Obsessions with maps?

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Wow this is an ancient thread - it's been around longer than I've been a member of WP. Don't know if I've written in it yet or not, but if I have the post should be similar.

In high school maps were a special interest of mine. I drew them often - they were of imaginary worlds. J.R.R. Tolkien's work is what got me into it - the maps that he made, that is, on top of my obsession with Tolkien's work in general.

When I was younger I used to collect and read bus maps, London Underground maps, the roads of Britain and A to Z's.

Other kids had coloring books, I drew maps.

The family aquired big sheets of paper the size of coffee tables.

When I was in grade school I took dad's road atlas of the USA and transcribed it into one big crayon map of the USA on one of these big sheets of paper. I remember drawing the outline of the White Sands Missle range in New Mexico and then being amazed when I looked at it- and then at the New England States- and realized that the US government had a piece of land comparable in size to the whole state of Connecticut where nobody lived and was apparently reserved for the sole purpose of blowing stuff up with missles!

Then someone showed me an Historic Atlas ( countries though time). My obsession got even worse as I flipped through the pages and could see how the nations of, say, Europe were living organisms that expanded and grew and invaded and devoured each other like a bunch of amoebas.

I dislike drawing maps. But they have this mesmerizing quality and i can sit there for hours scrutinizing those highways, those mountain ranges.

Maps are pretty much my special interest. So is anything that can be communicated via maps, e.g. demographics and transport networks. This has been true all my life.

Your post quoted above especially struck me and it was a real shame. I was with foster parents for the best part of a year when I was around the age of 7. If I ever looked at a map, or ever went near a map, or looked at a TV when a map (beyond my control of course) was on the screen, or even used the word "map" in a sentence for whatever reason... they would come down on it very aggressively.

I also had a special interest in mathematics at that age, and the foster parents successfully managed to kill that interest. They didn't kill the special interest in maps, though. Similarly, if I even used the word "number" in a sentence or said "one" or "two" or "three" or any other numeral in a sentence, they'd go into an aggressive rage at me.

Looks like this necrobump is starting to walk again

My folding maps are mainly of my home state, dates ranging from 1928 to 1986, just before the last section of Interstate was completed. The bulk of those are from 1969 to 1975. Since I discovered GM I've sequestered them to a plastic shopping bag that barely holds them all

I can read Google Maps OK enough but when I try to record my travels my head starts to spin and I end up ragequitting, maybe it's just my fortune that bugs are there when I'm trying to save my work but I want to complete my moped trips I've done eventually so the world can see them and I can reminisce on them

Love maps and google maps is brilliantly quick...also love maps as art, anyone seen Stephen Walter, 'The Island', 2008?

I'd love that on my wall...

I love to draw maps per my memory of real places, and then compare them to the actual maps. And I'm usually very accurate

Charles

I'm having a good laugh reading this thread. This is my childhood in a nutshell. I was OBSESSED (even for an Aspie) with maps to the point I have a large collection of them to this day. I spent hours a day studying them and as a result can usually navigate an unfamiliar city with no issues. It literally puzzles me how anyone can get lost in a city of 200,000 but I suppose nobody else shared my hobby. Of course, I was a Geography whiz but nobody picked up on it while I was a kid as correcting the teacher constantly wasn't a good trait to have.

Needless to say Google Maps is my favorite website. Street view in particular is my childhood dream come true!

My people! My people!

I've always had an obsession for maps. I can spend hours studying a map of my hometown or of the state of California. I can tell you where every traffic signal in my hometown is located. When I would younger, I would draw maps of fictional places with complete highway networks. I love studying the highway networks, exploring places virtually using Google Maps and Street View, and so on. In fact, I spent much of my weekend studying various locales in Google Maps and reading about various bits of transportation infrastructure on Wikipedia. Some years back, I found a bunch of old maps at my grandmother's house and spent an entire evening studying them to see how the highway system has changed over time.

I am disappointed with them as i find too many errors in them. For instance, US 41 is labeled "US Route 41 in Illinois" for its entire route, not just the part that is in Illinois.

Here is a new cool map of live winds in the U.S.

http://hint.fm/wind/

Damn, every time I come to an aspie forum or read about asperger's, I just keep finding out that many of my traits are chalked up to asperger's. It's crazy.

I was a major geography nerd back when I was a child. While I was generally misbehaved in elementary school, everybody (my peers and teachers) recognized me for my geography interest and talent. Of course I can't draw maps well, but I know geography very well and can look at a map for hours. I think my geography skills would be extremely great right now if I wasn't brought down by NT society since I ultimately started focusing on trying to fit in once I hit middle school.

I spotted a similar error just this past weekend, actually...

Great! Now, is there anyone here who knows of an exploit for the round inductive loops so a small tool can trigger it, let alone a bicycle? I can trip the long double strip sensors just fine, but otherwise it's red left arrow hell

My lappy is too rickety to run GEarth properly but I enjoyed taking virtual road trips in Tour mode, and saw a guy passed out on a sidewalk in Toronto once

I was obsessed with bot maps and the USA at the age of 10. I'd study American maps, every time that I got the chance.