How open are you about your road geeking in your social life?

[KEK Inc.]

I'm pretty open.  Most people associate me as the road guy since I was in elementary school.  I don't hide it all. 

Found an assignment I made when I was a chemistry TA in high school.



So, are you a closet road geek? 

[J N Winkler]

How open am I?--not very.  It is mostly because road enthusiasm is a hobby like knitting, carpentry, etc.:  there is a large group of people who are not into it and are not really interested in hearing much about it, but will allow their ears to be bent for a short while out of politeness; and then there is a rather smaller group of people who are road enthusiasts but don't know it yet, and have to be coaxed into it gradually.  For the latter, "less is more":  better to imply that there is more to learn and suggest that it might be fascinating, than to dump it all out at once.

[corco]

I come at it from the "I enjoy a good roadtrip" perspective as opposed to the "OMG ROADZ" perspective when talking with other people, and that's helpful, because lots of people are in that first subset and not so many are in that second subset. Plenty of people enjoy roadtrips- the difference is that most roadgeeks do it because they like the road as opposed to the things along the road- the road becomes the destination instead of a means to get to the destination.

Being a road enthusiast is a pretty niche hobby, but there's plenty of more mainstream interesting subject matter that can come of it, so I try to skew towards that in conversation. If I'm driving through Hill Country, I'll talk about what a neat town Llano is and how great that barbeque place was instead of how much Clearview there is in Texas. There are a lot more closet cultural geographers (most people are, to some degree) than closet roadgeeks, so I try to stick to that side of the subject matter.

I've only ever met two roadgeeks that are outside of the roadgeek community- both were geographers met in an academic setting, which is probably not representative of mainstream society anwyay.

[cjk374]

I keep it to myself.  I have shown a couple of my co-workers where the original alignment of US 79 south of Magnolia, AR is now Columbia County road 7 on the east side of our railroad...they already knew about how it ran through where the steel mill is now located. (in fact, the steel mill uses the original concrete road to place the billets they unload out of the railcars).

It's tough enough being a railfan while working for a railroad.  I sometimes get ragged by my co-workers, but I don't care.  Trying to be a road geek & explain that to them is not worth the effort.

[djsinco]

I waver back and forth with my tidbits. Having driven a truck coast to coast for over a dozen years, I have been to (and had a meal or two) in almost any mid-size to large US town you could name. It is fun to occasionally ask where in (insert state name) someone is from, and then tell them how great the Shade Tree Cafe used to be. The smaller and further away it is the more baffled they become. Sometimes I follow up by telling them I just made it up, and they are mystified even more...

[bugo]

I don't talk about it.  I don't even tell my friends about it until I've known them quite a while.  Some of my friends don't even know about it.  I do, however, talk about my bridge photography hobby because it seems "cooler" than talking about sign fonts or highways that don't fit the numbering system.

[J N Winkler]

I've only ever met two roadgeeks that are outside of the roadgeek community- both were geographers met in an academic setting, which is probably not representative of mainstream society anyway.

I have a few friends who are not members of this community but have tripped my road enthusiast radar, in one case by making Facebook posts referencing highway features such as freeway guide signs (not the state-line welcome signs most outsiders can sort of understand).  Plus there was that episode in Berlin years ago when I got into the zone photographing a large lane-assignment direction sign, only to find a young woman right next to me doing precisely the same thing.  But in no case have I ever said, "Hello, are you one of us?"

[corco]

In my case, one of them was an absolute highway nerd who really should be involved in the enthusiast community- we brought him along with us to be a ringer in a geography bowl at a regional conference (he lived in Evanston or something and took a couple classes online, so was qualified but had not been active with us to that point- somebody just knew he knew a ton about geography), and once we got to talking he was a pretty avid AARoads reader and knew of Kurumi's and Elkins' site and a couple others, but not somebody involved in the active community, and then we ended up scaring everybody with us at dinner by testing each other's highway knowledge, and he knew a heck of a lot. This was late 2009, so the forum was still in its infancy stages. He may very well be lurking- if you are start posting.

The other was a cultural geographer who was working on her dissertation on US 1 - basically travelled the distance of the highway and mapped culture regions and how the highway evolves over its distance, but then also knew a surprising amount about signage and alignments and things of that nature. She was actually a K-State student at the following year's regional geography conference. I'd love to see a copy of her dissertation, but she didn't have it with her nor was she presenting at the conference- the Wyoming contingent ended up dining with the K-State contingent that night because of some faculty that knew each other, and I'm not quite sure how that came up in conversation.

[Alps]

I'm fortunate in that I made it my career, so I get to talk about my career and throw in "yeah, this is kinda my hobby too, I love what I do." So I'm quite open about it, between my passion for highways and my photography hobby.

[kphoger]

Everyone I know probably knows I'm a roadgeek.  For one thing, it's pretty hard to travel with me and not know it.  Our best friend, especially.  He's said before, "˜I love how much of a geek he is.'  I have another good friend who designs road bridges for a living (his wife calls it doodling when he does sketches at home), and we have recently discovered each other's love of roadly things.  He drives his wife nuts by stopping on the highway and taking pictures of bridge elements and such.  At work, it's obvious I'm a roadgeek, since I'm on this site and Google Maps every day, all day, in between calls and work projects.  Basically, this is not an interest I've ever felt a need to keep to myself.

[cjk374]

I'm fortunate in that I made it my career, so I get to talk about my career and throw in "yeah, this is kinda my hobby too, I love what I do." So I'm quite open about it, between my passion for highways and my photography hobby.

That's how I feel about my job.  I get paid to play!   

[Duke87]

I'm relatively open about it although I do often start with "I like taking road trips", especially when dealing with women.

But I can't for a second fool anyone into thinking I'm not a nutty character if they spend any time with me since my very personality is so unique... so my friends all know about my love of roads (and other forms of infrastructure). It won't make anyone think any more weirdly of me than they already do.  

[empirestate]

By this point in my life, two things have happened that tend to make the question of whether or how to talk about it pretty much a non-issue.

One is that I've travelled enough, and many of my friends and colleagues have similarly travelled, that it doesn't seem odd to talk about what I've seen in my travels. The other is that my interest in the hobby has itself evolved mostly into those parts that don't seem so weird to other people anyway, such as the cultural geography aspect, and even map reading and collecting doesn't get as many sideways glances these days as you might think. (I've had any number of "normal" people admit, unsolicited, that they enjoy maps and find them interesting, even just occasionally.)

I don't readily bring up the fact that I've compiled route logs and lists of highway interchanges (and made a website about it), but then again, I'm no longer particularly active at doing those things anyway. So I've pretty much just made it a part of my persona, and after all, when you're in a business like I am, everyone is pretty much, by definition, a geek of some sort regardless!

[Scott5114]

I try to keep a lid on it as much as I can because people generally seem to not enjoy hearing about it. But I will spit out a routing if someone is talking about heading someplace, especially far away, and if I am driving with someone and I spot something unusual or bad I will comment on it. The latter is often more acceptable than you might think, because when you comment on how bad a particular sign they're looking at is, they just have to know why. One of my friends allowed me to turn it into a conversation on the general quality of Oklahoma signs, and after having pointed out how remarkably inconsistent things were from sign to sign, he started noticing it too and it started bugging him.

[vdeane]

I'm not particularly open about it, but it's not really hidden either.  Anyone who looks at my Facebook page close enough can probably tell, though I keep a separate Roadgeeks list for posting road-related stuff.

[US81]

I didn't really know there were (many) other road geeks until a few years ago.  From childhood, I have been known as someone with a good sense of direction and someone who enjoyed maps and atlases.  That's what I maintain for work colleagues and acquaintances.

After the Pixar movie "Cars" came out, I learned about the road geek community and realized that I was not alone in my fascination with old alignments, old v new maps, styles of signage, bridges, construction, geography, road numbering and trivia, etc.   My family and close friends are aware, but I have not yet met anyone in person who shares these interests. 

So - yeah....

[cpzilliacus]

I'm fortunate in that I made it my career, so I get to talk about my career and throw in "yeah, this is kinda my hobby too, I love what I do." So I'm quite open about it, between my passion for highways and my photography hobby.

That's how I feel about my job.  I get paid to play!   

Yeah, me too. 

Sometimes people at the office come to me with strange, obscure, road geeky-type questions about the highway and transit networks around the area, and even more disturbingly, I can usually answer them.

[kurumi]

I'm open about it; I tend not to bring roadgeeking up "cold" as a new topic, but will certainly chime in when the conversation goes there.

In my office are a few road photos (including Hartford skyline), a US 395 sign and a bottle of 395 IPA. An engineer in another group stopped by, and figured out who I was -- from MTR. He had lurked for a while, and no longer does, but his friend, who has a site where he contributed some photos, still participates.

"Cool, who's that?" I asked.

He was reluctant to give a name; his reasons, in summary, were that the person's conduct was controversial. That was enough information that the name was no longer necessary.

So that's my 1 degree of separation from Carl Rogers

(I'll leave out the co-worker's name; he's a good guy and doesn't deserve any of the notoriety)

[agentsteel53]

everyone who's ever ridden in a car with me knows, because I tend to make out-of-nowhere pronunciations like "that's a 1971 sign gantry".

[US71]

I'm more open about my bridge photography than I am with anything else.

[djsinco]

everyone who's ever ridden in a car with me knows, because I tend to make out-of-nowhere pronunciations like "that's a 1971 sign gantry".

Pronouncements or pronunciations?

Either way, it sounds like you have a the first clinically diagnosed case of Highway Tourette's Syndrome (HTS.)

[agentsteel53]

everyone who's ever ridden in a car with me knows, because I tend to make out-of-nowhere pronunciations like "that's a 1971 sign gantry".

Pronouncements or pronunciations?

Either way, it sounds like you have a the first clinically diagnosed case of Highway Tourette's Syndrome (HTS.)

oh dear.  kids, never post before the caffeine kicks in! 

[formulanone]

I try to keep a lid on it as much as I can because people generally seem to not enjoy hearing about it. But I will spit out a routing if someone is talking about heading someplace, especially far away, and if I am driving with someone and I spot something unusual or bad I will comment on it. The latter is often more acceptable than you might think...

With all my work travel, these things come up a lot, whether to family , friends, or acquaintances. Close friends and such know I'm apt to drop everything and drive in some obscure country road in a town they'd never heard of. What they probably don't know (and I typically don't share) is that I have an absurd amount of photographs of road signs and roadways, although I have no problem with showing off photos of my kids, family, and pets. Although, I've shown people the "Big Beaver Road" one a few times, in conversation, just to be tasteless and say I went to Michigan.

It's really no different than having any other odd or unusual hobby/interest that only a (comparatively) small handful of people enjoy. I don't find much pleasure* in boring people with information that they really don't want to hear in the first place, but if the opportunity is there, you say your bit and move on.

* Not completely true, I've been able to get both my cranky infant children to get to sleep by retelling the stories of Grand Prix races that...(yawn, oh look at the time)

[D-Dey65]

I was open about it long before there was an internet. Everybody who knows me knows I'm a big road geek, and though none of them share my passion for roads, sometimes they're glad. Remember that "You Know Your a Roadgeek" thread when I mentioned giving details about roads that most people can't handle?
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=1113.msg145574#msg145574

I also remember road signs that most people don't think about, and my first reaction to some traffic problem that I see in one location or another is to blurt out some construction project, instead of accepting things as they are.
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=1113.msg150442#msg150442


I've certainly got in more than my share of arguments with anti-highway zealots, so I don't make too many friends this way.  A girl who might've had a crush on me during the 1990's was horrified when I told her I wanted to see NY 347 turned into the expressway it was intended to be. It's sad too, because I thought she was attractive as well. I don't care, though. I stand by my principles even if they make me lonely.

[Alps]

I'm open about it; I tend not to bring roadgeeking up "cold" as a new topic, but will certainly chime in when the conversation goes there.

In my office are a few road photos (including Hartford skyline), a US 395 sign and a bottle of 395 IPA. An engineer in another group stopped by, and figured out who I was -- from MTR. He had lurked for a while, and no longer does, but his friend, who has a site where he contributed some photos, still participates.

"Cool, who's that?" I asked.

He was reluctant to give a name; his reasons, in summary, were that the person's conduct was controversial. That was enough information that the name was no longer necessary.

So that's my 1 degree of separation from Carl Rogers

(I'll leave out the co-worker's name; he's a good guy and doesn't deserve any of the notoriety)

You, sir, ... wait, when did you move to California?