Ken Jennings of Jeopardy fame just released a book about map-lovers called Maphead. It has a chapter called 'Transit' which is all about roadgeekery.
He interviews several people including two guys, Mark Bozanich and John Spafford. Mark being in charge of the Washington State DoT official highway map. I wondered if anybody mentioned in there is an AARoads regular?
There are references to Breezewood, following old US 99, and the Highway Gothic --> Clearview change. It also discusses Richard Ankrom's I-5 shield 'vandalism' with a photo of it.
There's probably no 'new' details to anybody who is of the type to frequent this site but it's about the most I've seen written about the subject in a mass-market book. It's about 21 pages.
Ken Jennings himself dropped by this forum as part of his research for "Maphead". He made a few posts.
Mark and John are both no stranger to our online world of roadgeekery.
And as for the book, I'm impressed at the accuracy of the chapter dealing with this hobby. Usually, what write-ups we do get in newspapers and whatnot are sorely mis-informed, and often totally miss the point. It's also rare to get a writer who's genuinely sympathetic to our interests; they act nice, but underneath they're usually all like "weirdos..."
Quote from: empirestate on June 02, 2012, 01:32:31 AM
It's also rare to get a writer who's genuinely sympathetic to our interests; they act nice, but underneath they're usually all like "weirdos..."
Well, it helps that he's a self-admitted roadgeek and weirdo himself. (The word "weirdo" doesn't have to be an insult... I use it quite frequently as a term of endearment, and have it used on myself as such.) You have to be a bit of a weirdo to have the sort of knowledge required to win 74 games of Jeopardy.
The book was genuinely one of the most enjoyable reads I'd had in quite some time. :)