my own worst enemy

Warrior of the 405

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Part of the sacrifice I made to live with my awesome roommates is that everyday I have to drive 33 miles to work. Approximately 30 miles is on the 405. For those of you who have never been to California, here's a few points of interest:

• Freeways, expressways, interstates and other major highways are not refered to as "Interstate X" or "State Road X", but rather "The X". Nowhere else in this great country do people do this, but then again nowhere else in this country is there such an abundance of hippies.
• The 405 is always packed. ALWAYS. You will always be surrounded by 100 other cars, none of whom are passing the others. However, if you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you're already dead!

Typical traffic on the 405
Photo courtesy of Baron's Blog

Every morning I get up before the ass-crack of dawn to get on the road by 6:15am so that I beat 50% of the other Los Angeleans going to work. This works out well because it allows me to leave work at 4:00pm and beat 50% of the Los Angeleans going home. Well, this morning I forgot to set my alarm. I didn't end up getting out the door until 7:00am. Knowing full well the hell that lay before me, I decided to get some Mickey-D's on the way out. Got on the 405 and what do you know... traffic was moving! Holy crap! It only took 45 minutes to get to work, which is par for the course!

I've been trying to notice traffic patterns so I know when and when not to travel in LA, but all I've learned in the past six months is that there is no pattern. That, and LA drivers don't know what the fuck to do when it starts raining. They're like Chicken Little in their cars screaming, "The sky is falling! THE SKY IS FALLINGGGGG!!" They're so busy looking up at the falling sky that one of them forgets to brake when everyone else slows down and WHAM! Car accident. Stopped traffic. Awesome. LA has so many accidents per day that they have a special term for the really, really bad ones: SigAlert. I have no idea what the "Sig" is SigAlert stands for, but check out the website: http://www.sigalert.com.

That said, LA is still better to drive through than Northern Virginia. That place just plain sucks.

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