Dial Up. Yeah I know the sound and I know the time it took to load anything with. But it’s something I won’t ever miss having. I would much rather be on a 1MB connection if I had to choose between that or dial up ever again. I also hated how easy it was to be kicked off, if anyone called the phone, you were off it in seconds.
Road trips before GPS and maps apps. Navigating off just paper maps and poor signage was not fun.
I don’t want to change back, but I still thought it added a sense of adventure, and having to be actively involved with the navigation gave you more awareness of where you were and where you were going. Now you just slavishly follow instructions and then some hours later you are there.
Like, we drove to Austria last summer and when we came back my dad asked me: so did you drive over Stuttgart or Nuremberg? And I honestly didn’t know.
Riding motorcycles is a way back to this sense of adventure. You sort out your path before riding, do your best to remember as much as you can, and then do your best while on the road for as long as you can. Pulling out a phone is a pain while riding, so you want to go as far as you can and happily improvise to see how well you can do.
You quickly get to the point where you learn to remember route numbers and such and can go pretty far on memory and educated guesses. Feels cool, and you start to learn an area well, getting to the point where you can give people quite detailed directions.
I dunno man, I don’t really get a sense of adventure when I had my giant ass paper map laying halfway across the fucking dash.
The funny part about driving to Austria from Germany is you only know you’re in Austria because the GPS lets you know the speed limit is 100.
Its a shame because it is something I am actually really good at, and now it’s a completely useless skill!
Time to play geoguessr
I navigated Europe in 1997 while hitchhiking using nothing more than paper maps and a sharpie to mark where I’ve been and where I wanted to go. It was pretty fun. Only got off track once or twice.