Picture of the Eifel Tower from my latest "trip" to Paris

Lots of people have their Internet compulsions and addictions: Facebook, Farmville, YouTube, eBay, video games, and so on.  My wife is a recovering Pinterest addict.

My web vice is Google Maps Street View.

I’ve always been a spatial kind of guy.  I instinctively know which way is North.  I was telling my mom how to get home from the airport when I was four.  My degree is in Geography.  I have no need for a GPS.

And I love to travel.  Mostly, I’m a it’s-not-the-destination-but-the-journey kind of guy.  I love watching the scenery go by, seeing new places in fast-forward.  Of course, that comes from being a transportation-enthusiast.  Getting from Point A to Point B is often my favorite part of vacations.

So now that I can essentially do that from my desk for a huge chunk of the world using Street View, it can quickly consume a significant quantity of my time.  For instance, the other day I was reading an article in the San Antonio Express-News about the suburban slums around Monterrey, Mexico.  I of course had to find the neighborhood to which they were referring on the map.  Using the description of the location in the article, I had it located on Google Maps in a couple of minutes.  Hmm, I wonder if they have Street View for Mexico?  Well, not for this neighborhood, but hey, there are those blue lines nearby!  I’ll just take a quick look around downtown Monterrey…

Two hours later, I had explored many of the main avenues and expressways of Monterrey as well as the toll road from Monterrey to Nuevo Laredo.  Having visited Nuevo Laredo several times before the drug wars rendered that inadvisable, I had always wondered what the main shopping street looked like further down than the half-dozen or so blocks I had usually plied.  No problem, it’s on Street View.  Uh oh, now I’m on the old two-lane federal highway going back to Monterrey.  Gotta check that out.  It didn’t help that I had the iTunes cranked-up.  I could have kept going all the way to Mexico City if not for a gnawing hunger in my belly and a full bladder.

Similar recent “trips” have taken me to Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris, much of southeastern England, and Tokyo, not to mention a plethora of US cities.

I tried Googling “Street View support groups.”  Nada.  I couldn’t even find anything for “Street View addiction.”  Guess I’m the only one willing to admit I have this affliction.  Here goes…

My name is Brian and I’m a Street View addict.

Don’t judge me– it’s gotta be in the genes.  My three-year old is already showing the signs of having the malady: he loves being in the car, he knows when we missed the turn to go home or to grandma’s, and he can point the direction to my office from nearby streets that he’s never been on.  I don’t dare introduce him to Street View.  Bye-bye Elmo.

Well, gotta go.  Another world city is waiting to be explored during my lunch hour.

Heber Springs, Ark., a friendly town of 6,000 that tourists swell to 30,000.

Driving through the pine forests of East Texas, on the way to Central Arkansas, you pass signs for places like New Boston, Pittsburgh, Mount Pleasant and even Paris.

It’s almost like pioneers started running out of names by the time they got to Texas. 

But things get a bit more imaginative once you arrive at the Arkansas border. Names there start off with morphed incarnations like Texarkana, and later dish up tidy permutations such as Arkadelphia. 

The one that snapped me to attention on my trip last weekend was “Okolona.”

You know, Oklahoma’s just a short jog to the west, I thought. Could it be? Is this some sort of an Arkansas localism? Perhaps it was pranksters?  

Nope, not pranksters, a crisp exit sign down the road soon confirmed – Okolona was sure enough real. But where’d the name come from? Does it have anything to do with Oklahoma? I could only wonder.

Later, I checked the web, and it turns out the name is yet another clone. A number of U.S. places share the name, including some in Mississippi and Kentucky.

This site says it’s an Indian name meaning “much bent.” Hmmm … another mystery.

Oklahoma, meanwhile, comes from the Choctaw Indian words okla and humma, which means red people, according to this website.

As interesting as all that is, there was one name that trumped them all. 

Cruising through Central Arkansas on lanes sluicing through thick woods, admiring how the towering trees shot up like ripe green walls along the undulating highway, the strange name suddenly popped up. I looked several times. I could see nothing else.

The sign said, “Toad Suck Park.”

So I dropped that one into Google too. Toad Suck is indeed a community, with a name that’s somewhat of a puzzle.

Yes, OK, I thought in amazement, I’m not in Texas any more.

Look, no frontage roads on this Arkansas freeway! But plenty of tall trees.

Just two days before Christmas, average U.S. gas prices have topped $3 a gallon. And you can expect prices to keep rising into spring and summer. 

This isn’t a typical run-up.

Prices usually peak in the summer and slide down after Labor Day. In recent autumns, regular unleaded dropped an average of 22 cents a gallon, even when you exclude the freakish plummet in 2008 after the economy popped.

But this autumn, gas prices shot up 30 cents a gallon.

Various experts point their fingers at growing demand amid a slowly recovery economy, tightening supplies and the U.S. dollar losing ground to inflation.

The last time Americans paid an average of $3 a gallon at Christmastime was in 2007. There was a similar run-up then, and prices went on to bust $4 the next summer.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration says we shouldn’t see such record highs this time, predicting gas will average $3.12 a gallon next summer.

Meanwhile, AAA reports that 92 million Americans will make trips over the next 11 days, the most since the 2007-08 holiday season. Nine out of 10 will drive.

Also, they will travel farther and spend more than last year, AAA says. In fact, despite unemployment hitting 9.8 percent last month, spending on transportation, recreation, food and accommodations over the next three months should rise 3.4 percent from the year before, even outpacing economic growth.

Hope everybody has a great Christmas and New Year’s. Have fun. Be safe.

HELPFUL LINKS:

• Check weather
• Check state roads, or call (800) 452-9292
• Compare gas prices

SOURCES:

• U.S. Energy Information Administration
• AAA Fuel Gauge
• AAA travel forecast

You’re going to pay a little more for a lot of things this Thanksgiving.

If you drive anywhere, gas will cost about 20 cents a gallon more than a year ago. Texas prices average $2.68 today.

If you fly, tickets will cost about 4 percent more. On top of that, at some 70 airports, including San Antonio’s, you now face security scanners that see through your clothes or agents who will touch in ways that few people would dare.

Staying home? Cooking a traditional turkey meal will cost 13 percent more in Texas.

Meanwhile, 9.6 percent of U.S. workers are looking for jobs. Experts, revising predictions, now say unemployment will remain higher than thought for years to come.

Yet, Americans seem ready to celebrate, an AAA survey indicates.

About 42.2 million people will make a trip of at least 50 miles this holiday weekend, up 11 percent from a year ago. On average, they’ll travel 816 miles and spend $495, nearly the same as last year. Nine out of 10 will go by car.

“When purse strings and heart strings compete in a tug-of-war, especially at this time of year, the heart wins out,” AAA President Robert Darbelnet said.

And so it has. Some things you can’t put a price on.

• Check weather
• Check state roads, or call (800) 452-9292
• Compare gas prices

Notorious traffic backups and numerous crashes on I-35, especially on the stretch from San Antonio to Austin, have spawned big-ticket projects such as the SH 130 tollway and Lone Star commuter rail. Putting two and two together from such thinking eventually led to the now supposedly defunct Trans Texas Corridor.

But more big plans are in the making.

Four committees, each looking at a segment of I-35, are holding public meetings this month to wrap up draft plans on what to do with the highway, its feeders and parallel roads. Billions of dollars worth of projects are eyed, including this for South and Central Texas:

• Convert one I-35 lane each way into toll/carpool lanes from Buda to Georgetown
• Remove tolls and widen SH 130 to six lanes from Seguin to Georgetown
• Build high-speed passenger rail from San Antonio to Dallas
• Build passenger rail from San Antonio to Laredo
• Widen I-35 from San Antonio to Laredo

The four segment plans will be finalized next month. Then the I-35 Corridor Advisory Committee will consolidate them into the MY 35 plan and deliver it to the Texas Transportation Commission next year. 

The committees for segment 3 and segment 4, which straddle San Antonio, will hold joint public workshops 6-8 p.m.:

• Thursday, Sept. 23, at  the VIA Terry Eskridge Community Room
  1021 San Pedro Ave. in San Antonio
• Tuesday, Sept. 28, at the Live Oak Civic Center’s Rocket Room
  8101 Pat Booker Road in Live Oak
• Wednesday, Sept. 29, at the  Seguin-Guadalupe County Coliseum
  950 S. Austin St. in Seguin

Learn more at www.MY35.org.

The nation’s economic recovery seems to be slowing down, but not travel plans to enjoy the last days of summer.

Some 34.4 million Americans are making trips this Labor Day weekend, according to an AAA survey, up 9.9 percent from last year’s dismal showing.

Vacationers will also spend more this year, the survey shows. Median spending is expected to be $697, up nearly $50.

Travelers are expected to pay more for airfares, 9 percent higher; car rentals, up 7 percent; and hotels.

But one thing they won’t be spending more on is gas. Regular unleaded, now averaging $2.68 a gallon, is down almost 20 cents from the spring, an AAA report says. Texas prices are averaging $2.51.

Meanwhile, nine out of 10 people are traveling by car this holiday weekend.

Polikarpov I-16 at the CAF museum, Midland, Texas

Rolling forward on my 2010 resolution to get out of San Antonio more, I took a three day trip to Midland and Odessa, two cities, indeed a region of Texas, I had not visited before in the nineteen years I have called the Lone State home.  I set out on the last Thursday in July, which proved to be a very good time to go.

For whatever reason, HWY 87, the route I decided to take on the outward bound leg, was essentially empty north of Fredericksburg.  Even when I drove into San Angelo just after 5:00 PM, traffic on the road was very light.  It just seemed odd to traverse handsome county seats like Mason and only see one or two other moving vehicles.

Following a stroll around Fort Concho which closed just before I got there, I continued on towards Big Spring before getting onto I 20 heading west to Midland.  Traveling by myself, with just an ipod for company, the landscape became flatter and the wind grew stronger.  A veritable forest of massive electricity generating wind turbines dotted the landscape, harvesting the enormous amount of free energy that just about knocked me over when got out of the car for a moment.

The hotel I chose was inexpensive in every way, but you get what you pay for, so I have no complaints.  I spent the whole of Friday, which happened to be my birthday, driving around the sights of Midland and Odessa.  My first port of call was the Commemorative Air Force museum.  To my surprise and delight I pretty much the whole place to myself during my 2 ½ hour visit.  As most CAF aircraft are dispersed around the country in different locations, like the Douglas C-47 Skytrain I hoped to fly in yesterday, which is based in Burnet, Texas, or the North American B-25 Mitchell located here in San Antonio, there were not all that many aircraft to actually see in Midland.  But I was thrilled to the core to find one of them was a Russian Polikarpov I 16.  As a youth, I used to make model airplanes – none to well, I must admit – and I loved the diminutive little plane, which, to my eyes, looks remarkably like the Brewster Buffalo.  Both were cutting edge designs when introduced in the early 1930s but were significantly obsolete by the time World War Two started.  With little else available, young men bravely continued to fight the good fight in these machines, sometimes achieving remarkable success despite the odds stacked against them.

I never dreamed I’d ever actually see one up close and personal.  It was absolutely the peak moment of my 800 mile journey and would have made the entire trip worthwhile in and of itself.  I also visited the oil industry museum, which was not laid out so well for those who know nothing about the industry, in my opinion.  I’d have done better with a guide, I think.  It’ an impressive place for sure but a little overwhelming and incomprehensible.  Rich in detail but somehow lacking in drama, of what odds and difficulties the individuals involved had to face.

Also a little disappointing was the crater site west of Odessa, mainly because the original vast hole dug by a meteorite the size of a Suburban yet weighing a thousand tons is all but filled 50,000 years later.  I enjoyed rolling around Odessa, and got to visit a remarkably well restored railroad depot, originally located in a tiny town called Texon, now located about seven miles from the city, in someone’s backyard.  Acquired in an almost disintegrated state, the owner has poured money, time and effort into bringing it back to its former glory.

Midland is the more impressive of the two cities which are maybe fifteen miles apart by interstate.  The smell of hydrocarbons, or money, is quite pervasive wherever you go.  I’m certainly glad I finally took the time to go there but, a bit like Big Bend, I’m not itching to go back any time soon.  Bleak landscapes don’t work for me.  I couldn’t stand to live in a place where if I traveled fifty miles I’d still essentially be in the same place.

I came back via lesser roads, again wonderfully empty of other vehicles, aiming first for Ozona and then the Caverns of Sonora Located off of IH 10 some two hundred miles west of San Antonio, this natural wonder is most definitely worth a visit.  The tour lasts just under two hours.  It was a nice finish to a trip that seemed, to quote Joni Mitchell, to be all about the land and the sky.

 The aircraft is flown to a lot of air shows.  I saw it and met the crew in Hondo earlier this year.  Since then the shiny silver plane has been to any number of events, including the annual air extravaganza in Oshkosh.  I’m really looking forward to making the flight, which costs $125.00 per person, a heck of a deal if you ask me.  The C-47 is the military version of the Douglas DC3, the twin radial engined aircraft that finally enabled airlines to fly profitably.  Its role as a military transport was so impressive that General Dwight Eisenhower said it was one of the four tools that ensured the allied victory.

UPDATE: The “Bluebonnet Belle” developed an engine problem during the return flight from Oshkosh.  It has yet to be determined how long it will take to make the needed repairs.  Then we will have to find a mutually acceptable date for all the people involved, including the aircrew and the original group of five.  If seats remain available I will post an invite on this blog.

 If you are interested in flying with us, post a reply right here on the blog and I’ll get in contact with you.  In the mean time, here is a link to the Highland Lakes Squadron web site, where you can find out more about the “Bluebonnet Belle” plus get the details of where they are located.

 http://www.highlandlakessquadron.com/HLS1/AircraftC47.html

Larry Walsh and the Austin MetroRail

My friend, Larry Walsh, and I finally found the time last Tuesday, July 27, to make a visit to Austin’s new commuter rail line, Capital MetroRail.  This is what is hoped to be the first thirty miles of a city wide system.  This first section runs from the city center at 4th and Trinity to Leander, a commuter colony way to the north of Austin itself.

Larry is, to put it mildly, an avid passenger rail enthusiast.  Now in his eighties, this has been his passion for every bit as long.  He served on boards pushing for the extension of passenger service across the north east of the country.  He can expound, at length, on the unlikely success of commuter rail in Los Angeles.  He sees a myriad of opportunities for it here in San Antonio, if only nay-sayers like me would only look beyond our road bound perspective and see the entire picture.  In fact he and I once traded barbs in the op-ed and letter pages on the San Antonio Express News regarding the proposed passenger service between San Antonio and Austin.

While we continue to disagree on that propoal, I actually have a fondness for the type of service which is now in its infancy in Austin.  Anyone who has used urban light rail in other cities will have a good sense of how successful they can be from any number of points of view.  My personal favorite is the Dublin Area Rapid Transit System in Ireland which runs on elevated track.

In Austin, the system mainly runs on track acquired by the City of Austin from the Southern Pacific when it was announced the line as far as Llano was to be abandoned.  While it continues to move a considerable amount of freight, it has been best known by the public, up till now, as the line used by the Hill Country Flyer, between Cedar Park and Burnet.  Ironically, Cedar Park has yet to acquire a MetroRail Stop so its residents can only watch the new service pass through on its way to Leander but may decide to opt in if the rail commuter service becomes popular.

As things stand, there are only six stops along the thirty mile stretch.  From the newly laid tracks on 4^th Street the train head due east under IH 35 until it makes contact with the pre-existing Southern Pacific built line.  It then heads north a while before crossing under the interstate again on its way to Leander.  Rather than give you a blow by blow account of every stop, I think it would be better  to simply give you a link to the MetroRail web site, which is:

 http://allsystemsgo.capmetro.org/capital-metrorail.shtml

 What I can more profitably do however, is provide a consumer’s point of view of what riding the train is like.  First of all, because they are only getting started, the number of trains available is limited only to weekday mornings and evenings.  Because Larry and I were essentially tourists out for a joy ride, we found there was only one train in the evening that would allow us to both ride form downtown and return.  For most commuters this would not be an issue as, presumably, most are coming in from the suburbs in the morning and returning in the evening.  Larry tells me the train ticket is good also for the buses which feed people to and from the rail service.

The train we caught, the 3:45 PM, the first one out, was not at all busy.  Presumably the following five trains would be, assuming most folks don’t get out from work so early.  The last one leaves at 6:40 PM.  Built in Switzerland, the “train” consists of two back to back cars with each having all its seats facing either forward or backwards.  The seats are not really very comfortable.  The padding is thin.  Also the leg space, at least in the seats we chose for an optimal view, was cramped.  The other 52 seats did not look a whole lot better.  But the view was good,  the engine noise level superb, especially for diesel powered rail cars, and the ride very smooth, including station stops and starts.

One of the unexpected benefits of ipods and other MP3 devices is that, unlike boomboxes of the previous generation which used to plague rail cars, the new devices do not cause much, if any, noise pollution.  Smoking is banned on the train and, just to make you feel even more comfortable, a uniformed police officer rides each train.  These also perform crossing guard duties in the event of signal failures but, fortunately, this did not happen on our ride.

A couple of people brought their bicycles on board and utilized some clever hooks to vertically stow them out of the way.  There were only two available with an obvious opportunity for two more to be installed later on if needed.  I don’t know if dogs are allowed.  I forgot to ask and it isn’t mentioned on the official web site.  The trains appear to be ADA compliant, with good ramp access from outside and almost no gap between the platform and the cars, plus set aside space within them.

My most serious complaint about the service is not about the trains at all.  It is about the lack of seating while waiting for the train down town and, far worse, no public restrooms at the large park & ride facilities.  It so happened we encountered a MetroRail board member on our way back, who seemed phased when I asked him why.  While most people will not be riding there and back in one go, as we did, the outbound trip to Leander lasts an hour and who wants to get into a car with a full bladder or worse?

All in all, I impressed with the service.  It was done with an eye to containing costs, by using existing rail lines which may not run through the most heavily populated areas of the city.  Expansion will most likely occur along the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas right of way which is fully abandoned.  Even so, bringing this into service will be cheap in comparison with establishing and building new rights of way if the system is to fully cover the entire city.

The same situation would apply in San Antonio except there are no city owned or abandoned lines available.  The Union Pacific is running profitable freight service to the quarry just outside Loop 1604 near Camp Bullis and delivering millions of tons of coal to the electrical power stations at Elmendorf.  These are the only two remotely possible stub lines.  All the other trackage is Union Pacific owned and operated mainline which carries well in excess of seventy fully loaded, highly profitable, unsubsidized freight trains all day every day.  It is not legal to operate light and heavy trains on the same track at the same time and “bumping” freight service to night hours only is not even remotely possible.  The cost to upgrade existing tracks to passenger standards, complete with signaling and other amenities would be enormous, not to mention the cost of constructing stations and massive parking lots.

The difference between theory and practice is often where Larry and I diverge on this issue.  Wishful thinking is one thing, but as the old army saying goes, amateurs argue about tactics while professionals discuss logistics.  When all is said and down, we could flood the ciy with buses and subsidize the service almost to the point of providing it free for what it would cost to create passenger rail in San Antonio.  There are other “social benefits” that rail brings with it that bus service does not.  However while it’s important to consider more than immediate economics in regards to commuter rail, it’s equally important that we don’t just ignore the numbers in the belief that social engineering, which is what passenger rail proponents principally rely on to make their case, is worth all the money we can throw at it.

            Recently I became involved in an upcoming PBS documentary on the perhaps unlikely subject of the resurgence of olive cultivation in the old “winter garden” areas between Carrizo Springs and Del Rio.  The story is, however, ripe with fascinating perspectives, including the “eat locally produced food” movement, and the original need for a means to transport the crops being grown in the area, which is where I come in, as the only person around who has spent time researching the history of railroads in the area, which has resulted in voluminous amounts of information on the Texas Transportation Museum web site and two locally published books.

            Over the last five years I have made numerous trips to Uvalde which has, over the past 127 years had the services of no less than four different railroads – the Southern Pacific, the Crystal City & Uvalde which was renamed the San Antonio, Uvalde & Gulf, the Asphalt Belt and the Uvalde & Northern..  Each time I visit the town I learn something new.  When I was there on Friday, the day after the trip by train to Del Rio, I found out exactly how the old SAU&G connected with the SP mainline, plus the exact location of both the SP and SAU&G depots.

            My delight in being invited to be an on camera participant in the documentary should have motivated me to at least try to find out about the railroad in Del Rio as well.  You might be able to understand my discomfort when I could not say for sure exactly when the current masonry depot,  now with a well made, compatible, bus station attached to it, was built.  I certainly knew it was not the original structure, which would have been of wooden construction.  I was in good company.  Representatives of the Del Rio city council, who supplied a bus for our group of eighteen to visit a local olive orchard and grape vinyard, did not know either.  A PBS executive from KLRU in Austin used her iphone to look it up on the web, only to find an absurd site that said not only was the depot the original structure, it was also built in 1876, seven years before the first train arrived.  A city transportation employee, who used to come down to the depot as a girl, and who was able to tell me about the original interior layout of the depot, was able to find a couple of old pictures.  One showed the original depot and the other showed the current structure when it just been completed.  Using the automobiles as a reference, it would appear to have been built in the mid to late 1920s, which is about the same time the entire downtown area was rebuilt, replacing frontier structures with pleasant looking “modern” buildings, to reflect the city’s growing wealth and importance.

            Not wanting to make the same mistake when I go with the film crew to Crystal City, Carrizo Springs and Asherton, I decided to visit these places the following day.  Accompanied by my good friend and avid railroad enthusiast, Fred Bock, the trip was most successful.  Having spent some time in Uvalde itself, we headed south on Highway 83.  Regrettably there did not seem to be anywhere worth stopping to seek information in La Pryor, the first community created by the Crystal City & Uvalde in 1909, but, contrary to the “warnings” given to me in Uvalde, Crystal City was another story.  Following a pleasant tour of the city, where the railroad once ran bold as brass right down the main street, we went to the city library, followed by the immediately adjacent town hall and county court house.  Every community, I have found, has a keeper of the flame, an individual noted for his or her knowledge of local history.  On this occasion, on a late Friday afternoon, the owner of an abstract company was unavailable.  His mother had passed on an unparallelled collection of early local photographs.  Many are on his office walls and even more are on the walls of the local bank.

            By the time we arrived in Carrizo Springs it was raining cats and dogs.  It was also after 5:00 PM and the library was closed.  Nonetheless, we were able to get the measure of the place for a future visit.  In my experience you hardly ever get much on a first visit, but you do get to sow seeds that usually bear handsome fruit on subsequent trips.  The rain let up while we took a break and a snack in the local Dairy Queen, but the sky looked so ominous we decided to forgo a visit to Asherton and, instead, follow the route of the “Sausage,” the nickname given to the SAU&G, eastward towards Pleasanton.  Because the tracks from the main Missouri Pacific line that still run alongside IH 35 were only pulled up in the 1990s, their evidence is still fairly obvious.  The same cannot be said for some of the communities that sprouted briefly along the line.  Some, like Los Angles, were nothing but a motley collection of dilapidated houses and farm buildings.  Others, such as Hindes, were reduced to a mere sign post.  On the other side of the freeway, towards Charlotte and Pleasanton, finding even a trace of the tracks is all but impossible.  They were removed in the early 1950s, some sixty years ago.  Railroads in general are very benign to the environment and the impact of the right of way is easily erased from the landscape.

            I now feel as though I am in better shape to speak knowledgably about this line.  However, several more expeditions to the area, including one to follow the line of the Asherton & Gulf, which connected with the MOPAC mainline a little further south.  I’m keen to see not only Asherton but Caterina, which was developed by Charles Taft, the brother of then President William Taft.  The local hotel which I believe still exists, supposedly has oversize baths to accommodate the chief executive and, later, Supreme Court judge’s well known girth.

            While a lot of filming for the documentary, which will also include a lot of music, some of it played on instruments originally owned by the Richardson family and kept at their grand mansion in Asherton, has been completed, there is still a good amount still to be done.  Some will occur at the Texas Transportation Museum, where a recreation of thousands of people arriving by train during the heyday of land sales will be filmed in late August.  These land rushes were, in fact, one of the last and largest population migrations in US history, attracting would be farmers from all over America and even Europe to sub-divided ranches.  A group of 160 Mennonites came from Ohio in 1910, to settle in a community called Beachy.  Located near Brundage, itself now not much more than an empty crossroads, the land where the community, which was abndoned in 1914, once stood is now part of an oil field.  It is hard to even begin to put yourselves in their shoes, when both the artesian wells and then the rain dried up and their high hopes turned to dust.

            But hope springs eternal and the humble olive, originally cultivated a hundred years ago, is making a major comeback, bringing with it the possibility of a resurgence of sustainable cash crops that are climate and soil appropriate.  It may just turn out that Asher Richardson and other developers, such as Charles Simmons, who built the Artesian Belt RR which put Poteet, Jourdanton and Christine on the map, were just a century ahead of their time.