The Road Geek

Lifespan of a Road Sign

2011-01-07T12:49:00.000-08:00

Sign to Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct

It's not often that something roadgeek-worthy makes it to TV news. This won't be extremely geeky as it is produced for the general public. Now from the middle of the country, Brad's Beat: Lifespan of a Road Sign.

Put this old sign on your back

Buy this shirt off my back!
Caution: Funny Signs Ahead Book
Lonely Planet Signspotting: Absurd and Amusing Signs from Around the World
Lonely Planet Signspotting 2 : The World's Most Absurd Signs

What's Your Sign?

2010-08-08T23:45:00.000-07:00

Beside finding the Roadgeeky details of how signs, signals and road markings should look, now you can test your skills at the Federal Highway Administration's Sign IQ Quiz.

Want to know more? You can download the official Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices here. Then go and see how well your local roads follow the manual.

Road Stripe Shortage could have Texas Drivers Weaving

2010-05-25T20:41:00.000-07:00

A stripe paint shortage has the Texas Department of Transportation scrambling to find new sources of paint for roadwork already scheduled. More from KVUE TV in Austin.

Here's the Top Ten Ideas for Striping Texas Highways.

#10 Arrest Spray Paint Taggers and put them on the road gang
#9 Start a Jobs program for out of work Painters.
#8 Field Trips for Art Students
#7 Now that DVDs have taken over… use old rental video tape.
#6 Junior High Kids with big shoes and to-go mustard packets
#5 Yellow Duct Tape
#4 Specially Trained Seagulls dropping in... Droppings!
#3 Delay openings 'til fall and use yellow and orange leaves
#2 Re-use Crime Scene yellow tape.
#1 Forget the stripes and drive crazy like overseas.

Links
Free Texas Map
Downloadable Texas Map
Texas Atlas and Gazetteer
Going to Texas: Five Centuries of Texas Maps
The Roads of Texas - 5th Edition

Free NC Map

2010-01-16T15:54:00.000-08:00

Get yourself a free North Carolina Road Map here. Paper or PDF and GIF files.
While you are there, look at the wonderfully detailed scans of archived road maps going back to 1922. This can be very helpful when scouting out old highways and finding the pre-interstate routes around North Carolina. There's also a history of the publication of the North Carolina State Maps.

Links
Free North Carolina Maps
Buy the North Carolina Atlas & Gazetteer
Buy the American Map North Carolina State Road Atlas

2009-12-31T20:49:00.001-08:00

courtesy AARoads Shield Gallery
Make your own Shield at the AARoads Shield Generator

Where are we now?

2009-08-31T21:01:00.000-07:00

No, we're not in Minnesota.

The shovel shaped sign is a clue.

US President Herbert Hoover once lived here.

We're in Newberg Oregon on Oregon 99W, also known as the Portland Road, formerly known as US99 and US99W.

It’s still called the Herbert Hoover Highway in honor of the 31st President. Hoover spent time in Newberg as a college student at Friends Pacific Academy which became George Fox University. The house he lived in, The Hoover-Minthorn House, is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

By whatever name you call the road, this section of 99W is a great mix of different road construction eras. In some areas the older northbound lanes goes up and down and around sharp curves with the natural landscape. Meanwhile the mostly parrellel southbound lanes are flat and have broad curves of a later era. Not too much has changed in the allignment of 99W since I-5 was built in a new location splitting the difference of 99W and 99E.

A rare sight is an operating drive-in movie theater. The 99W Drive-In has been around since 1953. They have an on-site indoor theater which may have helped them stay around.

99W is still the main thouoghfaire through the area. It’s often jambed with traffic especially when it drops to a two-lane road though Dundee. There is a plan to bypass both Newberg and Dundee with a new road.

Links
Order a free Oregon Highway map and see others
More Historic Places in Yamhill County
99W on Wikipedia

History of 99W Drive-In
Book: That Ribbon of Highway III: Highway 99 Through the Pacific Northwest
Book: Oregon Off the Beaten Path

More than just a Bicycle Map

2009-07-07T22:17:00.000-07:00

Once in a while you find something road geeky when you least expect it. I was at the library last week and saw a free map. Besides being a Road Geek, I’m also a Map Geek. I think it may be in my genes. During one our family’s mini-semi-irregular-family reunion my Father, Brother and I were in the living room. Our wives were elsewhere. Without prompting from any external or internal sources, all three of us were looking at maps. As usual I digress.

The map was the Washington (State) Bicycle Map 2008. Never being one to turn down a free map, even a map I don’t “need”. After all, I can’t remember the last time I was on a bike. It probably involved minor injuries, which may be why I have blocked it from my memory.

I opened the map and found the usual Washington State map from the Department of Transportation, highlighted with bicycle trail information. It showed the freeway sections closed to bicycles, highways with dangerous narrow shoulders, and the real highlight for this geek… color coded from hot red to cold blue, the highway’s average daily traffic. I’ll admit knowing that up to 2000 cars travel daily on US101 between Forks and Humptulips, Washington probably doesn’t make for exciting conversation. However, for the road geek, or map geek, or maybe even a cyclist… enjoy… but please, wear a helmet.

Links
View the Washington State Bycycle Map
Bicycling in Washington from the WSDOT
Forks is the home of the movie Twilight
More Bicycle Maps

GPS is Fun

2009-02-22T19:30:00.001-08:00

If you are a road geek like me, you’ve probably spent hours and hours pouring over maps. I look at road maps, USGS maps, Atlases, old road maps, as well as the pc based maps from Google, Mapquest and so on. Sometimes it’s just for figuring out where you are going, or afterwards, where you got lost!! One of my favorites is researching old routes of highways.

My wife has often remarked her amazement that I knew about some little road in some place we had never been. Of course, when I’m not Super Map Guy, I can be Super Boring Guy point out and obscure piece of pavement that used to be a US highway, but was bypassed and then decommissioned….blah blah blah while she is wondering if I noticed that red light ahead. But I digress greatly.

I had been one to resist the handy GPS devices as just a piece of technology that I did not need. It took a combination of seeing a GPS working, my eyes having a hard time seeing signs and maps in the dark, and getting lost in Dallas that made me break down and buy one for HER. It was especially easy when their prices started dropping below $100 around Christmas and I was able to find one for $80. So being the geekier of the two of us, I put it in my car and learn how it worked and what it did and didn’t do.

So here I am learning how it works and jumping around the screens and suddenly it hits me. This is pretty cool…. Not for the obvious feature if knowing where it is and how to get anywhere in the US. Ahem… It couldn’t figure out how to drive TO Puerto Rico. This GPS was pretty cool because it’s basically a zoomable map of every road in the US. I know you can do that at home on your computer, but this is like a moving map that goes along with you… and is almost like radar in that it can see roads beyond the trees, even when I can’t. That’s pretty cool. Depending on the views available, you can view the road from above like from a blimp, or if you prefer, a very slow private jet.

I usually have the silly thing on, even when I know where I’m going. Just this afternoon coming home from church, I found what appears to be an old section of Pacific Highway that still has its narrow concrete roadway in excellent shape.

So go ahead, get that GPS. You don’t have to let it tell you where to go. Watch the road, use the radar, er.. GPS as needed. Just enjoy the ride and the map that moves along with you.
A final fun note. Once in a while, ignore the GPS directions. Keep it guessing. It can be your protest of technology, before the GPS takes over!!

Links
Get your own GPS here
Tips from InformationWeek
Tips from Consumer Reports
Get rid of the suction cup!
GPS For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

Where are we?

2009-02-07T12:07:00.000-08:00

US 27 stretches from Miami to the Michigan border, but this looks pretty desolate and desert like for that part of the country. Here's some links below to help you play Road Geek Detective.
Hint: It wouldn't be the first or last time there was a shield error.

Links
US 27
A huge hint here.
More about sign shields.
You are here!

MERRY CHRISTMAS from TheRoadGeek.com

2008-12-25T16:23:00.000-08:00

... and a Happy 2009!

Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip through the Land Art of the American West (Culture Trails)

2008-12-22T19:52:00.000-08:00

Spiral Jetta is not your everyday family road trip book. It’s more of a journal of a college age woman using a road trip home to visit some larger than life art along the way. The title is a clever combination of Spiral Jetty and Volkswagen Jetta. Her car is the Jetta. The Spiral Jetty is one of her stops along the way, a monumental earthwork near Utah’s Salt Lake. Author Erin Hogan journals her trip in a way that draws you along with her. Not too many “road geeky” travelogue items here. It’s the people she meets, the colorful places she meets them and the trouble of finding oversized art with poor directions and a car not made for back roads. You may even learn about art along the way to Sun Tunnels, Lightning Field, Roden Crater and Double Negative. Bring along a soda. It’s mighty dry in Texas, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona.

Links
Buy the book, Spiral Jetta
Sun Tunnels
Lightning Field
Roden Crater
Double Negative

A Sign of Interest to Road Geeks

2008-11-30T18:07:00.000-08:00

If this ain't road-geeky, I don't know what is. While traveling along Oregon 99W, I noticed they had not used the Oregon Highway Shield on a street sign in Tigard, Oregon. I appreciate that they were trying to give it a classic look, but they used the Interstate Highway shield outline. 99W is not an Interstate Highway, although it was former US Route 99W and some say Alt US 99.

Those poor sign makers always getting picked on by Road Geeks!!

US 99W in Oregon stretched from just south of the Interstate Bridge north of Portland to Junction City, Oregon. 99W and 99E mostly follow the Willamette River Valley. Both ends merged with US 99E and continued as US 99. Oregon 99W is now signed only from downtown Portland to Junction City. You can easily follow the old 99W by crossing the Steel Bridge and then following Interstate Avenue until it merges with I-5 and shortly into Washington State across the Interstate Bridge over the Columbia River. A section of the old 99W through downtown Portland is now the Tom McCall Waterfront Park. This road along the Willamette River was considered a hideous freeway and was not just decommissioned, but totally destructed.

The City of Portland put to good use the former 4 lanes of Interstate Avenue and laid tracks for an expansion of the Max light rail transit system. There is still 2 lanes you can enjoy along with the tracks.

South of the Portland Metro area, 99W travels through scenic rural country, small towns, wine country. I-5 replaced both 99W and 99E with almost a whole new alignment, so 99W is mostly locked in time with at grade crossings, stoplights, and some slow speed limits through towns. While you are enjoying the scenery, look out for the other guy who is probably also distracted by the scenery. Be aware that 99W can be very very slow north of Tigard.

Links

99W on Wikipedia

I am a Road Geek

2008-11-28T12:20:00.000-08:00

I love checking out roads... old roads, new roads, even roads that aren't there any more.