Things that irk you about "road geeking"

[texaskdog]

Roads that are now at the bottoms of lakes. For example, Old NC 10 can never be clinched because five miles of it are sitting at the bottom of Fontana Lake

A true roadgeek would be renting scuba gear to clinch.

[Laura]

I would like to add: being prevented from tracking old roads because they have now become private property. I've tracked El Camino Real de los Tejas (Old San Antonio Road), the Bankhead Highway, old US highway alignments up to private property, not to mention old bridges.   

Make no mistake, I respect private property and do not trespass, but it does "irk" me.

This is also my irk! I love micro micro road geeking and hate how some old historic roads in the area have turned into private access. They aren't really "important" roads per se, but I would love to explore them for the fact that they've been used as trails for centuries.

My other major irk is when I have to rush to and from somewhere that I don't get to visit often due to time constraints. For instance, I wanted to take the whole weekend of the upcoming Scranton meet to explore roads in northeast PA, but I'm going to need Friday and Sunday to work on grad school work, so I'm only going to get to drive Saturday. To add insult to injury, it means that I'm going to have to take I-81 and I-83 home because it'll be dark after the meet.


iPhone

[kurumi]

There's still tons of information I haven't yet read that's not online, and available only in a library open 9-5 weekdays, by appointment, in the basement of a DOT building 3,000 miles away.

[kkt]

And I remember the days when Kmart would lose or ruin half my photos when I took them in to be developed.

I think I found your problem.

[adventurernumber1]

Another irksome thing when it comes to taking road photos and videos is when your phone (or camera) won't focus in. My phone does this quite often and it is so very irksome. Sometimes holding my phone as completely still and smooth as possible won't even do anything (then sometimes it focuses in). Another method that sometimes works (if far away enough from the sign or whatever you're aiming to get a snap of) is to quickly exit out of the camera app then go back in and briefly wait, but sometimes even that fails to work. I can't tell you how many pictures have ended up blurrier than hoped (though thankfully many of those are at least decent, though not as good and HD as they could be), and sometimes horrifically blurry. Sometimes even videos will fail to focus in (just check out my GA 316 Westbound in Winder video on my YT channel; permanently like that, but better than nothing), and that's even more irksome. 

Whenever my phone decides to do this, my family probably has no idea what the fuss is about when I say very fast "FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS." 

[GCrites]

A tripod will help with that when you're not in motion.

[Duke87]

Is it actually N.J. 68 if it runs through a military reservation's gate?

It is, yes. The official end of NJ 68 is at the traffic circle about 500 feet beyond the gate. The last opportunity to U-turn without having to explain yourself to the gate guards is another 500 feet further back.

This situation exists because pre-9/11 Fort Dix was not gated and the public was allowed to drive through unimpeded. NJ 68 ended at a traffic circle with County Route 616 and it was a perfectly logical endpoint. But, post-9/11 gates were added to keep the public out of the base, and it was decided the easiest way to do so here was to add a gate on NJ 68 upstream of the traffic circle and reroute the public section of CR 616 away from it so it intersected with NJ 68 outside the gate. The current layout is seen here:
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0175002,-74.6358918,736m/data=!3m1!1e3

You can clearly see the old pre-9/11 alignment of CR 616 heading southwest out of the traffic circle.

But, despite the US army having installed a gate, NJDOT has never changed their logbook to modify the endpoint of NJ 68 so it still ends at the traffic circle and probably will forever since NJDOT is not known to bother pruning route definitions to reflect realignments. This is why NJ 53 ends a block north of US 46 - it ends at old US 46 despite US 46 having been realigned more than half a century ago.

One can't roadgeek on a work trip

Says who? I do it all the time. If I'm in my own car I just don't expense the extra miles. If I'm in a rental I pay for the extra gas on my own dime and corporate rentals are unlimited mileage so nobody asks questions about the odometer so long as I return it with a full tank. And of course in either case the added time is my own and is not billed. My direct management is aware that I do this and they think I'm a little crazy that I want to drive MORE than necessary but they are perfectly fine with it.

When you're travelling with your spouse who doesn't tolerate stopping for things I would like to see.  I can justify a lot of things like bridges and national park entrance signs but when I see some strange sign and want to stop she'll say no

Grow a set of balls and tell her that you're going to stop and if she gripes, don't stop when she needs to go to the bathroom or something. Don't ever let a woman push you around.

What's funny is that with me and my girlfriend it is exactly the opposite. I will want to just drivedrivedrivedrivedrive all day stopping as briefly and infrequently as possible. She can't deal with that, she needs to stop and do stuff/see things along the way, and pulling over for a minute to quickly take a picture or two of a sign or a bridge doesn't count.

This doesn't cause fights, though. When I start yelling profanities at a horribly butchered sign assembly and circling around to get a picture of it, she finds it entertaining and is more than happy to let me do so. And if she wants to do something and we plan to stop there ahead of time, I'm more than willing to fit it into the schedule so long as it is something I would also find interesting.
Meanwhile when we go on trips together I do all the driving and we both prefer it that way, so there are no arguments over that.

[ZLoth]

That my current shift doesn't really allow me to road geek without messing up my sleep schedule. I'm a vampire.

[bandit957]

Sometimes I prefer nighttime Scholaring, especially on certain side roads through wooded areas. But nighttime photography is much trickier.

[Henry]

Sometimes I prefer nighttime Scholaring, especially on certain side roads through wooded areas. But nighttime photography is much trickier.

That is, unless your camera/cellphone has a very bright light.

[oscar]

Sometimes I prefer nighttime Scholaring, especially on certain side roads through wooded areas. But nighttime photography is much trickier.

That is, unless your camera/cellphone has a very bright light.

Or, in addition to or instead of a good flash, a digital camera that can be set to a super-high ISO like 25600, perhaps combined with a very fast (and cheap) lens like a 50mm f/1.4, and also helped by a tripod to allow long exposures without camera shake. Cameras with high ISOs might be too pricey, and you lose image quality pushing it to 25600 (or beyond).  But I've gotten usable and sometimes interesting nighttime shots, even without a flash (your car's headlights or a streetlight can help), a tripod, or ridiculously high ISOs.   

[Brian556]

In Florida, it is always raining in the area between Tallahassee and Gainesville, every time I go through, and there are a lot of old signs to photograph in that area.

[yakra]

Having to travel to work - which takes energy away from the "real" trips.  One can't roadgeek on a work trip - especially if:
* Your assigned a company car
* You don't get a car at all.

I clinched ME188 and ME183 on business trips. One the way back from the ME183 trip, I clinched ME185 and just pretended that that time/mileage never happened.

Roads that are now at the bottoms of lakes. For example, Old NC 10 can never be clinched because five miles of it are sitting at the bottom of Fontana Lake

I may or may not have clinched the second, ~1932-1949, incarnation of ME149, in a canoe.

[SSOWorld]

Having to travel to work - which takes energy away from the "real" trips.  One can't roadgeek on a work trip - especially if:
* Your assigned a company car
* You don't get a car at all.

I clinched ME188 and ME183 on business trips. One the way back from the ME183 trip, I clinched ME185 and just pretended that that time/mileage never happened.

Companies will catch on to the habit for sure in terms of time and miles on the car - eventually. It really depends if you have "uncharted territory" and time in between you and your destination.  In these days of "cutting costs" (a term I consider an oxymoron because salary is paid to the decision makers), they're going to whistle blow.

[Laura]

Having to travel to work - which takes energy away from the "real" trips.  One can't roadgeek on a work trip - especially if:
* Your assigned a company car
* You don't get a car at all.

I clinched ME188 and ME183 on business trips. One the way back from the ME183 trip, I clinched ME185 and just pretended that that time/mileage never happened.

Companies will catch on to the habit for sure in terms of time and miles on the car - eventually. It really depends if you have "uncharted territory" and time in between you and your destination.  In these days of "cutting costs" (a term I consider an oxymoron because salary is paid to the decision makers), they're going to whistle blow.

It also depends how your company reimburses you, too.

When school paid for me to go to TRB in January, while they didn't require gas receipts, I was only allowed to calculate the miles between school and the destination. Since I used the train, I submitted the mileage between school and the train station each day (24 miles total). My guess is that they do it this way so that they don't get suckered into paying for a full tank of gas when I used much less. I did have to submit my receipt for the train, though. I could have driven to the moon and back and there would have been no issues because I wouldn't have been allowed to calculate those miles into the total.

Four years ago, I went on business to New Jersey to deliver books. In that case, I was given a gas card. Had I done a bunch of extra road geeking, I would have just purchased additional gas with my personal card and obviously wouldn't have submitted those receipts. However, if they had me tracking every single mile, I wouldn't have been able to do that even if I wanted to.


iPhone

[Zzonkmiles]

1. Not being able to see road signs on interstates (especially unfamiliar ones) because I'm in the passing lane and a truck in the slower lane is blocking the view.

2. I second the person who mentioned unanticipated road construction--especially on roads I've never been on before. What a way to spoil the new experience!

3. Deer on roads in rural areas!!! I've had a few close calls that have turned me off from a lot of US highways and state routes in rural areas!

4. Being unable to pass a slow vehicle on a two-lane road because of double solid lines or because there's too much oncoming traffic.

5. Speed traps are a problem because I admittedly have a......uhhhhh "heavy" foot.

[oscar]

.One can't roadgeek on a work trip - especially if:
* Your assigned a company car
* You don't get a car at all.

On the rare occasions when I traveled for work (and wasn't working on a trial or other project consuming all my time), I was usually able to work in some roadgeeking.  The keys were (1) to need a rental car for my work assignment, with no PITA geographic restrictions (I had to get one modified, which interfered with my work assignment as well as my planned personal travel -- that rental agency tried to limit me to Louisiana, but the quickest route between my day 1 and day 2 assignments cut through Mississippi), (2) to travel by myself, or be able to drop a colleague off at the airport before I did my roadgeeking, and (3) to have the work assignment end on a Friday afternoon, so I couldn't fly back to work that day, and could use as much of the weekend as possible for my exploring.  It helped that we made our own travel arrangements, on a computer system that didn't object to weekend travel so long as it didn't cost extra (even though the official preference was for travel entirely within the work week); and we were also on our own for extra hotel nights which we couldn't expense in any case. 

Such roadgeeking tacked on to several work trips was helpful to snagging a few dozen counties in several southern states that were off my usual road-trip travel patterns.

[yakra]

I do it all the time. If I'm in my own car I just don't expense the extra miles. ... the added time is my own and is not billed.

BOOM.

3. Deer on roads in rural areas!!! I've had a few close calls that have turned me off from a lot of US highways and state routes in rural areas!

3A. Deer in Suburban areas. *COUGH*MerrittParkway*COUGH*
3B. ($%&( M00SE!

[jeffandnicole]

Lucky people that get to travel for work. 

I've been in the office for 16 years, with 3 occasions to take the train up to NYC.   When I do my plow work for NJDOT, I'm on a stretch of road no more than 10 miles in length for upwards of 12 hours at a time.  I can tell you every little nuisance of those roads, especially the manholes and drainage inlets set 1/4 inch too high that no car driver would ever feel, but that'll bust a blade.  These are roads I've travelled all my life near my home.  The biggest difference is I sit up higher, so I can see over the construction barriers easier.

Back in '98 when I did work for a CPA firm, I did some travelling not too far from home - the most I did was to Dover & Reading.  The one thing I learned in Dover was that if there's a No Left Turn restriction at an intersection from 8am to 5pm, and it's 7:55am, people still get pissed at you for turning left!

[1995hoo]

I do it all the time. If I'm in my own car I just don't expense the extra miles. ... the added time is my own and is not billed.

BOOM.

....

As someone who is self-employed, I've thought about this issue several times in conjunction with recording business miles for tax purposes. I'll either use the most direct route in one direction, note that mileage, and then simply record that as the roundtrip number, or if I don't use the most direct route, I'll measure it out in Google Maps or the like and record that. (The car has two trip meters, so I use trip meter "B" for this sort of thing. I usually just take a picture of the trip meter reading with my iPhone as an easy way of keeping track.) It's in my own interest not to record too many business miles because if I use the car more than 50% for business I will not be able to deduct the state car tax on my federal tax return.

If, of course, I use a longer route for a reason other than exploring–say, there's a wreck that closes the highway or creates a big backup–then I'll use whatever route I deem appropriate and record the full distance.

[formulanone]

Companies will catch on to the habit for sure in terms of time and miles on the car - eventually. It really depends if you have "uncharted territory" and time in between you and your destination.

Pick another airport, drive the extra 1-3 hours to destination. Sometimes saves money, at the expense of catching the 5:30am flight.

I have to keep a mileage log for work trips, but only for the drives to and from my destination. I print out a Google Maps with the desired route, which usually winds up 1-2 miles short due to fill-ups, meals, and rest stops. I get reimbursed per mile, if I choose not to let them pay for my fuel (the latter option exists for those who have vehicles with bad gas mileage). If I average 30-32mpg in my car, I usually come out quite ahead even after figuring in insurance, maintenance, tags, non-work usage, and other upkeep. (I don't consider depreciation into play, since that's a variable amount on the whim of a car salesman's need to sell a car; it's a lower-end B-segment car, anyhow.) I'll have plenty of leftover cash to use the side trips as a "personal expense", which means I eat the extra mileage for the sake of county-collecting, scenic-route-taking, or clinching.

[TEG24601]

Speed limits in rural areas under 75, although in most places 85 would be more logical.


Truck Speed Limits.

[sipes23]

3B. ($%&( M00SE!

Not just a rural problem. I nearly hit one in Scarborough, ME.

[bing101]

When nobody in the group understands the difference between route shields.

[J N Winkler]

There's still tons of information I haven't yet read that's not online, and available only in a library open 9-5 weekdays, by appointment, in the basement of a DOT building 3,000 miles away.

I expect this situation to improve as digital storage costs continue to drop, though the process is still frustratingly slow.