Remember the ancient times of the mid-to-late twentieth century, when long trips to unfamiliar places couldn’t be navigated by squinting at a computer the size of a deck of cards? If you needed to get from point A to point B, your first hope was that an elderly relative could give you directions that used no street names and depended on visual landmarks such as specific gas stations or funny-shaped trees. Plan B was to wander in the general direction until your wife got mad enough to make you stop the car and ask the locals for pointers. Plan C was to stay home and find something else to do.
Plan D was maps. Giant-sized maps that didn’t fit in your pocket unless you wadded them into a ball first, or wore overalls with enormous pockets. They unfolded into thirty or forty sections and covered your entire dining room table. If you were improvising on the run, they covered your dashboard, steering wheel, and most of your line of sight. Driving while mapping was, much like driving while texting, a fun way to terrorize your passengers and the drivers in the other lanes, adding new levels of stuntman risk to even the calmest Sunday outing.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 