Free Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks by Ken Jennings Page A

day. Ankrom crafted a perfect replica of a regulation California Department of Transportation directional marker and I-5 shield marker, and, early one morning in 2001, he armed himself with an orange vest and hard hat, some safety cones, and a fake invoice in case he was challenged. Twenty minutes later, the “art” was successfully installed on the sign—so seamlessly that nobody even noticed the fix for nine months. When a free weekly paper finally broke the news, Caltrans roundly condemned the project as vandalism but, unable to argue with progress, left the homemade sign in place for the next eight years, where it helped millions of Angelenos and tourists navigate downtown successfully. In 2009, Caltrans finally replaced Ankrom’s sign with an official one—but the new one still incorporates Ankrom’s improved design. *

    A time-lapse view of Ankrom setting up his “installation”
    “Where are we now?” I ask. We’re driving down a rather dreary commercial strip between Tacoma and neighboring Lakewood, and, though I’m trying to think like a roadgeek, I can’t possibly see why this particular road is on our itinerary.
    “This is the old U.S. 99,” says Mark in unusually reverent tones. The West Coast’s Route 66 (only upside-down!), Highway 99 once ran from the Canadian border all the way to Mexico, but it was decommissioned in 1968 when I-5 was completed, and much of it is now anonymous and unsigned. Roadgeeks are archaeologists as well, finding history in the modern urban ruins. They see the ghosts of Esso stations and motels shaped like tepees where now there’s only a waste-land of pawnshops and adult video stores.
    The last stop on our itinerary is another historic spot: the famed Tacoma Narrows Bridge, recently twinned with a new span heading west to the Kitsap Peninsula. The original bridge across this strait was the famous “Galloping Gertie,” which collapsed in a 1940 storm. If you were ever in an introductory physics class, you’ve probably seen the famous footage of the bridge wobbling and warbling terrifyingly due to harmonic resonance before it crashed into Puget Sound. The new bridge is reassuringly sturdy.
    “Being a roadgeek is definitely something the rest of the population doesn’t get,” sighs John Spafford as we turn around and head back toward downtown Tacoma. “It’s not genetic—even my kids don’t have it. I’m a little disappointed.” He prefers vagabond family vacations straight out of his childhood, but his college-aged daughter wants a real vacation like her friends get: a week by the pool in Orlando. “Wenever stay anyplace more than a night,” he says, shrugging. “She’s tired of seeing cornfields.”
    Even if his own kids never learned to enjoy the fabled wonders of roadgeek America —the sixteen-lane stretch of I-285 near the Atlanta airport or the record thirty-six times that I-91 and US-5 cross each other through New England—John has still managed to jump-start a new generation of young roadgeeks. Since leaving the military, he’s taught elementary school, and his fourth graders begin every school day with a little geography exercise, tracing highway routes with dry-erase marker on a state map at the back of his classroom. “By the end of the year,” he boasts, “my sharp ones can tell highways just by the shape of the shield. ‘Aha, this is U.S. 12!’ “
    Mark, on the other hand, has landed the roadgeek’s dream job: he works for the Washington State Department of Transportation, in charge of the state’s official highway map. Back in Tacoma, we say good-bye as he drops me and John off by our respective cars. The last I see of him as he pulls away is the personalized license plate on the back of his Ford Taurus: “MAPPER,” with a surround that reads, “I’m not lost / I’m a cartographer.”
    Driving home to Seattle, I pass the stadiums where the Seahawks play football and the lowly Mariners play something not entirely unlike baseball.