I’m working out of town this week in a moderate sized town (pop≈100k) that I have never been to before. While driving here it occurred to me just how different my preparations are now compared to when I started my career in the 90’s.
Now:
[ul]
[li]Google [home] to [destination] to find out about how long I’ll be driving.[/li][li]Plug hotel address into Garmin just before I pull out of the driveway.[/li][/ul]
Then:
[ul]
[li]Grab the Rand McNally Road Atlas[/li][li]Grab notepad and pen[/li][li]Look up the distance in the distance table if my destination is there. To a nearby major city if not.[/li][li]Plot my voyage on various maps as needed starting with[/li][LIST]
[li]US Highway map if the trip spanned multiple states.[/li][li]Final state map if the destination wasn’t directly on a main road.[/li][li]The city map if it was included in the Atlas.[/li][/ul]
[li]Write out the route legibly enough to safely read while driving[/li][li]If I didn’t have access to a city map before leaving, stop for gas and local map when I arrive at city[/LIST][/li]
I’m sure there are some small towns as the result of someone screwing up their navigation and winding up lost. Just saying to hell with it, I’ll start a new town here.
The poll:
Your mission, should you choose to accept it. You will be flown to an airport in a random city where you will be provided with a rental car and the necessary paper maps and a notepad required to accomplish your goal. Your starting location will be marked on the local map. Your goal is to navigate to an address in a city 500 miles from where you are using only paper maps which were provided. You will only be given the street address, it will not be marked on the map. You will have 14 hours to check in at the destination.
If you take a wrong turn in Albuquerque and wind up hopelessly lost in Turkfuckistan this board will disavow all knowledge of your existence or mission.
If you attempt to cheat or otherwise develop a solution outside the spirit of the challenge you will be sedated and an mp3 player will be implanted in your skull connected to high fidelity 5.1 Dolby surround sound bone induction speakers also implanted in your skull playing an endless shuffle loop of such classics as La Macarena, Achy Breaky Heart, My Humps, Swangin, I Love You (Barney), and Barbie Girl. This will be connected to a next-gen Tesla microbattery with a minimum play life of three years.
Will you be able to reach the destination in the time limit?
I could do it, and god damn, where do you go to find decent maps these days? Gas stations don’t sell them any more, just those crappy little laminated Best Of maps.
As long as it’s not small towns and/or big cities during rush hour all the way with unpredictable traffic, and I really do have access to accurate maps, yeah, I can do it. It’s less safe because I don’t have a digital voice telling me to turn right in 1000 ft, but doable.
(On the other hand, I love Google Maps satellite view! I phoned ahead and asked, “Are you at the house with the gray roof and a swimming pool, or the house with a red roof.” They said, “Red roof” and I zeroed right on in. I love the information age!)
It’s relatively easy in the US, where there are street signs. The real challenge is doing it in developing countries where most of the streets don’t have them. Or they are different from what’s on the available maps.
I was sitting in the main train station in Seoul in April, talking with a young man who seemed impressed that I was traveling by myself in Korea. He said something about how, of course, my smartphone made it possible to find my way around. His eyes grew wide when I instead showed him my paper tourist map and a compass attached to my daypack.
The only way I do it differently now is to look at maps online. Just last week I discovered by accident that I have GPS on my phone. I see no reason to use it.
I’ve found my way in quite a few cities and towns with nothing more than a paper map, regardless of whether I spoke the local language. The only problems I’ve had were the few times when the map was wrong.
This seems like a really silly question. People have been doing it for a long, long time. It is only in very recent times they’ve been relying on the car computer program to do it.
Are you a fool that you have forgotten how to use your own brain? Can you do math w/o a calculator?
Heh, I’m at the other extreme. I use my phone’s GPS every day. WAZE has saved me from a few tickets and has sent me on alternate routes I never knew to avoid traffic jams. It’s relaxing to just sit back and drive, turning wherever I’m told.
Screw that! I’m probably toast if I’m not allowed to ask help if I get confused.
(I was not gifted with a natural sense of direction, but was endowed with persistence. I always get where I’m going. Sometimes not by the shortest route however!)
Compass? COMPASS? We don’ need no steenkin’ COMPASS!!1!
I’m no mapmaker but am a pro navigator.
I hate trying to use a map on a phone. I’d much rather have paper than just a phone. IMO a tablet-sized screen is the bare minimum where you can get things zoomed in enough to read and simultaneously zoomed out enough to have any context. Turn by turn “navigators” giving you a subway tunnel view of the world are truly tools of the Devil, meant to enfeeble the minds of everyone they touch. If you need that to get around, just stay home. Let the rest of us get where we’re going.
OTOH, one of these days I will find the guy at Googlemaps who thinks it’s OK to leave all the street names off the tiles at various zooms. It won’t go well for him.
Harrumph!!
