User:Mirage45331

Hi! I'm 25 years old, originally from Greenville, Ohio, currently near Beckley, West Virginia. As a child I was a very bored individual. My dad was getting ready to plan a trip and had the Rand McNally Road Atlas out on the table. I couldn't stop looking at it! At age 4, I could tell anyone how to get from Dayton, Ohio to Los Angeles, California by the interstates. Growing up, learning about maps and highways was my equivalent to sports or whatever else the other kids did. I was almost ashamed of my knowledge throughout my teenage years, with my older brother and his friends calling me names like "Atlashead". Now, almost 21 years after I first feasted my eyes on the big map, I'm very proud to say that everyone comes to me asking for directions!

I'm very new to Wikipedia. I started editing and writing articles at the end of October 2007, and have been reading them for about 2 years. I enjoy creating articles about the Ohio State Highway system in particular. I'm not the best with my wordings of articles, but I'm getting better at it everyday, and also have had some good feedback about it. It doesn't bother me if you want to edit the articles that I have started, since I'm not an expert. As you can tell, I wasn't an expert making this page either, but it will get better! I have to share my experience with the world somehow!

My projects in the future for Wikipedia would be getting some of these state highways up to par. My expertise is my native Ohio, but I have lots of knowledge on the Indiana State Road system and also on West Virginia. Indiana is kind of tricky due to some of the roads having a double or even triple existance within the state. West Virginia is also hard, since some roads meander long distances in every direction (example: WV 55). Eventually, I would also like to do work on the U.S. Highway pages. The U.S. Highway system amazes me, how they planned all of it back in 1926. I wish I would have been around to see it, or even plan it.

The knowledge that I have to create the Ohio State Route pages usually all comes from memory. I rarely use a map when I'm creating a page. I see exactly where the road is in my head. I usually know all of the highway junctions and cities by memory too. When I'm making the pages, I'm actually having fun, because it interests me. Wish I had a job where I could do this!