Your "Other" Hobbies

[DZH22]

I've been a little bit MIA lately as I have a lot going on in my life... One of those things is that my old 2nd favorite hobby, long neglected, has been rekindled over the past 2 years and is now my 1st favorite hobby. Yes, that's right, Skyscrapers are now my "other" hobby! (along with football, foliage, hiking, and road trips)

My new favorite hobby, making up for lost time, is roller coasters. In the past 2 years alone I have gone from a list of 24 ridden to 110. I like riding the back cars, hands up, flying out of my seat, with my catch-phrase "HERE WE GO!!!" echoing throughout the parks as we crest the first drops. As much serenity as I get from staring at skyscrapers, here I feel like I'm actually part of it, "accomplishing" something (getting the "credits" which just means riding a new coaster) and getting an absolute thrill of a lifetime. Maybe if I was base-jumping off all the new Boston buildings I'd flip that back to #1, but the rush of seeing a skyline has been transferred to the rush of free-falling hundreds of feet and all the other craziness involved with roller coasters.

Since we only know each other from our shared interest in construction, what are your other passions that you follow when not posting here?

Here's my current rankings, including the first year I rode each coaster. Note that the highlighted ones are all NEW from this year. I have re-ridden plenty of others. Like I said above, I'm making up for lost time and as a middle-aged man I'm not sure how many years I have left that I can handle this stuff, so I consider this part of my "mid-life crisis" and I'm absolutely loving it. Just got back from Cedar Point (with a stop at Six Flags Darien Lake) last week, boosting my count from 87 to 110.

 

[Arenacale]

Well, since you asked...
It's pretty obvious already, but racing is my first love. I'm named after NASCAR legend Cale Yarborough, so it was inevitable, although I've drifted away from modern NASCAR to IndyCar and IMSA over the last couple of decades. I finally got a nice-ish camera a couple of years ago, and now I spend all weekend at the track taking photos, and I'm actually starting to get kinda decent.

Because I live in MA I have to travel to get to most races. St. Petersburg, FL for IndyCar was a new one for me this year. And at IMSA races I'm now "The Rexy Hat Guy", after they honored my son's memory on Rexy I made a stuffed T-Rex hat that I wear whenever I see them run.


Finally, the fan cave...

The bookshelf is a nice mix of racing, Boston, and other stuff. "This Brutal World" is a neat Brutalist coffee table book.

 

[DZH22]

Just finished out the year riding the world's steepest coaster, plus others, at the American Dream Mall in New Jersey. Since it's right across from the NYC skyline it was a nice way to pair up my 2 favorite hobbies! I tried to upload a short video my friend took of me on Sandy's Blasting Bronco but the extension doesn't work, so instead here's my updated rankings, #'s 1-120, to close out 2025.

 

[Charlie_mta]

One of my hobbies is to draw maps of cities that I've completely made up, cities that don't exist, but could. I've been doing this since I was in grade school. Here are a couple of ones I've been working on for awhile. Don't spend a lot of time on them, but it's fun to imagine a hypothetical city. The first one is the city without expressways, the second is the same city with expressways.

https://flic.kr/p/2s6s5Eh

https://flic.kr/p/2s6pY7N

 

[Stlin]

One of my hobbies is to draw maps of cities that I've completely made up, cities that don't exist, but could. I've been doing this since I was in grade school. Here are a couple of ones I've been working on for awhile. Don't spend a lot of time on them, but it's fun to imagine a hypothetical city. The first one is the city without expressways, the second is the same city with expressways.

https://flic.kr/p/2s6s5Eh

https://flic.kr/p/2s6pY7N

Has anyone ever introduced you to the game cities skylines? Me thinks you might enjoy it

 

[ritchiew]

One of my hobbies is to draw maps of cities that I've completely made up, cities that don't exist, but could. I've been doing this since I was in grade school. Here are a couple of ones I've been working on for awhile. Don't spend a lot of time on them, but it's fun to imagine a hypothetical city. The first one is the city without expressways, the second is the same city with expressways.

https://flic.kr/p/2s6s5Eh

https://flic.kr/p/2s6pY7N

That's such an interesting hobby and I'd love to hear more!

Are you imagining some topology that makes the streets stray off of a perfect grid? What's the population of that city? Do you play with different different design philosophies for layouts of streets, parks, important buildings?

 

[MrDee12345]

I have a four year old, so I actually had a few years where I just didn't have time for my hobbies. Now that she's getting older, I'm doing more hiking these days when I can. I'm not the "climb Mt Everest" type of hike, but I do like walking the trails near my condo. I like to think I live in Kuala Lumpur's Dorchester, and I'm close to some trails that are fun to kill a morning.

Before my daughter was born, I was part of an American flag football league and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, but the injuries kept piling up so I needed to let those very fun hobbies go.

 

[Charlie_mta]

That's such an interesting hobby and I'd love to hear more!

Are you imagining some topology that makes the streets stray off of a perfect grid? What's the population of that city? Do you play with different different design philosophies for layouts of streets, parks, important buildings?

Thank you for asking. Over the last few years I revised the maps to become more ped/bike friendly, having a regional network of multi-use paths. A lot of that has been influenced by discussions about actual projects here on aB. Also, I had a part time job the last few years (now ended) related to development of complete streets, multi-use use paths, and bike lanes, and that gave me some more ideas for the map. The topo question is interesting. I wish I had a cad program so I could overlay the map onto a cad file and create 3D topo and also a skyline for the downtown area (labeled as such on the map). I used cad (Microstation) all the time when I had a full time engineering job. I did these maps shown on here entirely with MS Paint, which is tedious but fun. I'm still registered as a civil engineer, but am now fully retired, busy with my grandkids.
I did change the design philosophy regarding transit from previous versions of the map. I eliminated some Alewife type mega-garages at radial transit stations along the circumferential expressway, in favor of bus transfer points. I even eliminated expressways completely on a second version of the map (as shown). I've been to Vancouver BC several times, and that city functions really well without expressways, which are limited to the periphery of its metro area.
As to how I became interested in drawing maps and city design in general, that happened when I was about 9 or 10. My dad worked in a gas station, back when road maps were provided to customers for free. The maps were fascinating to me. I collected them and started to modify them myself, so well drawn that the additional highways and symbols I added looked original. My dad handed out some of these altered maps to unsuspecting customers, and they actually did think highways were there that really weren't. That helped spark my interest in roadway design, and that's what I ended up doing as a civil engineer (plus plenty of multi-use path and context sensitive design). My dad would also take me out to highway construction sites to further encourage my interest. And growing up around Boston in the 1950s and 60s was incredibly exciting with all the construction of highways, transit and buildings going on, plus the BRA's and Mass DPW's planning of grandiose urban renewal and highway projects.
So, I really appreciate aB for the ongoing in-depth discussions and presentations on city planning, transit, and highways.

 

[commuter guy]

As to how I became interested in drawing maps and city design in general, that happened when I was about 9 or 10. My dad worked in a gas station, back when road maps were provided to customers for free. The maps were fascinating to me. I collected them and started to modify them myself, so well drawn that the additional highways and symbols I added looked original. My dad handed out some of these altered maps to unsuspecting customers, and they actually did think highways were there that really weren't.

When I was a kid, growing up in Omaha, NE, I was fascinated by new roadways and the related suburban sprawl. I would look forward to the receiving the annual phone book, which contained detailed and updated local street maps. I'd spend hours comparing last years map with the new incremental expansion of the street grid. Also, I had a thing for statistics particularly census stats and populations of major cities. I was 10 years old in 1980 and after I received an almanac as a Christmas gift I memorized the population of major US cities. Fast forward to the late 1990s/early 2000s when I was in my late 20s/early 30s working for a large company in Boston, I told a close co-worker about how I memorized the 1980 census stats, he was so amused by this quirkiness that he printed out a sheet of the 1980 census population stats of US cities and posted it outside of my cubicle with a sign that said something to the effect "I dare you to ask me the population of any city on this list". People who worked on my floor, some who I didn't know well at all, would stop and quiz me regarding the population of random cities, e.g., what's the population of Kalamazoo, MI. Then next question would be why do you know this information to which I would reply humorously "I was an only child so books were my friends." Looking back I connected with quite a few people on that floor by virtue of that quirk.

 

[Charlie_mta]

When I was a kid, growing up in Omaha, NE, I was fascinated by new roadways and the related suburban sprawl. I would look forward to the receiving the annual phone book, which contained detailed and updated local street maps. I'd spend hours comparing last years map with the new incremental expansion of the street grid. Also, I had a thing for statistics particularly census stats and populations of major cities. I was 10 years old in 1980 and after I received an almanac as a Christmas gift I memorized the population of major US cities. Fast forward to the late 1990s/early 2000s when I was in my late 20s/early 30s working for a large company in Boston, I told a close co-worker about how I memorized the 1980 census stats, he was so amused by this quirkiness that he printed out a sheet of the 1980 census population stats of US cities and posted it outside of my cubicle with a sign that said something to the effect "I dare you to ask me the population of any city on this list". People who worked on my floor, some who I didn't know well at all, would stop and quiz me regarding the population of random cities, e.g., what's the population of Kalamazoo, MI. Then next question would be why do you know this information to which I would reply humorously "I was an only child so books were my friends." Looking back I connected with quite a few people on that floor by virtue of that quirk.

That's cool. When I was in grade school (about 1960) I'd write Mobil Gasoline and request street maps of greater Los Angeles and New York City. I did this several times in subsequent years, and they sent me them for free. Of course that's when maps were free at gas stations. I was just fascinated by the freeway/expressway systems and their development. Every time Los Angeles punched through another freeway or complex interchange, I'd love it.

 

[KCasiglio]

Yeah yeah I love bikes and buses and trains and all that, but my real favorite mode of transportation is the canoe. Just got back from a week long trip to Utah where I got to do some paddling on the Green River and hiking in Arches National Park.

 

[kz1000ps]

OK so I might be a touch autistic and I love designing space through floor plans. I've been thinking about sharing some of these here for literal decades

This is a mall I drew in 1995 when I was 12. The color was added digitally

I like schools best because they're big and sprawly. This is a printout from 1999 of a high school I made up

From the Microsoft Paint files, here's a bitmap from 2002 of a school I basically copied off of the real life Ipswich High School

A new high school for my hometown school district I designed in 2006. Also it should be noted that I'm insane and every single big of square footage conforms to government recommended/regulated sizes and quantities for the given student population, in the case 1200 students

Actual location in my hometown of Valatie, NY

And recent stuff... I only do maybe two of these a year now since they're a lot of work and most of said work is calculating square footage needs and really isn't that fun. Here's early sketches of a plan with the final design coming together in the bottom right

And the final drawing. The theme was to take the library from "The Breakfast Club" and imagine what the rest of that school would look like

And the digital twin

And here's an example of one where I expand it over time, starting in this case with a building in the 1950s and then keep adding on to it through the years just like in real life, resulting in a final design that is more chaotic but more realistic

gif of the expansions

And the most recent one, with the theme being it has a big flowing mall atrium-type space

Once again, everything is to regulation sizing for the school's population because I am insane