Memories
Posted by Redcatche@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 188 comments
Posted by Redcatche@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 188 comments
ArtichokeNaive2811@reddit
Dude! Lets remember that it felt like you had it easy! Watching the parents with the flashlight on road trips while driving ,fighting, and driving 80mph was scary.lol
creegro@reddit
Mom planning out our trip 5 states away, writing down the road names and what exits to get off at and enter back on. Stopping in the middle of the night to check the map and see where the hell we should be... She may as well have been a pirate ship captain she did amazing, she was practically mapping out the stars on our way to visit cousins.
slipkid@reddit
Right?? It's easy to forget now how freaking amazing Mapquest was at the time. Enter two addresses and it would spit out turn by turn directions. What?? No digging for maps in the glove box or junk drawer. What a brave new world.
some_random_chick@reddit
Or ridiculous directions from your spatially inept friend that’s contained such easy to follow gems as turn left at the big tree (on a road full of trees), turn right at the blue car (cuz cars are stationary therefore good landmarks), go past the house with the barking dog (you better hope that dog was outside.)
And when you said this is ridiculous, just tell me the crossroads, they would have no clue of major crossroads and could only give you directions starting from their grandmas house so step one is drive to their grandmas house.
CherBuflove@reddit
I was posh and got a Triptik from AAA. Took me from NY to California and back.
123FakeStreetAnytown@reddit
Printer? Were you rich or something?
I would scrawl the directions on a scrap piece of paper like an old piece of mail.
homerj681@reddit
In shorthand that eventually became a mystery to solve in and of itself.
123FakeStreetAnytown@reddit
Lots of capital “L”s and “R”s in circles for sure
hobbestot@reddit
Memory unlocked. Thank you.
DrRichardDiarrhea@reddit
Make a wrong turn, lost forever.
Tru-Queer@reddit
Few years ago I had to make a big drive from 1 state to another, and I didn’t have access to GPS on my phone like I do now.
Used good old MapQuest and was driving the designated route. Ended up missing the exit I was supposed to take and I was PANICKING because I had to make my destination on a deadline (long story in and of itself).
Anywho, I was smart enough to realize that if I took the next exit, made a U-turn, I could essentially start over and take the right exit which is what I ended up doing. But for a hot minute I thought I was gonna wind up lost in another state 😂😂
annaoceanus@reddit
This was me too!
DavidRandom@reddit
Back when I was a trucker I didn't have GPS, just a big road atlas and directions from the receiver for the last couple miles.
I found one of the notebooks I'd write all my directions in a while back and it looked like a schizophrenic alien filled the pages. Just a bunch of numbers, letters, and odd symbols
homerj681@reddit
I love it
Aromatic-Mushroom-36@reddit
That's more like it! 😂😂😂
Arcturian485@reddit
My now wife is a genius and would write them on the windshield in dry erase marker. We crossed the country twice in Mapquest alone 😬😅
Practical-Trash-4976@reddit
Or try to remember what the gas station guy said
jujumber@reddit
I hated that. I was so bad at taking directions from locals that would describe things like you lived there your whole life.
prairieaquaria@reddit
Agree!! I’m in a small town and ppl still refer to the original owners of houses to “help” me find things. “Go down to the Smith’s old place then head east until you get to the road near Miller’s farm…”
123FakeStreetAnytown@reddit
“Take a left at that restaurant that Steve was arrested at last year, then a right at what used to be a K-Mart…”
chocki305@reddit
Hey.. My dot
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
matrix still
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
works fine.
DavidRandom@reddit
Did you not have a library near you? It was only like 10 cents a page.
123FakeStreetAnytown@reddit
10 cents! That’s a whole ass text message!
Evening_Ad_1099@reddit
We would call the destination, jot the basics down on a napkin , burger wrap or anything and find the place by relying on landmarks or the stars, I dunno, can't really remember...
greenmky@reddit
You printed stuff like this at work or at school, duh.
Drum_Eatenton@reddit
When I delivered pizzas, I would look at the big map in the wall and write down step by step directions
glitched-dream@reddit
Argh! Me maps up here! * Taps noggin
budgetcriticism@reddit
Directions?! You were lucky! I had to navigate using my own poorly drawn diagram of the route! That and the relative positions of the stars and the moon.
irate_alien@reddit
post it notes in the middle of my steering wheel
ApatheistHeretic@reddit
I travelled for work occasionally so I got to use their printer for that.
krissym99@reddit
And then I couldn't read my handwriting and I'd get lost and anxious.
123FakeStreetAnytown@reddit
Funny you say that because I never liked my handwriting (I’m a lefty), so in middle school I found a handwriting style font I liked and got my teacher to print a few pages of text for me. I went home to the glass coffee table and used a lamp without the shade to make a makeshift light table. I then traced the text over and over for a few weeks. So by the time I could drive my handwriting was excellent, even the scrawl was legible.
Express-Structure480@reddit
People are likely still doing this.
Foxfire5272@reddit
Nah, just had a really big Atlas I picked up at the truck stop.
ResistanceRebel@reddit
I can't believe my azz would shuffle through printed papers while on the highway, keeping an eye on the odometer to gauge how many miles I drove until the upcoming exit. The Big Guy upstairs was definitely watching over me. 🫣
Much_Zucchini8826@reddit
Yahoo maps gave me wrong directions. To a David bowie show! I'll never get over that
Mgmt049@reddit
And we were HAPPY to have those succinct, targeted directions over the big ass key maps or other maps of old
jacksonmills@reddit
Hah! MapQuest!
When I first got a car it was Rand McNally all day, busting out a compass and finding which dumb colored line was the highway you were on.
See also: memorizing how and why highways and routes are numbered the way they are.
verenika_lasagna@reddit
As a kid I loved looking at the Rand McNally maps while traveling. I think it instilled a life long interest in maps, geography, places, etc.
ilrosewood@reddit
Same. To this day people will mention they are are from random towns like Dothan Alabama and I’ll know exactly where that is and ask if they ever went down to Panama Beach.
fullmanlybeard@reddit
Thomas guide for me, and AAA maps for travel destinations, lol.
ObviousExit9@reddit
When my friend got a TripTik from his dad’s AAA membership for our drive from Florida to California, I knew we were living in the future!
fullmanlybeard@reddit
I had to look TripTik up, had no idea what it was. I meant the paper maps/booklets that they used to hand out, lol.
prairieaquaria@reddit
I used my atlas to map fantasy road trips.
5erif@reddit
Even with MapQuest, you had to keep the ol' reliable atlas with you for when you accidentally turn onto I85 Business instead of regular I85.
Dark_Shroud@reddit
My GPS did this to me last year at 2am traveling home on a long trip. It wasted a good half hour of my time getting back to the normal interstate.
It had tried doing it to me during the day but I avoided that shit. In the dark under my headlights the signs looked close enough and I was tired.
Routinestory8383@reddit
Dude, doing delivery with a Rand McNally. Wanted to kill myself.
Sweet_Deeznuts@reddit
I heard that in Rand McNally they wear hats on their feet and hamburgers eat people
Boring_Energy_4817@reddit
It's wild in retrospect. I remember driving to a town I'd never visited in another state for a music festival with nothing but a paper print-out, twenty dollars, and the unearned confidence of a 16yo.
ilrosewood@reddit
Damn right. I visited my girlfriend in Kansas City when I was 18. Had I ever driven there before? Nope. Did I know where her school was? No clue. I just had some vague directions and when I got to Troost and couldn’t find it I stopped at a gas station and asked for help. Found it and just showed up! That weekend I took her to a random restaurant I had been to when I was 14. Did I know the name or anything else? Nope. I just let my dead ancestors guide me. And we found it.
AreWeCowabunga@reddit
Dude, when I was younger, we just had a big book of roadmaps and you figured your own route. Drove cross country a couple times like that.
Nom-de-Clavier@reddit
I drove cross country like that a few months ago! I was using Google Maps, at first, but it tried to send me 700 miles out of my way...at which point I picked up a Rand McNally road atlas in a truckstop, and used that the rest of the way.
Dark_Shroud@reddit
I'm also hear from people buying the older GPS navigators from thrift shops. Just pop in a new SD card and update the firmware and maps they'll still work just fine.
Dark_Shroud@reddit
We did that a few times in the 90s. Both my Boomer parents had road atlases in their cars.
Because I was raised using the road maps I would double check the map quest directions before printing them and sometimes making adjustments to keep to more main roads.
askaboutmynewsletter@reddit
Same but from the country to the middle of NYC to see Chingy...
Plastic-Implement797@reddit
And the first page and a half was just a waste because most people know how to get out of their own neighborhood!
HibernatingSerpent@reddit
Actually, today, some high school students are so addicted to their phones they don't know how to get around their own neighborhood. Source: me, a high school teacher who's had wealthy students who don't know how to navigate the 1 mile between their rich neighborhood and our school.
ilrosewood@reddit
We call those people morons.
Dark_Shroud@reddit
I remember back in the 2000s people saying they realized they didn't know how to get to places because they somehow never paid attention in the car.
Many of us laughed at that. We couldn't give you the street name directions to save your life, but we knew how to get to places.
Flockgrl13@reddit
Says you, I’m still driving around the cul de sac 🤣
ClimbingAimlessly@reddit
Stop calling me out. I feel attacked!
Whitworth@reddit
I still have all my road atlases with high lighter
Skytraffic540@reddit
But if you hit a detour, you’re back in 1985 in an instant.
SchemataObscura@reddit
What about the stack of xeroxed black and white maps stapled together that you got from the gas station?
Ok_Contribution_6268@reddit
Before MapQuest, there was a Windows 3.1 program called Rand McNalley TripMaker. My grandfather used to print maps with directions from that hopelessly outdated program into the early 2000s when they'd take road trips. Seemed to do the job, no internet needed. I personally would love to source the program!
RedRust@reddit
I thought mapquest would be the end of my marital car driving fights. Wrong
westfailiciana@reddit
Anyone else ever get wrong mapquest directions... ugg. I can read the fuck out of a map, though. My mom had me navigating from the passenger seat at I shit you not, the age of 5. I still have a natural affinity for maps and directions. I kill world geography in trivia b/c I can still just glance at a map and take it all in.
LeperFriend@reddit
I had a big yellow road atlas in my car
Remote_Bumblebee2240@reddit
We would stop at the travelers information station and pick up the state map. Or buy an atlas.
oflimiteduse@reddit
Buying regional maps at gas stations and trying to read them solo driving.
BasketballButt@reddit
I can’t be the only one who remembers Thomas Guides!
Pristine_Serve5979@reddit
Rand McNally road atlas or the free paper state maps at the rest centers.
packetmon@reddit
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/461/
shapesize@reddit
Lol we had that exact thing happen in Maine with Microsoft Maps back in the day. The map said “Turn Left, then Board Ferry”…
beebsaleebs@reddit
The printer friendly was just one page usually
oddball_ocelot@reddit
I remember driving and calling out road names while Mrs. Ocelot had the ADC map book open getting us from here to there.
swoods425@reddit
"Print out." You fancy.
PinkCupcke007@reddit
I would write them down in order on post it notes and would peel off the top note as I went. It was my version of turn by turn directions lol
mrsmushroom@reddit
In my center console of our old car in a crumbled roll are the pirate directions we followed on our honeymoon. The very same directions that got us lost in the mountains late at night. Good times.
atomicgirl78@reddit
I remember having a driving job in Phoenix and the surrounding areas in the early 00’s and I had a big yellow square map that I used to navigate my way around the city!
windmillninja@reddit
And we thought we had peaked
Shaolinchipmonk@reddit
In high school me and my friends used to drive around until we had no idea where we were and then try to find our way back home just using our sense of direction.
True_Dimension4344@reddit
Awesome. This is how I got used to my city and even had a saying. I’d say “I drive around into subdivisions and neighborhoods I don’t know so that when someone invites me to a party on wackadoodle drive I’ll know where that is” I always used the same road name, one in my town that seemed odd that I saw and sure enough one day my husband says we are going to look at a house on “wackadoodle drive”, I got to say “I know where that is”. Now I live here. Also, moss and lichen on trees will show your roughly which way is north.
Murgatroyd314@reddit
That depends heavily on your local ecosystem. I’ve lived in places where all sides of the tree are covered in moss, and in places where there’s no moss anywhere.
True_Dimension4344@reddit
I did say roughly. Nothing is certain except death and taxes. 😉
DefiantFrankCostanza@reddit
Before that we had to actually use maps and plot routes…like real pirates.
JavaOrlando@reddit
Yeah, I was a courier for a while. I couldn't run into an internet cafe every time I needed directions to the next pickup.
I had a map book with every little street in Central Florida .
Dark_Shroud@reddit
I did both, and then I quickly realized to split the difference and both double check MapQuest directions and then make adjustments after my Boomer parents had to use their Road Atlases when Map Quest was wrong in one case or wanted to take us done old sketchy looking roads.
Independent_Pause333@reddit
I once had them tell me to take big river road. There was no road, just big river
Muleskinned@reddit
A lot of us could just look at paper maps and remember….
prairieaquaria@reddit
Seriously amazing I ever got to where I was going. Lord help you if there was a closure or detour. I once used a Bob Evans restaurant map to navigate Michigan.
BetterEveryDayYT@reddit
I still do for long trips.
Dangerous138@reddit
I drove from outside Philadelphia PA to San Diego CA only using a road atlas.
Amazing trip.
DiscountEven4703@reddit
Nope we just new the territory or we rolled the dice Like Men , LIKE MEN!!!
sicksixgamer@reddit
For my job at the time (Military Funeral Honors) we often had to find rural churches/cemeteries. I remember starting with using MapQuest but then discovering MSN Maps was actually the best. We tried Google but in it's infancy discovered too many errors. Then at some point Google took over and MSN was but a memory.
On MSN maps you could customize the print out with pictures if each turn. It was great.
313SunTzu@reddit
We used to get directions like:
"... you get off exit 87 and go til you see midland dentistry. At the cross street there's gonna be a funny looking rock on your right, make a left. Then half mile down there's a flashing yellow light, go 3 streets past and make a right. You're gonna stop at 3 stop signs and go left down the road along the pond. It's a blue house between 2 white houses, you can't miss it..."
And we'd set off on our fucking adventure, with gas at 89 cents a gallon and 1/4 the cars on the road there is today. Shit was fucking crazy
nevertoolate1983@reddit
"Google maps is the best!"
lunatic_minge@reddit
Ten years ago my spouse and I moved from Memphis to Portland and drove there. I printed maps for the whole trip and felt like an ass when they pulled out their phone. Duh.
Dark_Shroud@reddit
Never apologize for having solid offline travel directions.
Just yesterday I had my phone over heat & power off on me while traveling out of state on a ten hour round trip.
Lucky for me I knew the way to a planned stop. While eating and using the diner's WiFi I was able to get my phone turned back on and installed offline maps into the GPS app I use. So I turned of mobile data and WiFi so it wouldn't get so hot again from constant use while plugged into the vehicle.
Seleroan@reddit
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was how I wound up behind a dumpster off of MLK in Pflugerville.
Triala79@reddit
I had the giant Rand McNally paperback book of state maps that stayed in my car...I think my dad gave it to me...
thebookofswindles@reddit
We had street guides too. Paper indices of streets in order, what hundred block they were etc. I recently had a data outage but in the town where I delivered food in 2001, I felt like a millennial superhero
cortesoft@reddit
My folks had a “California atlas” book, where the first page was a map of California that showed which page to go for what section of California. Cities had more detailed zoomed in pages, too.
It was always fun when we would get to the edge of a page and I got to turn to whatever page it told me to continue the journey.
Practical-Trash-4976@reddit
The Atlas and Gazetteer
fatwiggywiggles@reddit
Technology rapidly turns into a crutch
I drove from Chicago to Miami for a friend's wedding a few years ago. When I was in Georgia I dropped my phone into water and it wouldn't start up again. I suddenly had no way to navigate (gps on the phone), didn't know where the venue was (email was on the phone), and since I haven't had to memorize a phone number in 20 years (phone stores your numbers) I didn't have anyone who was going's number. It was looking pretty grim
But I remembered my buddy's landline at his childhood home so I called his parents from a hotel, who gave me his number, who then helped me get there. Even got to buy a paper map for Florida in the process AND ask for directions at a few gas stations, only one of whom was helpful because he was an older guy and the other people didn't know how to get around without their phones either, even though they lived nearby
It was like doing a bit of time travel
Dark_Shroud@reddit
I know a couple of people who had Magellan GPS systems because they had to buy them in an emergency situation. As the one guy said Google Maps works great until you're outside the city & burbs in a rural area with spotty wireless internet and your phone's over all connection drops at times. The other one was driving back roads through wooded areas and corn fields quite often. Thankfully for them Best Buy & Walmart sill carried those.
PlaneLocksmith6714@reddit
We even had a navigator and snacks!
thebookofswindles@reddit
I still bring snacks. Do not underestimate the value of glove compartment trail mix
taney71@reddit
I need my pretzels to tell the driver that they need to turn right on Platt Road in 2 miles.
TanglimaraTrippin@reddit
Forget Mapquest. It was all about the free maps from AAA that you could never fold back up the right way.
Reasonable-Wave8093@reddit
I was too cheap to print, i would write it down lol
hungrypotato19@reddit
Yup. My mom started her business doing gift baskets. I'd sit in the passenger seat with the MapQuest directions while she drove.
Then she got a TomTom and a robot replaced my job.
butterfly_ashley@reddit
Yep.
Unfolding a map and trying to look at that and drive lol
Or not at all and just asking for directions that always seemed to have " if you reach (blank) you have gone to far and have to turn around." Lol
cbih@reddit
AAA was the best. They'd print you a whole spiral bound booklet.
hithappensmusic@reddit
Or go into AAA and get a triptic.
adchick@reddit
My Grandfather was a Navigator in the Air Force. He was GPS…before GPS.
Chronic_Overthink3r@reddit
Our Mapquest was the US Rand McNally map book.
tersegirl@reddit
Still do. When everyone else is fucking around with poor coverage for smartphone maps, who takes one look at the printed out map and knows exactly where we’re going? Yo.
Secure_Listen_964@reddit
Nah, I grew up on a grid. Number your streets.
nashuanuke@reddit
Some of us xennials remember having big mapbooks in the car.
manifest_ecstasy@reddit
I wrote them down probably 50% of the time. And they were sometimes wrong, which wasn't fun.
kellynch10@reddit
Even Mapquest was such a game changer compared to having to stop at welcome centers and grabbing maps.
TPlain940@reddit
Moved to Houston in 2000. Had to buy a key map which was a gigantic book with every single street in the metropolitan area. Not fun.
Sparkyd34@reddit
Hell yeah!!! I drove cross country twice that way!!
coccyxdynia@reddit
I remember driving 2 hours to go pick computer parts from Newegg and to do that I had to print out the directions from MapQuest and the only way back was just following the directions in reverse lest I get lost and have to go to a gas station and ask for directions.
bugbrown1@reddit
Imagine before the internet! We drove with flat-out maps. And when you unfolded it, it took up the whole front seat area... 😂😂
Rude_Negotiation_160@reddit
Yeah and we'd even highlight or put an * near an area that we knew was either jacked up and we needed to be sure of the route since it was like spaghetti in that area. Or it was because we needed to double check cause we could only remember to that point,
InsideInsidious@reddit
I navigated my city by having knowledge of most of the arterials, and then somebody would tell you a series of landmarks to guide you in based on the direction you were coming from.
Basically, everybody had a bunch of waypoints memorized and there were enough other people around you to help interpret unrecognized waypoints that you rarely had to pull out a map, which was truly a last resort
TrustAffectionate966@reddit
MAPQUEST?! Psh, I used it for, maybe, 6 months. I had Thomas Guide books by County. It was like Cartography bingo back then! I knew where I was going.
vallogallo@reddit
Once I basically missed an entire Belle and Sebastian show in Atlanta driving from Nashville because the Mapquest directions didn't account for all of the blocked off streets due to construction and I got lost. I got there in time to see the last song only. Still a very bitter memory for me, and one of the only times I wish smart phones had been invented earlier.
Pinkleton@reddit
The most useful graduation gift that I got was a U.S. road atlas from my aunt. I traveled a lot by myself and I used it for a good 10 years before I got my first gps.
bugwitch@reddit
I collected maps at rest stops. Had a huge collection I kept in my car. Held onto them for years.
draculaalucard8622@reddit
Haven't lived until you drive a box truck into downtown Chicago with bad map quest directions
Aromatic-Relief@reddit
And I would do it again.
CosmicTurtle504@reddit
chatrep@reddit
I thought I was clever and would reverse the text and invert (black background w/white text), place on dash and have an instant heads-up-display!
Skibidi_Rizzler_96@reddit
We used maps. My parents even got custom "triptiks" from AAA.
Anonstigram@reddit
My best friend to this days nickname is “The Navigator” because it was her job to yell out directions. And also LA Natives, let’s pour one out for The Thomas Guide, aka the phone book size maps of the roads of LA and Orange Counties.
xeroxchick@reddit
We were gods.
AnywhereParking3981@reddit
This is so true that it hurts me to read it.
systemfrown@reddit
I’m embarrassed to say I was o e if the last people to stop doing this.
But hey, I’m a creature of habit.
NeonRx@reddit
And we thought that was the height of technology 😅
dieth@reddit
What is this print off mapquest BS!
I remember stopping at a gas station, paying $1.99 for the traveler's map of the local area. Then wildly arguing about the best route to take and then yellow highlightering it once everyone "decided" which way was the best.
Then the person in the shotgun seat became navigator; and as soon as you fucked up/missed an exit/whatever you lost navigator rights and got sent to the back of the car.
chejo378@reddit
I would still get lost and have to call my dad. He was a truck driver and knew every road in the Bay Area. I'd tell him where I was at and he would be like, "oh... yeah, you're next to the Chevron station and Burger King. Okay, then go...."
OJimmy@reddit
And rhe helpful gas station guys:
https://youtu.be/62IPlNYbdec?si=rAWuoeTJX699EBWM
https://youtu.be/TgvyparsP0c?si=d2QRLyl0rsYeLe-K
Angelkrista@reddit
We also used to write direction on lined paper if a map coordinator wasn’t available shotgun.
meatus1980@reddit
I drove a box truck all over eastern MA and Boston from 99-2002, during the big dig. Paper maps that were outdated and Mapquest is all we had. That’s when I really learned how to drive.
ChrisChuck1@reddit
Pepperidge Farms remembers.
HerRoyalRedness@reddit
I have an awful memory of trying to find a funeral with printed directions (pre-smartphones and I didn’t have a GPS), getting lost, and driving up and down Peachtree Industrial Boulevard in Georgia and not being able to find the place.
HelloweenCapital@reddit
On what planet does this belong here?
Harlockarcadia@reddit
And somehow, often end up in the middle of a field somewhere because of said directions
DanimalHarambe@reddit
Atlas in the trunk and never be afraid to roll down the window and ask a complete stranger... Looking back it was a beautiful system.
Foreign_Ad393@reddit
I remember taping hand written directions to the windshield of my motorcycle for long road trips.
BreakfastBeerz@reddit
Used to use paper maps because MapQuest didn't exist.
GeetchNixon@reddit
Tharrr be the exit, matey.
strix_nebul0sa@reddit
I got around most of Western North America (in 2006) guided only by my sense of direction, Lonely Planet's North America on a Shoestring, and an 1990 vintage Winston* Road Atlas inherited from my folks.
I used MapQuest at a Kinko's, paying by the minute for internet, once. And only because a landslide in California seriously changed my route.
*yes, the tobacco company sponsored a road atlas. I've never been able to figure out why. But that collection of maps got me to a lot of cool places and allowed for some great adventures!
Electrolyte_Crave@reddit
This pic is nabbed from El Arroyo in Austin, TX… Credit should be given to the author OP…
R1pp3R23@reddit
Some of us bought Thomas guides.
jfrii@reddit
Bitch I had a rand macanallys.
KabeeCarby@reddit
Mapquest was great except when they would forget a crucial step, like getting off the highway at a specific exit. Then you’re trying to make sense of the rest of the steps but they don’t apply! One technological advance I’m super grateful for is GPS on your phone. Saved my ass so many times!
mostlygray@reddit
Just drove back from Marquette to the Twin Cities. GPS/Apple Maps/Google Maps were useless. They all kept sending us on stupid routes.
So I went to the good old Rand McNally road atlas, found a good route, and it was no trouble. GPS is great in a city. Cross country, on back roads, it's quite frustrating. Shortest distance is not always the quickest, or the most logical.
It made me remember using maps as the default for navigation and suddenly I remembered that it's possible to know where you are without looking at your stupid phone. Just know the map, and landmarks tell you where you are.
I was always the navigator when I was a kid. My dad would just say, "Grab a map, how far are we from Muddy Gap?" Then I'd find the right map and figure it out, get a course to the next waypoint after, and then be able to follow it as we went. Thousands of miles and you're just a kid with a stack of maps.
Practical-Trash-4976@reddit
Awww, I love Marquette
Zabroccoli@reddit
I was in a band in the early 2000s and our first couple of tours were planned on Mapquest. We kept the papers inside of our US atlas. Really was an adventure.
demonbadger@reddit
Funny story. Was cleaning out some old stuff and came across my travel binder. Was stuffed full of printed off directions to concert venues, record stores, hotels and places to eat. With handwritten notes!
Calm_Examination_672@reddit
Wish I'd kept something like this
Creepy-Floor-1745@reddit
My kids are 13-20 and can read maps ONLY because when we camp and hike, I’ve been giving them the trail maps to navigate for us since they were old enough to read
The public schools have like 2-4 weeks of learning about maps in 3rd grade. That’s it. Sure maybe they don’t need the skills but it’s still a fun way to get around the world.
DevilGuy@reddit
I used to have a stack of maps from AAA in the pocket on the drivers side door of my car and have to pull over and get one out, figure out where I was and then memorize what turns to make.
wuh613@reddit
OH GOD NO! NOT A DETOUR!
Independent_Baby5835@reddit
lol and if I missed the turn or there was construction and needed to be re-routed, I would be toast since I have zero sense of direction.
My ex-husband once got so mad when he asked me to read the map for him while he drove. I’d tell him to take a right and I’d flip the map right, left, and so on until I didn’t know where we were. He snatched the map from me and asked how stupid I could be and how I didn’t know how to use a map. 😂🤣 This was in Canada too!
homerj681@reddit
I was always a fan of the big ass maps you could get at the gas station. Rand McNally? Kept one in my jeep for the longest time. Those bad boys don't lose service in the mountains or the desert!!
DamarsLastKanar@reddit
I still print the endpoint map. Most turn by turns for the majority of a trip are easy highway switches.
I have decent spatial intelligence/memory, so I can stare at a map, burn it into my cerebral cortex, and feel what cardinal direction I'm going.
Even in Boston.
Walksuphills@reddit
But Mapquest print was too tiny to read while driving, so I also transcribed the turn by turn directions in large sharpie print in a notebook.
Sea_Buy9017@reddit
I remember back in 2003 or so, I had a crush on a girl I went to college with and she invited me to visit her during the summer. I printed off about 10 pages of directions at the local library and then took off on a 5-hr trip to the other end of the state.
When I got there, I played it off like I had used a road atlas to get there, because I thought it would sound better than a 10-page print off from MapQuest.
Ended up leaving a few hours later with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. I still think about her from time to time.
AfternoonPast3324@reddit
My daughter played travel ball. I would print out home to hotel, hotel to each gym & each gym to each other gym. My navigator mocked me mercilessly, but we never got lost.
FantasticTumbleweed4@reddit
Worst directions ever
Gonzostewie@reddit
I worked for a moving company in high school. I'd fall asleep in the moving van and wake up to us being lost. I'd use the map and figure out where we were and get us to our job. It's how I got my sense of direction.
To this day I have to lead the family convoy on our road trips. Everybody has gps but for some reason I have to lead the fuckin wagon train. It really sucks because my dad now drives like he's never been in a car before. "Speed limit says 55. That's what I'm doing." Dad the flow of traffic is at 70. You're gonna get us all killed.
PlethoraOfPinatasss@reddit
The good ol' days
MisterHyman@reddit
Argggh, there's exit 6b!
HaveTPforbunghole@reddit
Yarp!
Flockgrl13@reddit
My husband used to be a service driver and he had the big map books. He had to have one for every county and every year had to get a new one with all the changes!
ImitationCheesequake@reddit
Those Thompson guides are awesome, my Dad was a service driver too and he gave me one of his old ones for the county when I first got my license, I used that to find the way to pick friends up all the time.
ImitationCheesequake@reddit
I had a binder with directions inside plastic protector pages to get to different venues for shows/concerts, picking up a friend after work and making the long trips to follow bands from the next closest venue back home was a blast, co-pilot made it so much better, changing out discs, keeping an eye on the directions and stumbling into awesome places to stop for a break and making notes of it on the MQ page. I wish I still had that binder just for the memories, I had some awesome show flyers tucked in the back pocket too.
Ordinary_Aioli_7602@reddit
My college roadtrip was literally that lol- a lot more than 4 pages too. And of course I had the good ole US Atlas.
Future-Agent@reddit
YARR!
YouKnowMoose@reddit
Steeeeeve!
bcentsale@reddit
I'll copy general directions with distances and approximate times into Google Keep, and only use GPS for the last few miles. Maybe it's just my wife and my brother, but I've found Google and Apple maps guidance to be completely non-sensical, repeatedly sending them over local and back roads to save 2 miles while adding 30+ minutes to trips.
jasonmoyer@reddit
I use Maps via Android Auto as GPS in my car, but it does have a habit of sidetracking down neighborhoods for no reason when it should be keeping me on a main artery. Also it's always weird when the directions include making a U-Turn.
awe2D2@reddit
I still make hand written maps. Then make copies for my kids so they can follow along.
Never know if reception will be good, don't want to have to check my phone while driving anyways