in the 80s you could call AAA and tell them where you’re planning to go on a road trip and they would send you a spiralbound roadmap of the route with gas stations, hotels, and construction zones highlighted
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.
Nice!
I wonder if there is a print-on-demand service that will still make these for you. Could certainly DIY.
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.
GeoGuessr mfs inventing the first time machine to have this job:
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”
How widespread was this? I grew up in the 80s/90s and pre GPS we just had a map in the car. I’ve never heard of such a hotline until seeing this post.
But, when would you use this? Stop at a gas station, and instead of getting a map, you make a phonecall?
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
Yes, but what gorgeous country to get fucked in! When my wife PCSd from Long Island to Fort Knox, we drove through that country several times.
She would also spend a lot of time at Fort Lee (now Gregg-Adams) and the drive from Fort Knox to Fort Lee also crossed amazing parts of WV.
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’m also dutch, and Im pretty sure you couldn’t call for route advice from the ANWB poles. Or at least, you couldn’t in the later years, maybe it was different in the 60s.
It does make a lot more sense these people are planners, not general navigation advisers.
I would think using that service to plan a route ahead of time would be optimal…
here is a cool article on a few different jobs lost with photos https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/jobs-that-no-longer-exist/
my favorite is the human alarm clock and went and shot your window with a pea shooter to wake you up
