Part of me still misses TripTiks. It was fun to go through them ahead of trips and always have that nicely printed, spiral bound book with you on the road.

At some point in the 90s they automated TripTiks with the idea that you'd print them at home yourself. It was all the same info but the magic was gone.

My grandma actually recommended I do this last year. I was already contacting AAA about some other thing, and jokingly brought up road trips. They went, "Yeah we can help!" I was kinda adorable.

My father was an itinerant minister. He traveled all over the country. We made great use of TripTik (I think that's what it was called).

GeoGuessr person:"ok, now which directions are the shadows pointing? Any wildflowers or birds in the area?"

Caller: "I'm just looking for a gas station"

Maybe a call centre operated by map producers, intended more for questions about routes and conditions rather than "take the third left" kind of navigation.

Yeah, it sounds like the kind of thing you could do but would pay out the butt for as a private service. Road map books and asking directions were my go-to.

Of course, post-internet but pre-GPS there was always mapquest.

Rest area payphones. Its why most rest areas have a huge blown up atlas map these days

edit: and as a note, the death of the rest area payphone is a huge problem some places. you ever look at a coverage map for west virginia? you break down or get lost out there and you're totally fucked

everyone had maps, but they weren't always current

This is actually a map of the Netherlands and I'm from there. I'm also old enough to remember a time without mobile phones. This was probably the call centre for triple AAA, in Dutch the ANWB. We had these emergency telephone poles along the highways. When stranded (car broke down) and without a map you could easily call aid through them with these phones, which they also knew where they were, for easy dispatching.

I mean, payphones were at most stops. Rest areas, etc.

I would think using that service to plan a route ahead of time would be optimal...

I will still do this. What does an alarm clock cost? $500? $1,000? I'll do it for half that.

These still exist, except it's not a number you call, it's a shortwave station that you tune into.

Check out http://websdr.org/ if you don't have your own. From there you can play with various shortwave radios from around the world. The first one on my list is my favorite cause it picks up a lot of stuff.

555-1212 was the number where I was.

I still use it on websites that ask for my phone number for some gods unknown reason.

France+Iberia in the background

You carry around a universal translator, and a global atlas in your pocket. Leave me alone.

Haha that is a new way to look at roadmaps of the Netherlands, I love it

"Se encuentra en méxico."
"Muchas gracias!"

I disagree. It has changed and morphed. The weights have shifted, some parts have gotten better, while others have dropped. Overall, quality of life is better now than it was in 1960. Of course this is all immensely subjective and the viewpoint of a homeless person in Moskou cannot be compared to a family man working middle management in Los Angeles.