Spoofy Randomness

Location: United States

  • NW LNK Improvement Sketches 3: Purple Heart Hwy West and an alternative to I-80

    NW LNK Improvement Sketches 3: Purple Heart Hwy West and an alternative to I-80

    I was recently in a situation where I was not allowed access to a computer, phone, books, etc. for several hours…but I had a couple pens and some handouts with blank backs! So for the next few weeks I will post these sketches. They are just some thoughts I’ve had about how I would improve roads in NW Lincoln. I did draw these 100% from memory; I did not alter anything afterward, and so once I look at satellite pics, that will probably nix some of my ideas. (Obviously not to scale for the same reasons.)

    The top sketch shows a continuation of the Purple Heart Hwy conversion to freeway that I started previously. There actually is a road that has been started that travels north from NW 38th St and Airport Rd, but the project seems to have been abandoned as far as I can tell. This finishes it and makes an interchange with Purple Heart Hwy, because making a left off of NW 31st St can get really interesting some days! I also show the NW 48th St project being completed (upgrade to four lanes) and connecting W Fletcher Ave to North Park Rd and Airport Rd so that one doesn’t have to go all the way up to Wildrose Ln and back down to get from Air Park to the Highlands. I also eliminate S55C from the highway roster, as it is now entirely within LNK city limits.

    One of my peeves of living in the Highlands is that there is not a good way to get down to US 6 to head west (also known as my non-interstate way to work) without either going all the way around the airport or backtracking to N 1st St to drop down to Sun Valley Blvd if you don’t want to take the interstate. So I proposed a surface road that would connect airport-area roads and NW 27th St along the north side of I-80. Of all of these sketches, this one is probably the least viable, because a) my working memory is slightly less here, b) protected salt marshes, and c) potentially national security issues with the National Guard right there (but at least I proposed that as a possible name?).

    That’s it for these sketches! If you liked them, let me know and maybe there will be similar content in the future!

  • NW LNK Improvement Sketches 2: I-180 @ I-80 and Superior Street

    NW LNK Improvement Sketches 2: I-180 @ I-80 and Superior Street

    I was recently in a situation where I was not allowed access to a computer, phone, books, etc. for several hours…but I had a couple pens and some handouts with blank backs! So for the next few weeks I will post these sketches. They are just some thoughts I’ve had about how I would improve roads in NW Lincoln. I did draw these 100% from memory; I did not alter anything afterward, and so once I look at satellite pics, that will probably nix some of my ideas. (Obviously not to scale for the same reasons.)

    This was an attempt to redesign the two interchanges at the north end of I-180. They are very close together (not meeting modern Interstate standards!) and it looks like some preliminary work may have been done when I-80 was widened to redo this, so I took what little I had and ran with it. In addition to hopefully eliminating the dangerous area between the two interchanges, I also eliminated the cloverleaves leading to and from I-180 to help improve downtown access (and Memorial Stadium on game day).

    I threw in a diverging diamond mostly for fun, although given that Superior Street is a primary route going east it might not be a bad idea to eliminate cross traffic turns.

  • NW LNK Improvement Sketches 1: Purple Heart Hwy & NW 12th/13th St Corridors

    NW LNK Improvement Sketches 1: Purple Heart Hwy & NW 12th/13th St Corridors

    I was recently in a situation where I was not allowed access to a computer, phone, books, etc. for several hours…but I had a couple pens and some handouts with blank backs! So for the next few weeks I will post these sketches. They are just some thoughts I’ve had about how I would improve roads in NW Lincoln. I did draw these 100% from memory; I did not alter anything afterward, and so once I look at satellite pics, that will probably nix some of my ideas. (Obviously not to scale for the same reasons.)

    For this one, I focused on Purple Heart Hwy and the NW 12th/13th St Corridor. My goal here was to convert Purple Heart Hwy to freeway–not interstate standard, though–out to N-79 (the western half will be shown later). This involved closing the Fallbrook Blvd intersection and converting W Fletcher Ave to an interchange (trying to avoid as many buildings as possible from memory); it also gives a roundabout at W Fletcher Ave/Fletcher Ave/N 1st St. I also put a roundabout at W Fletcher Ave and NW 1st St, because making a left turn there drives me crazy.

    There are currently long-term plans to build a bridge connecting the roundabouts at W Fletcher Ave and Aster Rd (I can’t wait!). I expanded this plan to include an interchange. One of my minor peeves is that NW 12th St becomes NW 13th St by Highlands Pool, and the new bridge will result in it rejoining the NW 12th St corridor. So I decided that these improvements would involve a consistent name from the south end of the I-80 interchange all the way to Aster Rd (where it would take the NW 12th St name). Renaming wouldn’t actually be too difficult; there are very few addresses on this stretch. I also threw out the consideration of including W Cornhusker Hwy in the renaming, since that is no longer a highway, never was part of US 77 (the original Cornhusker Hwy), and it is the same road, just curved to be E-W instead of N-S. If you can’t read my handwriting, I’ve listed the name ideas below with brief justification. I also said it should be part of the Lincoln Parkway system, which would also involve upgrading the section between W Highlands Blvd and W Fletcher Ave to a four lane divided street.

    • N Highlands Pkwy: It serves the Highlands. This is my favorite name, but to be fair we do have W Highlands Blvd on the south side of the residential Highlands
    • Duncan Pkwy: In honor of Duncan Aviation (as this is access to W Adams St to reach the airport) and a major Lincoln family
    • Fredstrom Pkwy: Matches the name of the nearby elementary school
    • Aeronautic Pkwy: Nearby airport
    • Arrow Pkwy: Named after a former airport of Lincoln. Has the added bonus of being a DC Comics reference (Lincoln’s nickname is the Star City, which is also the name of the Green Arrow’s city)
    • Lindbergh Pkwy: Supposedly Lindbergh learned how to fly at Arrow Airport.
    • West Lincoln Pkwy: This would be particularly good if W Cornhusker Hwy is included, as West Lincoln is served.
    • Star City Pkwy: Good name for the major road bringing people into Lincoln from the airport/US 34
    • Lancaster Pkwy: Honoring Lincoln’s original name, and goes roughly past the salt marshes.

    If you like this kind of stuff, let me know in the comments and maybe there will be more!

  • Intersections of Lincoln

    Intersections of Lincoln

    I came across Peter Gorman’s artwork of Omaha intersections, and to my knowledge no one has done this for Lincoln. It had been stewing in my brain for a while, so I finally decided to pick up my (digital) pen and draw it myself. I think I’m going to make a poster and a T-shirt of it for myself. At this moment, Spoofy Randomness doesn’t have a store so I doubt if it will be printed up for general consumption, unless there’s significant demand. (And yes, it’s copyrighted, ya dang internet scalpers!)

    Choosing which intersections to include was a bit tricky, so if your favorite didn’t make the cut, sorry. I decided no freeway interchanges fairly quickly, and it had to be in Lincoln city limits. Runners-up included 56th/Cotner/Randolph, Cotner/66th/Starr, Cotner/Adams/66th (Cotner is very unique, okay?), W Fletcher/NW 13th, 14th/Superior, Capitol/Randolph/G, Pine Lake/91st, 84th/Yankee Hill/Yankee Woods, Fallbrook/Tallgrass, and 33rd/Sheridan. I actually had finished drawing 56th/Cornhusker/Havelock/Superior/Touzalin/Russell when I realized that I had not included Rosa Parks Way, so it got eliminated because I had another Cornhusker intersection less than a mile away and there were too many road names involved.

    A couple interesting (well, let’s be honest, interesting for me and not many others) bits of trivia from this map. First, the top left does not include Pinnacle Arena Dr in the title. There’s some debate as to when Salt Creek Rdwy ends and Pinnacle Arena Dr begins. A lot of maps have it at the left roundabout, but the signage actually shows the change occurring at N 8th St. Being an OpenStreetMaps guy, I follow the rule of signage, hence that decision. The other unusual choice I had to make was Nebraska Parkway’s name (top middle). Currently, it is actually Nebraska Highway, but very soon (in construction terms, 2024ish) it will have a name change to Nebraska Parkway as N-2 will be rerouted onto the new south leg of the beltway and Nebraska Highway will join Lincoln’s parkway system as Business N-2, hence the renaming. By doing this, this also allowed me to feature every parkway (yes Rosa Parks Way is actually part of the parkway system, and yes, it is a glorious pun) in some form. Also, yes, there are a few side streets that connect that aren’t shown. Artistic liberty. Same goes with scaling (especially on O Street).

    I wanted something unique, other than a different style of artwork, to set my work off from Gorman’s. Hence, including O Street (despite technically not being an intersection). While technically it has five names (Road 9, O Street Road, West O Street, O Street, and East Union Road, and also designated the Bess Streeter Aldritch Memorial Highway for a stretch), it is arguably the longest stretch of straight Main Street in the world (there’s some debate on this matter), with no curves between south of Waco to the Missouri River, and 9 Rd after a slight curve continues west almost to Grand Island.

    On a non-road geek note, this art had me tinker with some things that I didn’t really do with webcomics. My biggest problem was how to make the road widths consistent. This led to a rabbit hole that never really answered my question (I just drew a thick line over a screenshot of the map and outlined it on a new layer, then discarded the layers with the thick lines and the map), but did introduce me to the world of vectors and how to use them in Clip Studio. WHY DID I NOT LEARN HOW TO DO THIS WHEN I WAS MAKING COMICS????? Man, that would have made life so much easier. (I was aware vectors were a thing, but didn’t know much about them. Remember, I never took art after 6th grade, and I was still on an Apple IIGS then…)

  • Distracting Hobbies

    Distracting Hobbies

    I couldn’t resist inserting an Alpha House reference (Senator Andy Guzman). If you like political comedies and don’t mind a fair bit of swearing, check it out. It is one of my favorite shows of all time. (Alas, it’s exclusive to Amazon Prime.) The other reference that may be a bit obscure is Andy Weir. Most people have at least heard of The Martian film starring Matt Damon; Andy Weir wrote the book it is based on. As my wife puts it, his writing is basically a bunch of word problems. She’s not wrong, but he makes it a very enjoyable read. I just finished his most recent book, Project: Hail Mary, and it is very good.

    Also, Disney lawyers are jerks. I’m waiting for the Great Disney Lawsuit Against Everything Egyptian, as copyright law is not really respected over there, to put it mildly (the owner of my school could not see anything wrong with only ordering one copy of each textbook, and then having professionally bound copies made of said textbooks). and many businesses, especially private schools, use Disney logos, characters, etc., to excess. Don’t get me wrong, protecting content creators is a good thing, but Disney has been known to take things a little too far…

  • Finding My Direction

    Finding My Direction

    Ref: A (Not So) Brief History of Road Signs in Lincoln | Victory News Post | The Great Nebraska Highway Revision Project

    So I intended Baloney to be an exaggeration of events. And then I wrote this. There’s only one exaggeration, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if it actually was true.

    Anyway, I’m going to be posting random road trivia all month on Facebook. Because I can.

  • Lighter Fare

    Lighter Fare

    I came closer to missing this deadline than I’d like to admit, given that I only update once a month. November has been a heck of a year, hasn’t it? Ah well, it’s December now and on with the festivities! And that means Christmas lights! Huzzah!

  • LDSG: Shipment of Love

    LDSG: Shipment of Love

    Hey look, it’s another Long-Distance Survival Guide! Not doing a month of these this time around, but I did want to do something special for Valentine’s Day.

    As noted in the linked comic above, shipping costs are a pain if I were to send stuff from here. I’ve kept my Amazon Prime account active (partly also to get my Alpha House fix), and between that and Hy-Vee’s floral department, I do pretty good if I do say so myself. Only trouble is, Meagan can’t send me things back…

    Hy-Vee Jake gets a special mention in the last panel.  For one thing, we share the same name (surprise, my name isn’t actually Stretch). We’ve managed to coordinate things so that not only is he usually the one doing the delivery, but we even managed to have near-perfect timing between my texts/calls to Meagan and when he arrives.  Not bad for being 10,000 km apart! Great guy.

    Minor behind-the-scenes note: the first panel is of course copied from the original run of the LDSG. I did make two minor tweaks, though. I removed my glasses and added Meagan’s freckles that I apparently forgot last year…

  • Time Zones

    Time Zones

    Meagan introduced me to this song, and oh man do I feel it some days: https://youtu.be/ntSBKPkk4m4

    The weekend thing always throws me; there’s a double whammy there because the weekend in the Middle East is Friday-Saturday. Combine that with a 7 to 8 hour difference with Central Time Zone, and I’m leaving work on Thursdays while Meagan is heading to two more days. It makes finding time to video chat very difficult because we don’t share much of a weekend and weekdays are almost impossible since one of us is always at work or asleep. I think a 12 hour time difference would actually be easier to handle because of that.

    Okay, so an eleven-thirty start to a game isn’t that early (unless you’re a college student), but for those that have to work those games (like the Scouts who volunteer for ushering, and the professionals like Will who get to help), it can become quite early. It takes a lot of effort to prepare for enough people for Memorial Stadium to become the third-largest ‘city’ in Nebraska! Trying to shunt that many people, sometimes in varying states of sobriety, can be quite ridiculous, especially at that hour.

    And yes, Meagan does this every day. Silly. 🙂

    Technical note: I changed where I draw to have better posture, but it turns out I’ve gotten into bad habits and drawing on a table suddenly means I can’t seem to draw a straight line. Ugh. I’ll keep working on that.

  • LDSG: On Hold

    LDSG: On Hold

    From Meagan: 

    Moving abroad requires sacrifice… and not just from the person moving. That’s really hard early on in a relationship, when it should still be about flirting and dates and silliness and having adventures together.
    The last six or so weeks before Jake left, in an attempt to help AND squeeze in as much time with him as possible, our whole life became about preparation. Which meant that it was NOT about cleaning my house, mowing my lawn, eating well, exercising, or really maintaining my life at all.
    Add to that the fact that Jake was preoccupied with his own stress and, though he did what he could to comfort me in my emotional moments, I had a hard time feeling seen and acknowledged. At one point I felt like my contribution to this whole experience and process was summarized by simply packing his suitcases, which frankly made me really angry. My energy, my effort, and most of all my overall sacrifice for him to have this experience felt unnoticed and wasn’t met with the level of gratitude I felt like it deserved.
    It might have been only a week after he move when he had this big aha moment and told me how much he suddenly saw and understood. He needed time and space to breathe and think and process this ENORMOUS change to really let it sink in and click. And, truthfully, I think he needed to be WITHOUT me for a while for that to happen.
    The moment that clicked for him and he expressed his gratitude and just recognized me was one of the defining moments in our relationship. The acknowledgement of not just the little tasks I helped with, but the big-picture role I played was validating more than I can say.
    Our time apart continues to let us reflect on what we have together, what we want in the future, what we need from each other, and what our relationship really means to one another. And some really good conversations come from that.
    From Stretch:
    Don’t worry, this revelation did not take six months to happen! It pretty much happened the first day I was in Alex, coming off of the panic attack and having a chance to really sit and think.  But yes, it was very easy (and a little bit necessary, for both efficiency and sanity’s sake) to get so absorbed in getting ready to leave that the rest of my world got left in the lurch.  And Meagan did this all without complaint, coming straight from work every day to whatever we were doing.  She is a trooper, and she drives me to be the best I can be because of what she does.
    Meagan does raise a good point about distance in her commentary.  I think for every relationship, putting some distance every once in a while helps not take the other for granted.  That being said, I think we took this to a little extreme!  It is very important for anyone planning to live abroad to acknowledge the effect on those back home, and that was one of the goals of the Long-Distance Survival Guide this year, especially with last week’s and this one.
    One thing that this whole situation did for us is that it pushed us to have those deep conversations fairly early on.  We only started dating a little over seven months before I left.  As a result, we had to decide fairly early on whether we wanted to pursue our relationship with the intent of making it last when most people would still be in the ‘casual relationship’ stage, and I feel it really shows how well we click together that we were able to do so.
    Meagan’s bag in panel 3 might be full of trail mix…  This is the last of the Long-Distance Survival Guide comics until next year.  Time to take a break from drawing laptop and phone screens!