Before MapQuest, you'd carry around a six county atlas, and a state map. If you had to go somewhere outside the metro area, you'd use the state map to get to the city, then stop at the first gas station you saw there to look at their map on the wall, or ask to look at their phone book for the map in there.

Ew, people.

Haha yeah. MapQuest. That's old school, you silly geezers. Let's get ya to bed.

Slowly folds up his road atlas hoping no one notices

Bruh, I remember being excited to be the one to stay up in the passenger seat with the atlas overnight making callouts from the highlighted route. A child never felt so important, needed, and critical to the operation.

"Sometimes, you just had to stop and find someone to ask for directions..."

Wait until you find out what people did before computers

I remember navigating for my dad as a kid using a physical street map. It was a great feeling tracking your position on the map and telling the driver what turn to make next.

But nothing beats the convenience of having a small rectangle that automatically calculates routes for you, especially when travelling alone.

don't forget the stack of quarters for when you inevitably have to stop and use a payphone

i used to have to buy printed maps from the magazine racks at the grocery stores back in the 80s

Even that was a massive technological improvement from the days prior, when you had to buy an entire book of your city, or part of the city if you lived in a large city, and then plot your own course, and write directions down, or follow a tiny map in the book as you drove.

AAA did the same thing. Yellow highlighter marked the route.

Rand McNally has just entered the chat

Pages? Like a static display made from dead trees?

I am astounded people managed to drive around Japan without gps. The signage is awful here. Even with gps it can be a struggle at times.

Oh that’s nothing. Before then we had to commit landmarks to memory and just call back on it as you’re driving.

Thomas Guide in the city, AAA Trip-Tik for road trips.

My grandmother still does this for some gods forsaken reason and somehow is worse at it than me. Mind you ive been having to track down adresses for work for about 3 years now but c'mon.

Everyone ought to try driving somewhere they haven't been before without bringing gps or even printed maps.

Look at a country/state map to get an idea of the general direction beforehand, but then otherwise just drive there and follow the signs as you get closer.

I remember those days.

We didn't have a printer so we wrote down the instructions and memorized them as much as possible because we understood that not paying attention to the road would get someone killed.

The same people can't get their fucking eyes off their cellphone now.

I'd just use good old maps. Had a provincial one in my car plus a few city maps. Actually still have them there just in case I need to fall back.

Hell, I even delivered pizza in a city I lived in for a while but wasn't very familiar with. Most deliveries involved looking for the street name in the index and getting grid coordinates to find it on the map on the wall of the place I worked, which I then related back to a street I knew how to get to and I memorized the last part to get to the side street I'd never heard of before that.

Only reason I started using Waze was after getting my last speeding ticket and deciding it was time to get that app I'd read about where police traps were crowd sourced. I like still having that general sense of direction so that following the suggested route is optional for getting to be final destination (though it does also help having a map to be able to check what side streets are connected).

The short time after smartphones but before free EU roaming was the prime days of offline map apps that you specifically downloaded for each city

I miss the days of Microsoft AutoRoute. No internet connection needed - but you were stuck with the map and routes present in the release version that was on the CD.

Printing was optional and encouraged!

Great Mapquest story: my two friends and I were driving from Gainesville Fl to Tuscaloosa, Al to visit another friend in college. I was in charge of the ‘quest, and we had the directions set on when to light the 6 blunts we rolled for the drive (aligned with the longest periods without having to turn, 70+ miles on the highway, etc).

Well, I missed the 0.2mi immediate exit before the 125mi straightaway and lit that next blunt. Long story short, we went like a hundred miles in the wrong direction because I told him we were good for a couple of hours.

My B

Ripped map pages out of the phone book

ViaMichelin!

Then offline GPS, I had Navigon installed on a Windows Mobile PDA with a Sirfstar3 receiver. It gave terrible directions.

It was pretty great. Tried to have me drive through a city park lake once to get to a movie theater I hadn't been to before. A+

And the scaling was fucked all to hell.

i know a guy who still does this. mapquest->print ... hes not even that old.. just dumb as a brick.