(TFT) Crossing a Continent

[Jay Carlisle <maou.tsaou@gmail.com>]

I stumbled across a set of 5 small pamphlet-sized books this weekend of maps
for the Bikecentennial held in 1976.
The format is sized eight inches by three and three-quarter inches (same as
many glove compartment maps when folded) with a scale of 1 quarter inch per
mile.
There are 109 total maps grouped into 5 regions; the Coast Cascades (24),
Rocky Mountains (29), Plains Ozarks (28), Bluegrass (11), and Appalachians
(17).
There are also a number of detail maps of larger towns scaled at 1 quarter
inch per 0.1 mile.
Whats nice about the quarter inch to one tenth of a mile scale is that each
sixteenth of an inch is VERY close to 3 by 4 Battle-maps in area (30 by 32
inches).
As this route was picked for bike travel (with strong considerations for
scenic routes) Id imagine it would be a reasonably passable route for
travel before modern highway improvement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikecentennial

The only real problem with the setup is the use of a floating compass to
allow the longest portion of the map to follow the route most efficiently.
Having fixed the hex-grid with hex-sides always oriented north to south and
vertices east to west the different orientations of the Bikecentennial maps
presented a small issue for me.
As a result I made a pin-box that allows me to orient the Bike-maps to
north on my hex-grid before laying out the hexes.
This allows me to draw each map on the n/s hex-side alignment in
square-hexes that gives me a dynamic map that can easily be altered due to
Actions or events.
(Try Wolframs A New Kind of Science if you wanna see how I handle things
like fields becoming overgrown over time or natural disasters. {hexes are
cells too})
Ill throw a few pics on the web site if anyone is interested.
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