction.

[US 89]

- Weather, specifically The Weather Channel. I think our rules set is based on one from a Weather Channel forum. Most roadgeeks seem to know what the WeatherStar 4000 is.

I have no idea what a WeatherStar 4000 is without looking it up, but I am a degreed meteorologist...

Even if it displays weather, that kind of thing is really more of a communications/TV type interest than weather itself as far as I'm concerned.

[Scott5114]

- Weather, specifically The Weather Channel. I think our rules set is based on one from a Weather Channel forum. Most roadgeeks seem to know what the WeatherStar 4000 is.

I have no idea what a WeatherStar 4000 is without looking it up, but I am a degreed meteorologist...

Even if it displays weather, that kind of thing is really more of a communications/TV type interest than weather itself as far as I'm concerned.

It's a device that sits at a cable headend, pulls data from NOAA, and renders it onto the screen. The 4000 was the early-mid-90s version of it, back when the Weather Channel was actually about weather.



While that's maybe not hardcore meteorology, it has inspired an interest in such for a non-zero number of people.

(Also, it kind of ties into general geography interest as well, since the 4000 in particular was unfailingly honest about where the AWOSes were, leading to the Limonization of a bunch of random small towns that happened to have an AWOS. Raise your hand if you've ever heard of Daggett, California.)

[1995hoo]

I suspect that my hobbies are not shared by many others in the road geek community. My main two interests are playing musical instruments (mostly piano and bass) and discussing/debating apologetics and Christian theology. Other than those two things, I dabble in a lot of interests (weather, cars, working out, and sports, among other things), but I don't obsess to the point of making them hobbies.

Oh I can totally vibe with the Christian apologetics and theology stuff. Religious content isn't allowed on the forum so it wouldn't show, but I have interest in that stuff. Best to leave religious debates off of this forum though.

I minored in religious studies as an undergrad. Would have made it a double major except I didn't want to do that much work. I find theology and such extremely interesting, but I avoid it on the forum for the reasons you've noted.

[TheCatalyst31]

- Weather, specifically The Weather Channel. I think our rules set is based on one from a Weather Channel forum. Most roadgeeks seem to know what the WeatherStar 4000 is.

I have no idea what a WeatherStar 4000 is without looking it up, but I am a degreed meteorologist...

Even if it displays weather, that kind of thing is really more of a communications/TV type interest than weather itself as far as I'm concerned.

It's a device that sits at a cable headend, pulls data from NOAA, and renders it onto the screen. The 4000 was the early-mid-90s version of it, back when the Weather Channel was actually about weather.



While that's maybe not hardcore meteorology, it has inspired an interest in such for a non-zero number of people.

(Also, it kind of ties into general geography interest as well, since the 4000 in particular was unfailingly honest about where the AWOSes were, leading to the Limonization of a bunch of random small towns that happened to have an AWOS. Raise your hand if you've ever heard of Daggett, California.)

I'm not a weather nerd, and until this post I didn't realize the WeatherStar 4000 was an actual thing instead of just the name of the website that simulates the 90s Weather Channel look with current weather reports.

[Scott5114]

I'm not a weather nerd, and until this post I didn't realize the WeatherStar 4000 was an actual thing instead of just the name of the website that simulates the 90s Weather Channel look with current weather reports.

Yep, it's an actual physical computer. The 4000 is one of a number of different models that have been in use throughout the years, and are responsible for the differing graphics on the Weather Channel over the years—the graphics don't update unless the WeatherStar unit at the cable headend gets updated. (This means that every once in a while, usually in a small town served by a small cable company, you'll get some massively out-of-date unit still in service, which is much like stumbling across button copy in the wild.)

It is possible, but difficult, to get ahold of a genuine Weatherstar unit and get it up and running, and there are at least two instances of people doing this on YouTube (the most well-documented is a guy in Franklin TN who has some videos showing how the actual hardware works, in addition to filming its output as he goes through the process of repairing it).

However, there are two different simulation programs out there. The screenshot above is from the one at taiganet.com. That one actually renders a near-pixel-perfect rendition of the WeatherStar 4000 to an OpenGL window on the desktop. It also offers extensive configuration options so you can choose the exact set of cities you want, where to place them on the maps, and what music you want playing. (The dev even managed to get Dan Chandler, the actual TWC announcer at the time, to provide clean voiceovers for it, which ended up being his last credit before he died.) There is also a web-based version called Weatherstar 4000+ which does a lot of the configuration for you, but it isn't terribly accurate to the original machine.

[formulanone]

Showing my age, but I still expect TWC's graphics On The 8's to look somewhat like this (WeatherStar II or III):



You had to wait patiently until a meteorologist pointed a map (and maybe see an ad for wiper blades). Ah, the dulcet tones of elevator instrumental music, sometimes synthy, sometimes jazzy. I kind of fell off from my fanaticism with weather when automotive stuff suddenly took over, but I still catch a glimpse before traveling, if I can.

[ClassicHasClass]

The screenshot above is from the one at taiganet.com. That one actually renders a near-pixel-perfect rendition of the WeatherStar 4000 to an OpenGL window on the desktop.

Sadly it doesn't look like the Mac version is updated much - it crashes on my Sequoia M1 MacBook Air, even after you jump through all the signing hoops.

I'd love to try it on Linux, but my Linux desktop is POWER9, and I can't find source code to build from scratch.

Getting the old TWC hardware running again is a nice crossover with us vintage computer geeks.

[freebrickproductions]

Railfanning also has a LOT of overlap, even among forum users. Not a total overlap, no, but there is enough that they are correlated. The new rail side of Travel Mapping has a decent amount of crossover users. Some people into both have made it a habit to combine the two in their material. I certainly will not turn down a chance to get a great combined road/rail photo.

I do have to wonder how much overlap there is with certain railfan niches crossingfans or defect detector enthusiasts.

There's also a decent overlap between traffic signal enthusiasts and roadgeeks, though IDK how much overlap there is between specifically traffic signal collectors and roadgeeks.

[SEWIGuy]

Showing my age, but I still expect TWC's graphics On The 8's to look somewhat like this (WeatherStar II or III):



You had to wait patiently until a meteorologist pointed a map (and maybe see an ad for wiper blades). Ah, the dulcet tones of elevator instrumental music, sometimes synthy, sometimes jazzy. I kind of fell off from my fanaticism with weather when automotive stuff suddenly took over, but I still catch a glimpse before traveling, if I can.

I loved the traditional Weather Channel! I could have watched for hours.

[Otto Yamamoto]

Minor things that bother you: Those incessant Monopoly Go ads you see on your phone.

Even worse is that it's totally Gacha Garbage from what I have heard.

A VPN takes care of most of that.

[Laura]

I suspect that my hobbies are not shared by many others in the road geek community. My main two interests are playing musical instruments (mostly piano and bass) and discussing/debating apologetics and Christian theology. Other than those two things, I dabble in a lot of interests (weather, cars, working out, and sports, among other things), but I don't obsess to the point of making them hobbies.

Oh I can totally vibe with the Christian apologetics and theology stuff. Religious content isn't allowed on the forum so it wouldn't show, but I have interest in that stuff. Best to leave religious debates off of this forum though.

I minored in religious studies as an undergrad. Would have made it a double major except I didn't want to do that much work. I find theology and such extremely interesting, but I avoid it on the forum for the reasons you've noted.

I'm a big theology/religious studies nerd. I'm a member of a local Unitarian Universalist Church and have had the opportunity to create and preach a service each of the last two summers. I grew up Roman Catholic and had experience in a Methodist church as well as the evangelical Christian world as a teen and young adult. Lately I've been digging into the Divine Feminine as well as Buddhism. I absolutely love visiting houses of worship when I travel.

My related interests to roads include (in no particular order) urban planning, bridges, signs, map collecting, mapmaking, transit geeking, county clinching, license plates. I love international travel and visiting cities and staying in them for a while. If I had a sabbatical from work, I'd love to go somewhere like London and stay for a month, trying to explore as much of it as I can.

Some of my other special interests that seem to overlap with a lot of other roadgeeks include Billboard Top 40, hiking, retail history. I also love all kinds of board games but don't really have the time to play much these days. I like the more complex ones but also adore Monopoly. 

Additional special interests of mine are music (especially singing - I used to sing in a community choir!), writing (particularly poetry), and crocheting.

Something I've personally seen overlap in is game shows, broadcasting, stadium clinching, amateur radio, weather. As we all know my husband Mike is a roadgeek as well as a Ham - his call sign is N3KEV.

So far, my daughter loves road trips and has been to many meets. My nephew is a sign geek and obsessed with FreewayJim. My SIL has joked that she somehow gave birth to our other kid, lol.

[hbelkins]

As a kid, I was a power line/power pole geek as well as a roadgeek.

[Max Rockatansky]

I suspect that my hobbies are not shared by many others in the road geek community. My main two interests are playing musical instruments (mostly piano and bass) and discussing/debating apologetics and Christian theology. Other than those two things, I dabble in a lot of interests (weather, cars, working out, and sports, among other things), but I don't obsess to the point of making them hobbies.

Oh I can totally vibe with the Christian apologetics and theology stuff. Religious content isn't allowed on the forum so it wouldn't show, but I have interest in that stuff. Best to leave religious debates off of this forum though.

I minored in religious studies as an undergrad. Would have made it a double major except I didn't want to do that much work. I find theology and such extremely interesting, but I avoid it on the forum for the reasons you've noted.

I'm a big theology/religious studies nerd. I'm a member of a local Unitarian Universalist Church and have had the opportunity to create and preach a service each of the last two summers. I grew up Roman Catholic and had experience in a Methodist church as well as the evangelical Christian world as a teen and young adult. Lately I've been digging into the Divine Feminine as well as Buddhism. I absolutely love visiting houses of worship when I travel.

My related interests to roads include (in no particular order) urban planning, bridges, signs, map collecting, mapmaking, transit geeking, county clinching, license plates. I love international travel and visiting cities and staying in them for a while. If I had a sabbatical from work, I'd love to go somewhere like London and stay for a month, trying to explore as much of it as I can.

Some of my other special interests that seem to overlap with a lot of other roadgeeks include Billboard Top 40, hiking, retail history. I also love all kinds of board games but don't really have the time to play much these days. I like the more complex ones but also adore Monopoly. 

Additional special interests of mine are music (especially singing - I used to sing in a community choir!), writing (particularly poetry), and crocheting.

Something I've personally seen overlap in is game shows, broadcasting, stadium clinching, amateur radio, weather. As we all know my husband Mike is a roadgeek as well as a Ham - his call sign is N3KEV.

So far, my daughter loves road trips and has been to many meets. My nephew is a sign geek and obsessed with FreewayJim. My SIL has joked that she somehow gave birth to our other kid, lol.

BuceesJim?  Might be high time to introduce the lad to some higher tier groups and pages (definitely not Roadgeekery or there is no way that is MUTCD complaint).