Moment You Knew You Were A Road Geek

[Roadsguy]

Who exactly is Eric Stuve? I'm assuming he's a big roadgeek.

[Ian]

I thought I was just a weird individual that knew a little too much about signs and maps. I didn't know there were others until the day I searched for the name of the street I lived on at the time in Google. It was an obscure rural road, and its only claim to fame was its I-35 interchange. So the only thing that popped up were I-35 exit lists. One of those was Eric Stuve's site... you mean not only is there someone who likes signs as much as me, but he's photographed them all so I can look at them??

Oh, yeah, Eric Stuve is how I am able to live with myself.  I might be a roadgeek, but I'll never approach the level of Eric. 

The standard unit for roadgeekiness is the milli-Eric. Mr. Stuve himself is 1000. Alex and Andy are in the high 800s. I'm 553. (Carl Rogers is NaN.)

Where is the mE calculator so I can find out my own measurement?

I wish to find my own standing as well with this milliEric measurement method.

Thirded on the finding out my milliEric measurement. Though I guarantee I'm > 200, as I haven't been doing actual "roadgeeking" (taking photos, taking road trips for the sole purpose of roads, etc.) for more than a few years.

[kphoger]

I'm > 200

I'm < 200 ???

[Ian]

I'm > 200

I'm < 200 ???

I was trying to say I was less than 200 on the milliEric scale...

[codyg1985]

When I first discovered MTR in the late 1990's and saw that everyone on there was talking about the same sort of roadly stuff that I was curious about.

[kennyshark]

I was a Road Geek from an early age (about age 7).  I thought seeing all those freeway-to-freeway interchanges on I-94 through Detroit were so cool.  And I was a big reader of the Rand McNally Road Atlas by the time I was 8.  Now I've graduated to Road Trip Geek, where my knowledge of what's at each exit falls somewhere between Sheldon from "The Big Bang Theory" and Rainman.

[Alps]

Having met Eric Stuve, I'm a little surprised he would be at the top of the scale. He doesn't seem nearly as bad as some I've met/know/know of.

[doorknob60]

I would spend hours looking at the road atlas when I was 5. Also as far back as 5ish, I knew my way around and would tell my Mom (who's terrible at directions) where to go, even though I couldn't drive of course. I would memorize important exit numbers, etc. I always watched The Weather Channel because I liked seeing the maps Also I became really interested in weather for a while, possibly because of that. I always liked talking about roads with my Dad (he's a somewhat road geek too). SimCity was and is one of my favorite games. The first time I found AAroads (not the forums) a couple years ago, I spent hours browsing all the photos. The first time I found this forum (not long ago), I spent many more hours helplessly browsing all the threads. Yeah, there's a lot of signs

[Scott5114]

Having met Eric Stuve, I'm a little surprised he would be at the top of the scale. He doesn't seem nearly as bad as some I've met/know/know of.

Oh, no, he's not. What we are commenting on is that he is pretty damn dedicated to get a photo of every single exit he passes. Considering he has done trips of several thousand miles before, keeping up that level of consistency is, frankly, admirable.

Plus, it's really useful. There have been times I need the exact text of a sign for a Wikipedia article. I don't even bother with Google Street View, I go straight to OKRoads.

[OracleUsr]

I had never heard of the term "roadgeek" until I joined misc.transport.road

HOWEVER, my first roadgeek memory came was when I was 5 and  I argued with my parents on how to get from Nags Head, NC, back to Raleigh.  They wanted to stay on the same road, which was US 264.  I knew better.  I didn't know at that time how big a difference it would have made had we stayed on 264 (having been on that road to the Outer Banks twice, I now know), but I knew US 64 was the way to go.  I was of course right.

[kphoger]

Having met Eric Stuve, I'm a little surprised he would be at the top of the scale. He doesn't seem nearly as bad as some I've met/know/know of.

Oh, no, he's not. What we are commenting on is that he is pretty damn dedicated to get a photo of every single exit he passes. Considering he has done trips of several thousand miles before, keeping up that level of consistency is, frankly, admirable.

Plus, it's really useful. There have been times I need the exact text of a sign for a Wikipedia article. I don't even bother with Google Street View, I go straight to OKRoads.

Yes, the captions of his OKroads (and don't forget OKhighways) photos are only moderately roadgeekish.  I totally agree with the usefulness of real-world photos of exit signage.  The only problem is, construction projects happen, layouts change, signs change, and then I'm left looking for a more recent photo.  Oh well, you can't have everything.

[Riverside Frwy]

I didn't know I was a roadgeek until high school, but I looking back I was into highways, and actually transportation in general, from 3 or 4 years old. Much of my childhood was spent making traffic lights out of legos, building overpasses and flyovers out of blocks, using Kinex as guard rail, and building a freeway through the hallway of my house for my toy cars. It was numbered highway 77, and it used a California Spade shield(of course, I didn't know the differences in highway classes at the time, I just had always like the California State Route Shield.) I also remember that it was a single direction  freeway five toy-car lanes wide, and I used rectagular blocks and put them on their side to form sound walls. I couldn't make bi-directional because a 10-lane toy car freeway would have taken up like 80% of the hallway. 

EDIT: Yes, I know, why didn't I just make 2 lane per direction freeway? Well, I'm from South Bay/Long Beach, and hadn't really seen anything other than classic Los Angeles 10 lane freeways at the time...

[bugo]

I'm not a road "geek" (the only things I "geek out" about are cars and guitars) but I've been interested in roads and maps since I was probably 6 or so.

[Scott5114]

Having met Eric Stuve, I'm a little surprised he would be at the top of the scale. He doesn't seem nearly as bad as some I've met/know/know of.

Oh, no, he's not. What we are commenting on is that he is pretty damn dedicated to get a photo of every single exit he passes. Considering he has done trips of several thousand miles before, keeping up that level of consistency is, frankly, admirable.

Plus, it's really useful. There have been times I need the exact text of a sign for a Wikipedia article. I don't even bother with Google Street View, I go straight to OKRoads.

Yes, the captions of his OKroads (and don't forget OKhighways) photos are only moderately roadgeekish.  I totally agree with the usefulness of real-world photos of exit signage.  The only problem is, construction projects happen, layouts change, signs change, and then I'm left looking for a more recent photo.  Oh well, you can't have everything.

Yeah, the websites are a bit out of date (OKHighways in particular is full of pictures from the circle sign era) but you can often find a more up to date photo on his Flickr feed.

[bugo]

I have some newer pictures of circle signs.  They're rare now, but there are some out there.  There are a couple on I-40 near Webbers Falls, several on US 69/75, some at OK 51 and Sheridan, and some in downtown Tulsa.

[kphoger]

you can often find a more up to date photo on his Flickr feed.

I know.  I just find it nigh impossible to easily search his Flickr pages.  The old webpages are nicely laid out, for the most part.

[kurumi]

... Much of my childhood was spent making traffic lights out of legos, building overpasses and flyovers out of blocks, using Kinex as guard rail, and building a freeway through the hallway of my house for my toy cars. It was numbered highway 77, and it used a California Spade shield ...

I wonder if your CA 77 was longer than the constructed part of real CA 77 :-)

[agentsteel53]

I have some newer pictures of circle signs.  They're rare now, but there are some out there.  There are a couple on I-40 near Webbers Falls, several on US 69/75, some at OK 51 and Sheridan, and some in downtown Tulsa.

I wonder if the 18" (!) OK-3 circle that ScottN and I found in Nov '09 is still around.

[Mike_OH]

When I was a child, I used to draw maps on the back of the church bulletin, while in church.

[kphoger]

When I was a child, I used to draw maps on the back of the church bulletin, while in church.

Well, yeah, how could this refer to anything but a highway interchange?

[Roadsguy]

It means... some kind of roundabout volleyball with a lane drop bottleneck from the '70s.

And it's hilly, so you have those "keep two dots apart" signs.

Either you weren't enough of a roadgeek to tell that that would fail from minute one, or you just wanted to draw a bottleneck interchange.

[roadman]

Life long roadgeek here, though I didn't learn about the actual term until a few years ago.  And I still prefer to call myself a "highway enthuasist".

At the age of 2, I taught myself to read by reading highway signs (it was the early 60s, so there weren't any graphic signs yet).  And I was drawing roads (with signs) on paper at age 4, and making paper signs and mounting them on overhead supports made from Ideal Super City pieces at the age of 7.

By age 8, I was the only person in the family my father would trust (apart from himself) with the road maps when we went on trips.  And what trips they were.  Some of my earliest memories of those days include crossing the then newly-opened second span of the Deleware Memorial Bridge, driving through the construction zones for building the original "dual-dual" roadways on the New Jersey Turnpike, and later on - the widening of the Wilbur Cross Highway (now I-84) between Hartford and Sturbridge.

[Kacie Jane]

At the age of 2, I taught myself to read by reading highway signs (it was the early 60s, so there weren't any graphic signs yet).  And I was drawing roads (with signs) on paper at age 4, and making paper signs and mounting them on overhead supports made from Ideal Super City pieces at the age of 7.

Much the same here.  Apparently "EXIT" was the first word I could read.  (Which made road trips fun, with me shouting "exit" every time we passed a sign.)

[The High Plains Traveler]

At the age of 10 or less, probing my Dad about whether he was SURE he hadn't seen a California route marker older than the bear signs, when he finally snapped, "Oh, you mean the ones with the Spanish Conquistadors?"

[NE2]

Oh, no, he's not. What we are commenting on is that he is pretty damn dedicated to get a photo of every single exit he passes.

There's another site that has something just like that. I think it's called AAARoads?