So, I will get down to doing a real post one of these days, but in the meantime, here are a few recent events I've thought about posting about. I have no idea why they all involve driving. Oh, except that I spend my entire life in the car. Seriously, I should have been a trucker. Then I could have gotten paid for it. And learned all that cool C.B. lingo. Alas...
Late November
Two weekends ago, I witnessed an accident while driving on the 10-West. Traffic was cruising around 50 mph and all of a sudden everyone’s slamming on their brakes and I see a car a couple of vehicles ahead spinning in circles across several lanes, driving the wrong way head-first into a wall, bouncing back, and bumping a minivan in the process. When the whole thing ended, I had like second-row seats to the affair. I pulled out my cell phone and called 911, sure that the driver of the spinning car was seriously injured. I have done this once before (to report a driver that was either drunk or completely asleep at the wheel in the middle of the day, and who had turned the packed freeway into a bumper-car course of sorts) and it’s creepy because 911 knows where you are and automatically patches you into CHP. I told them about the accident and all. Then the driver of the spinning car, apparently fine, gets out of her car, starts throwing a Jerry Springer worthy fit about the accident and shaking her fist at the poor woman in the minivan. This is about the time that I, and the rest of the freeway, lost all sympathy and concern for her and began driving off in droves.
But post-crash etiquette is not the point of this post. Rather, for the next half hour, my cell phone periodically gave off this weird ring/alert I had only heard once before—the last time I called 911 from the highway (I swear, I don’t do this every day). Does anyone out there in blogland know what this is? Was CHP keeping tabs on my position or something? Just wondering.
Thanksgiving in Phoenix
In LA, the speed limits are kind of a reference point. The reality is that you are permitted to go as fast as traffic will let you. Usually, this is far below the speed limit. But on a good Saturday morning, where no wildfires or bikers or landscaping trucks or other accident-prone vehicles have managed to mess things up for you, the flow of traffic generally averages out at around 80 mph. As long as everyone is going 80 mph, and as long as you’re not doing anything too stupid while going 80 mph, you can drive right past a cop at 80 mph (who will also be going 80 mph) without any real worry.
Given this background, I’m sure you can appreciate how very frustrating it is for an LA driver to be in the greater Phoenix area on a holiday weekend where the traffic is light enough that one could easily go 80 mph but be forced to drive 65 mph instead. When you’re able to drive 80, 65 seems like a snail’s pace. But that’s just what they’ve done in Phoenix—taken the joy out of driving by placing a whole robotic committee of ground-triggers, radars and an entire photo studio complete with fake books and oversized “Class Of” letters and other stupid props at five-mile increments on all the freeways in town. This committee purportedly records your speed and snaps a picture of your car and then tickets you by mail. What, no e-mail tickets? No tickets asking to be my friend on Facebook?* Sheesh. Get with the times, Phoenix.
So even though Dave and Mary warned me about the new and ruthless traffic regime in the Valley of the Sun, and even though there are signs posted everywhere telling you about it, I still got noticeably flashed on the night I drove in and then, while leaving town, I spaced and did it again. So now I am biting my nails every day as I open the mailbox, waiting for not one but two speeding tickets to jump out at me. And the worst part is that I wasn’t even going glorious 85, only like 72 or so. So it wasn’t even worth it.
Thanksgiving in L.A.
SoCal’s holiday rush hour started a mere seventy miles from the Arizona/California border this year. It took me three hours to drive from the Fantasy Springs casino to the Cabazon Outlets. Previously, I always considered the two to be adjacent to each other. Oh wait, they are. There was a meltdown of sorts. I’m still experiencing PTSD as a result.
Yesterday
Yesterday I was sitting in traffic after work, which was even heavier than normal due to something going on at the Staples Center that warranted Batman lights and helicopters flying all around, and I see this kid walking on the side of the freeway, pull out a can of spray paint, and begin to tag a concrete wall right then and there. In rush hour. The freeway was packed. A cop was bound to drive by eventually. That’s some real moxie, people.
Now, I don’t know what this says about LA and the jaded nature thereof, but all of the drivers in my lane, including yours truly, had the exact same reaction at the exact same time: pull out the celly and snap a grainy picture of this young hooligan in action, because nobody’s going to believe it otherwise. Seriously, the lights on our phones all went on in tandem. Alas, it was dark and we were under an overpass or five, so the grainy picture is not worth posting. Neither was the kid’s graffiti. I can see why he’s willing to risk life and limb to get some practice in. His handwriting wasn’t even good.
There you have it, folks.
* No, I don’t do Facebook and I won’t be your friend.
