What year did you discover the online road community?

[bugo]

I first discovered some road related websites in 1996, and started actively contributing to the community in 1997.  What about you?

[corco]

I think I became aware of it in 2003 or 2004 or so, browsing many of the websites. I became aware of MTR in that time period, but didn't really read it.

I think I made my first MTR post in 2007 or so, but posted pretty sporadically and was mostly just a lurker. Once this forum appeared in 2009 I really started diving into the community side of things.

As far as I can tell (and my memory confirms this), this post in December 2007 was my first post to any forum. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/misc.transport.road/0OEVgkw0OqQ/iNcPvxtmACwJ

[signalman]

I first found AARoads in 2009 looking for road and signal pictures.  I quickly found the forum and joined.  I lurked for a long time before I first posted though.  I knew nothing of MTR years back.  I only learned of its existence from reading other members talk about it here.

[Scott5114]

2004 or so. I discovered it by Googling the road I lived off of, an obscure county road notable only for having an exit from I-35, on a whim. I got a hit to Eric Stuve's OKRoads, complete with photos of the exit, including the older button copy signage that used to be there. I spent a few days looking at his sites, vicariously traveling along on his trips. I didn't realize there was an actual roadgeek community for a while after that, though.

[Truvelo]

I joined a UK based roads forum in 2002. I discovered AARoads.com some time before the forum started.

[jeffandnicole]

Somewhere around 2000 or a few years after that, I discovered MTR.  I was late in the game getting to this site...I guess I just never came across it somehow in my web searches.

[US81]

In 2009 or so, I was researching maps tracking old alignments and found this web site, which was really my first hint that there was any sort of community. I was a long-time lurker, also.

[Tom958]

'95, IIRC, right after I first got online. I was looking for transportation planning resources, and I'd found a collection of links. The last one at the bottom of the page was titled "For roadgeeks only." My heart shipped a beat and I think my hands trembled slightly as I clicked it. 

[AsphaltPlanet]

2003 or so, the first time I tried googling, "Ontario Highway 401"

[JKRhodes]

2001. A local news story about safety improvements to the Loop 202 freeway between Mesa and Tempe(weird to think there was actually a gap up there before the huge shopping centers went in) led me to do some googling, or actually, webcrawling or yahooing or something like that. I stumbled across Richard Moeur's Highway Stuf page, Alan Hamilton's Arizona Roads page, the ADOT website, a number of other road enthusiast websites, and eventually, MTR.

[NE2]

The end of 1997. The local paper had the URL for "Oddens' Bookmarks" which included a link to IHOZ, Kurumi, and perhaps others. I was struck by the elegance of the SPUI.

[hotdogPi]

2013 for me.

[okroads]

It was in late 2001 or early 2002 when I discovered the online road community. I was searching for Kansas Turnpike pictures and stumbled upon the AARoads Sign Gallery. From then on, I was hooked.

[Alex]

1997 while killing time at the University of Delaware library. I searched for something on Interstates and stumbled across Kurumi's page, James Lin's site, Andy's Highway Kickoff Page and MTR.

[roadman65]

It was in early 2000's that I discovered that there are others like me on the internet, and that they even took road photos and posted them!  I discovered AARoads later on after stumbling upon Steve Anderson's NYC Roads. 

I then learned it had a forum years later in 2011 and then joined afterward.  I only wish that I knew of this years ago (that is the picture taking) as I would have loved to photograph many historic road signs and designations that no longer exist today.   Many of you disbelieve stuff I have said I  saw and if I had photos from back then (even the early 90's) I could prove to you the things that really did exist.  Many of you are young and I have been into roads long before many of you were even born, and seen a lot of signs and practices that one could never imagine.

[Roadgeek Adam]

Discover it? Probably about 1999 or 2000.

Be a part of it? 2008.

[Grzrd]

Discovered it in early 2000s while trying to find info about progress on Corridor X construction. Lurked at MTR and seroads@yahoo for a while. Joined here and started participating in 2010.

[Takumi]

2011.

[Alps]

2001, thanks to someone pointing me to user NE2. Had no idea the highway interest even extended beyond drawing and reading maps until then.

[sammi]

Some time in 2010 was when I started making road signs... I wanted to look for a program so I don't have to do all the work. (Kurumi's Signmaker was used rather heavily by me then.) And then I learned about MTR and AARoads. Joined the forum only about 9 months ago.

[Brandon]

1996-97.  I was up at Michigan Tech and they had access to the newsgroups.  I had participated in a few since late 1995 when I started up there, but then I found MTR and all the other road sites at that time.

[kurumi]

1996. I think the first site I saw was Zzyzx's Interstates. By the end of the year, I was bringing the site up and bugging MTR guys for information (as in "Looking for Dead Interstates" thread, Dec. 1996)

[CNGL-Leudimin]

2007, while browsing a new discovery for me: Google Earth. I decided to look at the US just for the heck of it, and liked the roads. Then I got to Wikipedia, and eventually to Froggie's site and then to Henry's site on Geocities. Back then I knew little English, but improved a lot with that. Some time after I realized our roads were interesting too, but struggled to find a community before I joined Skyscrapercity in mid 2010.

[getemngo]

While searching for scans of paper maps in 2001 or 2002, I accidentally stumbled across a (now long-gone) site with photos and descriptions of traffic lights from every state. From there, I found Kurumi, Robert Droz's US Highways, Chris Bessert's Michigan Highways when it was hosted on AOL, Marc and Sandor's roadfan.com, Texas Highway Man and all his pages about the Autobahn, SPUI's pages, and yes, AARoads. Most of my discoveries from that point on came through Andy's Highway Kickoff Page or dmoz.org.

I knew there were meetups and I knew about MTR, but I wasn't familiar with newsgroups and they seemed like too much hassle (so I never even saw meet announcements).

Finally, in 2008, I got brave with my digital camera and submitted some M-179 photos to Dan Garnell's Michigan Highway Ends. Dan invited me to the Great Lakes Roads group on Yahoo, something that I didn't know existed before that day, and I've been part of the community ever since.

I'm not sure anyone else took as long to go from lurking to participating...

Discover it? Probably about 1999 or 2000.

Be a part of it? 2008.

...oh wait, never mind.

[1995hoo]

Discovered? No idea. I knew of MTR but have never posted there. The first site I found was probably either Scott Kozel's Roads to the Future, kurumi's 3di site, Steve Anderson's NYC Roads, or Jim Teresco's road sign photos. Don't know which nor when.

As far as participating, I discovered this forum in April 2011. I had known of this site, and I had submitted pictures to the webmasters back in 2002 or 2003, but for some reason I never noticed the forum until more recently.

I have not participated in any USENET newsgroup since May 1998 at the latest.