Remember What It Was Like to Travel Pre-Smartphone?

Smartphone and Google maps are such game changers. I was working near Boston for an internship around 2005. I had a cellphone, but no data plan. Whenever I wanted to visit a friend at Tufts or in Cambridge, I had to print out pages and pages of MapQuest directions.

I would still get lost quite often if I missed a turn. Roundabouts are the absolute worst. I often just ended up driving in the general direction until I hit a major street and and

 

Do ya'll remember what it was like to travel pre-private helicopter?

Yeah me neither

 

I miss life without smartphones, I'm tired of my job and everyone else feeling like they should get access to me at all times. I'll take mapquest over what it's like now.

 

@ThatBoyNick be all like

 

Seriously. I can't imagine a road trip without Waze.

We took a family road trip through TX, OK, ARK, and MO this summer. My in-laws were with us for a portion of it (in separate cars) and every time we tried to arrange to meet them somewhere, my MIL would pull out her keymap, cover the table with it and try to tell me how to get there. I would just very politely say "ok, thanks....soooo what's the physical address?" Then I would plug it into Waze and be done with it.

She kept trying to tell my kids "you still have to know how to read a map!" and I would just think to myself "actually, no you don't. Not in this day and age."

 

Sounds just like my grandma Bless her heart, she still steals sugar packs and whatever "free" stuff happens to be laying around the table when we go to eat, I will say something and she will just say in the sweetest voice, they wont miss it and gives me a wink .........she must be afraid she will run out

 

Hey Mapquest is still around

 

Ride sharing and language apps are the biggest things for me. Makes the idea of overseas traveling a lot less daunting.

 

Did they go to map-reading school? That's weird.

No one ever taught me how to read a map. It's a picture with locations and roads on it. You pick point A then follow the roads to point B.

 

Great. Now, can you tell work to stop expecting me to install apps on my own phone in a way I don't get fired? Same for expecting me to text, email or call at their convenience anytime they feel like it (also without getting fired)?

 

Smartphone and Google maps were such game changers. I was working near Boston for an internship around 2005. I had a cellphone, but no data plan. Whenever I wanted to visit go somewhere, I had to print out pages and pages of MapQuest directions.

I was still a student and was too cheap to buy a keymap. So I just had a folder with a bunch of mapquest printouts that I printed at work lol.

I got pretty lost a often, especially in the dark when I didn't see the street names in time. Street of Boston and town around it were a mess. I hated ****ing round-abouts because it messed up my sense of direction. I eventually did buy a compass which helped!

 

I wish we still had AIM.

 

i heard they teach you map reading in rotc. im gonna enlist when i get to high school

 

Dude, haha. Not because they are euro, but because they are Royal Douche Airlines -- they have been truly awful in ways I've never seen an airline be awful.

Sorry to my non-airline-employee euro compatriots!

 

Key Maps.