According to Clinched Highway Mapping, I have traveled approximately 1036 miles on I-40 and 1035 miles on US 40.
That’s not going to be the case for long, though. Once the Crosstown Expressway’s westbound lanes open in Oklahoma City, I will lose both my clinch of I-40 in Oklahoma and interstates in the state of Oklahoma. The eastbound lanes opened earlier this year.
Fifteen years and a month after 000AAA was handed out to someone in Adair County, we’ve reached Z. There are less than 500,000 combinations left, assuming IOQUV are skipped again. (Use of D in the second position may or may not have been constant.) If the Legislature had been on the ball three years ago, January would have been the perfect time for a new design, but as far as I know we’re going to be stuck with a simple alphanumeric rollover. That raises the question of what we’ll do when (if?) the design does change.
However, the plate I saw had a much more significant issue. The zeroes had a slash through them. It is every bit as aesthetically displeasing as you would image. It’s also completely unnecessary, because even in a switch from 999ZZZ to AAA000, as long as Iowa keeps letters and numbers together there’s no confusion.
It’s 2012, not 1987!
(PS: Southeast Polk, you play it too fast.)
July 16, 2006: Junction of IA 100 (Collins Road) and Business US 151 (1st Avenue) in northeast Cedar Rapids. This was the end of IA 100 in 1984-96, and before then, IA 150 turned left here in a wrong-way multiplex with US 151 — it was going south while 151 was going north on a road running northeastward.
This ends the easy part of the number sequence. From this point forward, I won’t hesitate to use dates already used, nor will I make photos from previously used intersections ineligible.
This post covers the rest of my Sunday outside of the basketball game.
College Station, Texas, Jan. 29 — I started out the day by clinching I-610 in light traffic. I had a little snag after exiting I-10 to get back on 610 to reach US 290, but it worked out. It was much easier to shift five lanes over to get to 290 this time.
The north interchange of I-610 with US 59. Flyover ramps ahoy!
Seven hundred and sixty three! The distance back to El Paso on I-10 is about equal to I-80 from the Wyoming/Nebraska line to the Mississippi River.
May 12, 2008: Former IA 99 was signed as County Road 99 through the rest of the 2000s but in the past few years changed to X99 to match style.
I don’t even know where the county would have acquired square shields like this.
The trip in May with this picture was meant to travel all of IA 70 and old 99. I accomplished the former, and saw the Toolesboro Indian Mounds, but the southernmost part of 99 was already suffering from flooding that would become much worse within weeks. I drove through Oakville without a second thought; now I wish I had taken pictures.
Columbia, Missouri — It was so quiet I could hear Bill Fennelly talk.
It was only once or twice, but to hear the Cyclones’ coach’s voice at all is a minor miracle after his cancer treatments, let alone in a game. But when the entire audience (1208) could fit comfortably in a Class 2A gym, sound carries pretty far in Mizzou Arena.
I arrived about 45 minutes before the game and parked next to an SUV with Audubon County plates. Only after I followed the vehicle’s occupants into the building and NOT to the general public ticket window did it dawn on me that I had just walked behind Hallie Christofferson’s parents.
The early arrival was unnecessary seat-wise, but it provided ample opportunity to see the arena. Less than a week ago the place had been rocking as the Missouri men beat Kansas.
See those fans in red at left? I would join them. See those fans in yellow? No, those are seats.
Margie Miles, my grandmother’s sister, lived near the University of Missouri campus. On one trip down there, Mom got so sick of me asking where we were that she gave me a map and said, “Here. Follow Highway 63.” A roadgeek was born.
“October 31, 1986, Valerie’s first Halloween that she’s going to go trick-or-treating,” Mom’s voice says on the tape. “We’re down at Aunt Margie’s, and we’re going to go trick-or-treating in Columbia! And Mom’s going to go to the football game tomorrow, Missouri against Iowa State.” Us trick-or-treaters would make out like bandits, but Iowa State would lose the game. Jim Criner would be fired two weeks later.
Much more than Texas A&M, a little more than Nebraska, Missouri’s defection from the Big 12 hurts. It’s personal. Continue reading
College Station, Texas, Jan. 29 — Even the children’s books have to be rewritten.
In the gift shop for the Texas State History Museum in Austin, I noticed a book about a baby Longhorn who grows up to be Bevo. Along the way, the Longhorn comes across a man driving a prairie schooner, a bear with green socks, a masked raider, and a cyclone (but not a Cyclone). His greatest antagonist is a maroon collie. All, of course, are allegorical to Texas’ long-time opponents.
It’s the little things like this, or the fact that Kansas’ fight song is obsolete again, that show just how much is being thrown away in the upheavals of college athletics. The mileage signs on TX 6 are the only places College Station and Waco will be together now.
It’s with these things in mind that I went from Houston to College Station to see the last women’s basketball game Iowa State will ever play there. (Much more after the jump.)
Reed Arena at Texas A&M University. Look, another logo with a lone star.
June 1, 2009: US 98/301 junction in Dade City, Florida. Despite having an even number, US 98 is signed north-south at least in the central part of the state. It’s east-west in the Panhandle but then turns diagonally though most of the peninsula.
Houston, Texas, Jan. 28 — With some time on my hands, I had the chance to visit one San Antonio attraction I hadn’t done earlier in the week, the Tower of the Americas. Ironically for me, I was there too early and had to wait until it opened. After it did, I spent time looking at the history displays at the top and the skyline outside, although it was too windy to be in the outer portion.
Tower of the Americas
But as I headed north, the GPS’s frontage road issues bit me again. I spent 15 minutes getting on and off TX Loop 1604 before finally arriving for a dinner meeting — only to find that plan needed its own audible. Texas Roadhouse in Texas? How meta.
Going north, the sprawl never really stopped. It was at least three lanes one way the whole way to Austin. I filled up in San Marcos, then made my way right past the hotel I stayed at my first two nights and right back southward on US 183 toward I-10. While this may seem counterintuitive, it accomplished my major goal: I have now traveled all of I-35 in Texas and have it continuously from its south end to Wyoming, Minnesota, excluding both I-35E routes. (Des Moines to Austin, excluding that portion not part of the Kansas Turnpike, was almost entirely covered in one shot with the Houston Bowl trip.) Continue reading
