Before Siri sweet-talked us through every turn, before Google Maps rerouted us around traffic like a literal fairy godmother, we had… MapQuest. Good ol’ MapQuest, where you’d print out 12 pages of driving directions and cling to them the entirety of your trip. Good luck missing one turn. You’d be pulling over, flipping through those sheets like you were decoding a tedious math problem from high school algebra class. And if you were really old school, you used an actual map, like one of those giant, accordion-folded monsters that unfolded to the size of your windshield and nearly guaranteed you’d clip a mailbox.
If you traveled for work back then, your best strategy was to commit every highway exit and side street to memory, just to avoid the full-body stress of navigating unfamiliar roads with nothing but a printed map and a prayer.
