Definition of "Clinching" a Route

[Max Rockatansky]

I just see no need to be so draconian about a hobby when it can sap the fun out of it.

Can I make this my forum signature?

Sure.

[Scott5114]

I think I just spite-clinched the entirety of MSR-200 from page 3 there...

[Rothman]

Routes are designations upon certain roads.

So, if a person has traveled every inch of road in the entire Republic of Chad, then they still haven't clinched any routes there?  That seems like an un-useful definition.

I am not familiar with Chad's transportation system.

As far as I know, its roads have no numbers.

Surely they have some sort of names.

[Rothman]

In theory, I agree with you, but I capitulated due to how travelmapping works.

I agree that TravelMapping is a big factor for anyone that uses it. If you've been on the road segment, you've been on it and that's all there is to it. If the number changes, I have no issues with saying you have to go back and re-clinch to get the new number, but it's still completely fine to keep it logged as a traveled segment.

Fencesitter.

[kphoger]

Routes are designations upon certain roads.

So, if a person has traveled every inch of road in the entire Republic of Chad, then they still haven't clinched any routes there?  That seems like an un-useful definition.

I am not familiar with Chad's transportation system.

As far as I know, its roads have no numbers.

Surely they have some sort of names.

Not that I'm aware of, although I suppose it's possible.  I imagine the road to Abéché is probably just called "the road to Abéché" (in Chadian Arabic or whatever language, of course).  Your assumption that all roads have names or numbers is ill-founded.

Heck, I'm an American, and I grew up in an area where the rural roads didn't even have names or numbers until the 2000s.  So, for example, everyone knew the route to get from Herndon to Ludell, but that route had neither name nor number.  I'm not even 100% sure it has a name or number even today, as I can't find any online map with any labels there.  The official county map labels it as "RS 179" but, as far as I know, those RS designations only exist on paper.  And besides, they are only applied to roads of some local importance:  this road doesn't have such a designation.  By your definition of routes being "designations upon certain roads", then, clinching that road does not result in clinching a route.  (They've probably been named or numbered since I lived there, even if I can't find it on any online map, but they certainly didn't have names or numbers before 2000.)  To get to a friend's house, I had to know where he lived and where to turn to get there–they didn't have addresses other than rural mail route numbers.  My dad had a big map of the county on the wall with every farm labeled.

I must therefore conclude that, by your definition, clinching roads in a place with no names or numbers given to them, it is impossible to clinch any routes.  And that is, as I said, un-useful.

[Big John]

U2 sang something about it:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FsrPEUt2Dg

[Rothman]

Routes are designations upon certain roads.

So, if a person has traveled every inch of road in the entire Republic of Chad, then they still haven't clinched any routes there?  That seems like an un-useful definition.

I am not familiar with Chad's transportation system.

As far as I know, its roads have no numbers.

Surely they have some sort of names.

Not that I'm aware of, although I suppose it's possible.  I imagine the road to Abéché is probably just called "the road to Abéché" (in Chadian Arabic or whatever language, of course).  Your assumption that all roads have names or numbers is ill-founded.

Heck, I'm an American, and I grew up in an area where the rural roads didn't even have names or numbers until the 2000s.  So, for example, everyone knew the route to get from Herndon to Ludell, but that route had neither name nor number.  I'm not even 100% sure it has a name or number even today, as I can't find any online map with any labels there.  The official county map labels it as "RS 179" but, as far as I know, those RS designations only exist on paper.  And besides, they are only applied to roads of some local importance:  this road doesn't have such a designation.  By your definition of routes being "designations upon certain roads", then, clinching that road does not result in clinching a route.  (They've probably been named or numbered since I lived there, even if I can't find it on any online map, but they certainly didn't have names or numbers before 2000.)  To get to a friend's house, I had to know where he lived and where to turn to get there–they didn't have addresses other than rural mail route numbers.  My dad had a big map of the county on the wall with every farm labeled.

I must therefore conclude that, by your definition, clinching roads in a place with no names or numbers given to them, it is impossible to clinch any routes.  And that is, as I said, un-useful.

Yep, no names or routes means you can't clinch routes.

I mean, clinching un-routed roads, you'd just say "I've clinched all the roads in this area."

You can't refer to routes when they don't exist.

[Avalanchez71]

 
That is hard core.

[Rothman]

That is hard core.

And the rent was real hard core.

[Mr. Matté]

If you clinch pavement, do you need to reclinch the road if it gets milled & resurfaced?

(I guess I do that on the local & county roads around me on bike when that happens)

[Rothman]

If you clinch pavement, do you need to reclinch the road if it gets milled & resurfaced?

(I guess I do that on the local & county roads around me on bike when that happens)

No.

[NWI_Irish96]

If you clinch pavement, do you need to reclinch the road if it gets milled & resurfaced?

(I guess I do that on the local & county roads around me on bike when that happens)

Resurfaced, definitely not. However, I've struggled with what to do with surface roads that get upgraded to freeway. The road stays in the same place, but the nature of the road changes quite a bit. Whenever feasible, I will try to go back and hit those roads again.

[kphoger]

If you clinch pavement, do you need to reclinch the road if it gets milled & resurfaced?

No.

I was under the impression you clinch routes, not pavement.

[Rothman]

If you clinch pavement, do you need to reclinch the road if it gets milled & resurfaced?

No.

I was under the impression you clinch routes, not pavement.

Yes.

[bm7]

Not only are you clinching routes, I think a clinch should only count if you're following the spirit, or the intended purpose, of a route. Interstate? You have to use all of it to travel to another state. Alternate route? The main route must also have been viable for where you're going. Bypass? You need to have a reason unrelated to clinching to not use the main route. Business? Must use it for business purposes. Truck? Self-explanatory.

[dlsterner]

Not only are you clinching routes, I think a clinch should only count if you're following the spirit, or the intended purpose, of a route. Interstate? You have to use all of it to travel to another state. Alternate route? The main route must also have been viable for where you're going. Bypass? You need to have a reason unrelated to clinching to not use the main route. Business? Must use it for business purposes. Truck? Self-explanatory.

But then nobody will be able to clinch I-97   

[pderocco]

The only clinching I keep accurate records about are state, US, interstate, and numbered county routes in California. If some road that I've clinched is rerouted, I put an "asterisk" on it. Currently, my only asterisk is on US-101, because of the Willits Bypass. Last time I was there, it was one week before the bypass opened, so I could see most of it from the old road, but I still intend to drive the bypass next time I'm in that part of the state.

Since I'm having a harder and harder time to find roads to clinch in California, I'm beginning to wish that I had kept separate track of which roads I've driven in each direction. Often, the experience of a piece of road is quite different depending on the direction, because certain things are only visible in one direction. Yet not having kept track of that in the past, I could never re-clinch anything without starting nearly from scratch.

Once I've clinched a long significant road, I then start looking for old alignments to explore. Along US-395, I've driven on bits of road with weeds growing up through the cracks, just to imagine what it was like when there were old Model Ts on it. I managed to drive a piece of the old CA-178 that was buried under Lake Isabella, when the lake was really, really low five or six years ago. But I think that's above and beyond "clinching".

[NWI_Irish96]

I have about the sloppiest criteria for clinching as anyone you'll ever meet. It basically boils down to "If I was able to reasonably experience what was marked as Route X between points A and B at the time I was there, then I clinched Route X between points A and B". There's too much stuff I want to see in my life to dick around driving back to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or whatever because they realigned a mile of road and I need it to keep a clinch. That's so fiddly I wouldn't have any fun doing it (and in fact would start to actively resent having to do it), so I don't.

• Route closure with detour– If Route X was closed, the detour counts.

[/li][li]Sight clinching–If I can follow along the route and keep sight of it the whole time (like on a frontage road or a parallel street) I count it even if I'm not on the road itself. If I wouldn't be experiencing anything different if I was on the mainline, there's no point drawing a distinction. (Note that if there's a route that runs along the frontage road and I'm on a freeway mainline, like how MO-97 parallels I-44 for a bit, I don't count that since it's much easier to see what a freeway is like from a frontage road than the reverse.)[/li][/list]

So for me these two go together. In Indiana and I believe several other states, when there's a road closure on a highway, even if it's just a short closure for a bridge out, the official signed detour follows signed highways which might bypass 10 and sometimes even more miles of the route. I will always go for the shortest possible route around the closed part rather than the official detour, especially if it's an area I'm not likely to return to later.[/list]

[1995hoo]

Nah.  If the route number changes, you lost the clinch.

By that logic, if a route number was simply changed and you have already driven the entire highway in question then you would still consider it an un-clinch?  Wouldn't that not just be a clinch of the new route number designation by default? 

I clinched the old route, not the new route.  It isn't about pavement.  It's about clinching routes.  If the route number changes, I have not clinched the new route.

Suppose they add a route number while keeping the old one in place. The example that comes to mind for me is the new I-14 in Texas. We lived in Copperas Cove when I was born but moved away when I was one year old and I've never been back. I didn't have the current alignment of US-190 in that area clinched because the Killeen bypass didn't exist back then (heck, a fair number of streets in Copperas Cove were unpaved, according to my mother), but either way, in my view I certainly don't have any mileage travelled on I-14 even though a good part of it is "the same road" as US-190.

[Dirt Roads]

In particular, can a route become "unclinched?"

For example, if a route gets moved or extended onto a new routing, such as a bypass, do you view that you have to now take that bypass to "reclinch?"  What about if it is moved or extended over highways that you have driven on previously? 

A real life example.  When WI-13 was given a new route through Marshfield, it was also re-routed between Wisconsin Rapids and Marshfield.  Instead of taking the current WI-73 and WI-80, it was routed over WI-34 and US-10.

I had previously clinched all of WI-13, as well as US-10 and WI-34.  Since the stretch through Marshfield was a completely new route, would you consider my clinching reversed until I took that routing?  How about the stretch that was previously clinched as existing state highways?

Here's an interesting twist.  Now that the NC-119 Mebane Bypass is open (almost completed), I wanted to traverse the whole bypass on my first trip.  That required getting off of I-85/I-40 at the Trollingwood exit (Exit 152) to get to NC-119 in order to catch the first 100 feet of the project (which is south of Exit 153).  But there are also two other segments of the project:  (1) the new connector to US-70; and (2) the new connector to South Fifth Street Extension (former NC-119).  I have taken the S Fifth St Ext connector many times since it first opened three or four years ago.  But I just picked off the US-70 connector this week.  Which is a good thing, because that is working great as a bypass around the north side of Mebane and I've already taken it four more times this week.

Fun fact:  The South Fifth Street Extension connector was routed to align up with the South Third Street Extension.  Not sure why, but that entire section of the South Third Street Extension has been renamed as South Fifth Street Extension.  There's only two (maybe three) houses on the new connector, so its not a big impact on the Postal Service.  It looks like the old section of the South Fifth Street Extension is still named that as well.  There's only eight of those houses remaining.  Anyhow, it is strange coming up and seeing blades for "S Fifth Street Ext" and "S Third Street Ext" at the same intersection.

Anybody else's head spinning about the perhaps subtle differences between "extension" and "connector" here?