Sorry to not respond promptly folks; I was in Austria the last 2 weeks and since AT&T has SIM-locked my out-of-contract cell-phone and refuses to unlock it even though they made a butt-load of money on me already, I was unable to use the 3 network SIM I bought in Vienna. I shall refrain from using the remaining choice words I have for AT&T at the moment, especially with respect to having a GPS in my phone but now way to download maps of any kind, even of the local streets!
Anyway, the map looks fine today too, even if extremely zoomed out at the moment. I see the FAQ has been moved from Germany to Mexico and now lies somewhere around Fiji. Seems though a lot of blue markers mean I'll have some cleaning-up to do for a bit. And congrats on the Green RAQ in Hawaii!! Now, let's start seeing some in TX and then the Atlantic South + Alabama!
And yes, I don't know of any way to back up a Google map either; at least Google Wave allows you to see the history. Seems not so for the Google Maps. But, all is well now so let's just chalk it up to a server glitch like the ones plaguing blogger a couple months ago with respect to Java Script insertion.