Moment You Knew You Were A Road Geek

[ShawnP]

1972-73 living in the Lauderdale Lakes area of Broward County, Florida. I-95 was just getting completed in the area. As a young child in the 1970's I loved seeing new roads. Well I-95 had opened but not completely yet. Well we were traveling on it and the workers were taking a break. Well I WAS NOT HAPPY with that. I wanted my road done and done NOW. So I yelled out the window at them to get back to work. Yes at 5 years old I realized I was a road geek. 

[kphoger]

I've always been a roadgeek, but I didn't know it until high school.

We were near what had once been the border between East and West Germany, on the west side of the line.  This was the summer of 1999, and my family was being driven by a German man and his son in their RV; he had driven these roads a few times over the years, and I had never been to the region at all.  My mom pointed out to him that he'd missed our turn a little bit ago.  'How do you know?' he asked.  She replied, 'Because Kyle says so.'  (We had.)

[Alps]

I didn't know what a roadgeek was until college, but I was drawing road maps by age 3.

[1995hoo]

I always liked maps and by age 5 I was giving my parents directions. I'm sure by that point I was demanding in advance to know whether my dad was going to use "Cars Only" or "Cars-Trucks-Buses" on the Jersey Turnpike.

In the second grade my teacher didn't like it that I "drew little badges on the numbers" on math assignments (when the number was one I knew like 495, 270, etc.).

[agentsteel53]

at age 5, I attempted to trace I-495 along the east coast using the individual Rand McNally pages.  there it was in Boston.  And again in New York City.  so how did it ever get between those two??

I still remember the license plate number of a car my grandparents sold by 1984, when I was 3.

(it is Hungary RS 54-55, for those wondering.)

[kphoger]

Well, yeah, I was doing roadgeek stuff as a young child.  I made license plates for my Big Wheel.  I looked out the window on drives and doodled road signs.  Et cætera.  But when were you first aware of your roadgeekdom?

[agentsteel53]

probably whenever I found MTR, which was around 2001 or so.

[Takumi]

Well, yeah, I was doing roadgeek stuff as a young child.  I made license plates for my Big Wheel.  I looked out the window on drives and doodled road signs.  Et cætera.  But when were you first aware of your roadgeekdom?

Bah, you just obsolesced my long, nostalgic response with that. Probably the mid 90s when I guided my family to and from the beach and they bought me maps. I realized it was a hobby at that point.

[ShawnP]

Signs never really interested me (sorry sign mistake guys). The actual construction and routes to this day do. Love seeing a well built and well designed highway and interchange. Nothing gets me boiling more than seeing a project done on the cheap. Either do it right or don't do it at all. I would rather have 2 well done projects than 10 done on the cheap.

[formulanone]

Holding the maps and atlases at the age of 5-6 on our trip to sunny Florida from Tennessee, and being "in charge of it". Learning what the directions meant, what the road numbers signified, where and why those squiggles and lines meander or join up in places. (Not to burst anyone's bubble, but it probably meant our fathers' wanted us to participate a little in some long drive, either to keep us quiet, create some father-son bond, or chattering so that he wouldn't fall asleep on long interstate drives.) Boys (and some girls) are also fascinated with large machinery, equipment, building, construction, demolition; especially at a really young age.

Probably the crossing over into roadgeek territory was when I started highlighting the all routes I drove on, around 1995 or so, with penciled notes about when I'd driven each segment. I started noticing the sign stuff along the way; no two really seemed alike. I just wanted to see...what was over there, and what did it look like?

[NYYPhil777]

Started drawing road signs and maps at age 4... on MS Paint.
Started giving directions at age 5.

[DTComposer]

At 4 I drew a road map of my neighborhood on the inside cover of my Charlie Brown Dictionary.

In Kindergarten my career goal was to be a cartographer.

When our school flooded in third grade I made a map of each "pond" and "stream" caused by the flooding, naming them after teachers and administrators.

In fourth grade my teacher gave me a box of old National Geographic maps that the school library was going to throw out.

[kurumi]

Around age 7, possibly on hockey road trips along CT 66, I-91, and CT 15.

Roll out about 6' of butcher paper, draw a city of Matchbox-size streets; use cardboard for overpasses, and Q-tips for sign gantries.

[NYYPhil777]

Around age 7, possibly on hockey road trips along CT 66, I-91, and CT 15.

Roll out about 6' of butcher paper, draw a city of Matchbox-size streets; use cardboard for overpasses, and Q-tips for sign gantries.

Now that's a moment of genius.

[Scott5114]

Likewise I found out that the wide masking tape was exactly the right width to create a two-lane road with no shoulders for Hot Wheels cars. Cardboard signs on toothpick gantries followed.

[DandyDan]

It was probably when I was a kid, about 1st grade or so, and I would go along with Mom and a horde of different relatives to her garage sales.  In order to give me something to do, they let me be the navigator.  Sometimes, I would lead them deliberately out of the way just to see stuff.  Not long after that, I was making my own maps, some of them of imaginary places.  Of course, I didn't know the term "road geek" existed until 6 years ago.

[Roadsguy]

When I was really young–not sure quite how old (did it for a while)–I taped 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of paper end-to-end and crayoned roads on them. A five-lane, median road was about as wide as the paper, maybe an inch on each side left. Probably my first (or a really early one) was Cottman Ave/Township Line Rd (mostly PA 73) from Greenwood Ave all the way to 95*. Not too accurate, though (for example, I-95 was a sea of lanes: exactly how three-to-four in each direction seemed to me.

Then I got my Matchbook cars and drove them on my roads, only to find that I had trouble maintaining enough width.

I still have a good-sized bin of them, all rolled up, in storage.

Looking back, I guess that was the first verification of official roadgeekdom.

*http://goo.gl/NNmS0

[Dr Frankenstein]

I guess it was around when I started looking through Steve's website and I've first seen the term.

[vdeane]

I knew I was into roads for as long as I can remember, but I didn't know the term roadgeek until I was in middle school.  Someone posted a photo of a guide sign gantry to a SimCity forum, I looked on google images for more sign pictures, and stumbled on Upstate NY Roads.

[corco]

I think it hit me seriously in the late 90s. I had been interested in cars since before I can remember (I learned to read by reading nameplates off the back of cars), and once I knew how to read fairly well my Dad got me a subscription to Car and Driver.

When we moved to Idaho in 1997, my parents got a 1996 Rand McNally that I started studying, and I remember shortly after that I'd go through the Car and Driver magazine and read the letters back to the magazine and trace the routes where people came from to various places.

I think my first exposure the the roadgeek community was when we got internet in about 1999 or 2000, and at some point I searched for road signs and stumbled upon Elkins' Milleniumhighway site. In early 2001 my Dad and I drove a Jeep from North Carolina back to Idaho and I remember really getting into looking at the road signs beforehand on the internet.  Until I got my license in late 03, I didn't do much more than browse maps and occasionally roadsign pictures, and then I started getting into driving highways in early 2007.

By late 2007 I realized I wanted to share that with others, and started posting on MTR sporadically in late 2007, but my real involvement didn't take off until 09 when this forum opened shop.

[triplemultiplex]

Probably freshman year of high school (1997) when I discovered some road geek sites on the web and realized there was a name for people like me who were totally into maps and highways and stuff.  I think Kurumi's site is the first one I remember.  I used it to pretty much memorize all the 3di's (and discover the ones that didn't appear in Rand Mac at the time.)

That's when I realized that this wasn't just another passing phase like dinosaurs or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  I knew this would be a part of me for the rest of my life.

[NYYPhil777]

Also, who had a "Car City Carpet" when you were a kid? I had one, too- it was a city map with buildings on carpet.

[Alps]

Also, who had a "Car City Carpet" when you were a kid? I had one, too- it was a city map with buildings on carpet.

I had a plastic mat with roads and signs on it. I drove that mat to pieces, so my parents got a second one, and I drove that one to pieces as well.

[Takumi]

I had one as well, although I was more into cars at the time.

[amroad17]

Probably when I was nine or ten, reading signs along the Thruway on weekend family trips (sometimes out loud--much to my parents' chagrin) and looking through my grandparents' 1971 Rand McNally atlas.