User:Stratosphere/LeftPane

Hello! Welcome to my userpage. My name is Nick and I'm a recent Summa Cum Laude graduate of Central Michigan University with a degree in Computer Science and Geographic Information Science. I reside in the lower part of the mitten for those acquainted with geographic descriptions in Michigan.
I'm a roadgeek at heart and love to drive for the trip, itself, rather than the destination. I've logged over 25,000 miles on road trips over the past two years and have visited 42 of the contiguous 48 states in that time. The only states I have yet to visit aside from Alaska and Hawaii are Washington, Oregon, Idaho, North Dakota, Minnesota and Arkansas.

All maps that I have created for use on Wikipedia are created in ArcMap, part of the ArcGIS 9.2 Suite. Aside from maps of transportation networks, I have the ability to create thematic maps as well. I am currently retired for the time being as far as cartography on Wikipedia goes.

• If you are looking for a map of a road, highway or interstate, please make a request at The U.S. Roads Map Task Force.

Maps that I have developed are released into the public domain, unless specified otherwise. All of my maps are categorized in their appropriate categories on the Commons.

I'm currently involved in a few transportation related projects. My main task in these projects is developing maps, maintaining infoboxes, and fleshing out articles.

• U.S. Roads WikiProject
• U.S. Interstate Highways WikiProject
• Michigan State Highways WikiProject
• U.S. Roads Map Task Force

For the U.S. Roads WikiProject I developed maps for all the primary U.S. Routes most of which can be found on the Commons under the Road maps of the United States category.

For the U.S. Interstate Highways project, I developed maps for all the primary interstate routes (I-4 thru I-99) which are available at U.S. Interstate Maps category.

For the Michigan State Highways project I completed maps for all the state trunklines that were active at the time, they are available at Road maps of Michigan.

Road tripping is my main method of travel. If there's somewhere I need to go, I drive it. So far the only time I haven't was to fly to Florida to rent a car from Hertz when they had their crazy Florida drive out rates. So, I started from West Palm Beach and drove 7,553 miles around the east coast and took the car back to Detroit two weeks later...for $107. Here's to hoping they do that again this year!
You can view a map of the counties that I have drive through at this page
You can view a map of the Interstate that I have clinched at this site. Note that a lot of times I travel on U.S. Routes, which aren't tracked by that site...yet.
As I said, my last big trip encompassed 7,553 miles of driving, after a flight from Detroit to West Palm Beach, FL. I got a 2007 Pontiac G6 GT to drive (yes for that aforementioned $107) and I must say it's a pretty nice road trip car. I hit both ends of U.S. 1 (Key West, FL and Fort Kent, ME) and traveled through 23 states in 13 days (Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, and Michigan)
In the style of a true road geek I keep track of roads I've been on which can be seen Here.
Outside of the United States I've visited many cities in Spain including Barcelona, Madrid, Córdoba, Málaga, Toledo, Seville and Costa del Sol. During my trip to Spain, I also crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to visit Tangier, Morocco.