1/28/04

I went to Long Beach and back this weekend.

Correction - I drove to Long Beach and back this weekend. My daughter wanted to attend a convention down there – and she wanted the use of my van because it has cruise control, where her little Saturn doesn’t. So, to get my car, she took me for a 1-day “respite” trip. I drove down, and I drove back – three hours plus, both trips, in weekend, late-afternoon not-quite-rush-hour traffic.

And you wonder why I wonder about my own sanity…

I live on the California Coast roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. When the traffic is running smoothly, it takes approximately three to four hours of freeway driving to get to either place - and by "running smoothly," I mean traveling consistently at a speed somewhere between 65 and 80mph. Of course once a person gets in city traffic, one travels at the speed the rest of the maniacs are driving – and that means that speed limits are moot. If the traffic is going 90mph, trying to stick to a sane 65mph is asking to cause an accident. If the traffic is clogged and moving at Dead Slow (when not at Dead Stop, that is,) gunning the engine repeatedly is not going to help!

Where I live, the freeway is two lanes each running north and south – and for those of you who’ve never been there, the freeways in the LA area are at least four lanes each direction, often six and sometimes seven. The good news was that the pavement was dry – the average speed I hit was 75mph, too fast to be traveling safely on wet pavement. The bad news was that everybody else in the world decided they wanted to be traveling too. The five lanes were jammed and very literally bumper-to-bumper – and everybody moving at 75mph.

There is a state of mind that a person gets into when they know they’re in a dangerous situation, they know there’s no way around being in that dangerous situation, and they know that the only way out of that dangerous situation is to behave just as dangerously as everybody else around them (within some minimal limits of sanity.) Driving in Los Angeles means entering that state of mind and staying there until one gets OFF the freeways. The city streets might be just as crowded, but they’re rarely full of cars traveling 75mph.

Driving in Los Angeles also takes an immense amount of trust – and not only in one’s own ability to manage a car. One has to trust that the guy ahead will be a good driver, trust that the cars behind will not slam into the trunk, and trust that the cars to the side know enough to look before changing lanes. One has to trust that the people who designed the signage will put up ample warning for upcoming freeway junctions so that if one must battle to move two or three lanes across traffic to be in the proper place at the proper time, one has the time to do battle.

One thing I’ve noted over time is that manners – waiting one’s turn, signaling lane changes, etc. – is a dying trait, never more obvious than on the freeways of Los Angeles. Everybody is in so much of a hurry – and so completely self-absorbed in where they want to go – that navigation takes on the elements of a chess game or not-quite-contact sport. An empty slot between two vehicles rocketing down the lane will be filled, even if the act of moving over makes the vehicle behind have to hit the brakes to avoid being clipped.

Have you ever noted that the line in a exit-only lane moves more slowly because of all of what I’ve come to call “yellow-breasted lane darters” – those idiots who wait until THE very last minute to try to move over into an exit lane. These are the same idiots who, when they see construction signs saying “lane closed ahead” just keep right on barging forward in the lane to be closed, fully expecting some poor slob to give them access at the head of the line.

What ever happened to the concept of politeness in our society today? How is it that the Golden Rule came to be re-written? What used to be “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is now “Do unto others and run like Hell” or “Do unto others before they can do unto you.” Hedonism – the philosophy that puts self and self-interests before everything else – is now the defining element of American culture.

Politeness, compassion, altruism – those are words we don’t hear a lot about anymore except perhaps in a religious context. “Love thy neighbor” is what we hear or read in scripture – “Love thyself,” while certainly a worthy concept, is now not only the only concept taught, but it is taken to extreme lengths.

And all of this – ALL of it – can be seen in the way Californians drive on the freeways.

And yet – it still exists. You just have to know where to look for it (and don’t try looking at other freeway drivers – they’re lost causes.) After parking at a HUGE Convention Center and finding out there was no place for me to stay while she was busy, I resigned myself to spending six to eight hours in the parked car because I didn’t know where to go while my daughter did her “thing.” But while walking back toward the parking lot, I was lucky enough to run across one of the security personnel of the Convention Center. Not only did he stop and answer my question, but he put me in his electric cart and then drove me over to Shoreline Village, where I could find someplace considerably more comfortable to kill the time while my daughter was busy. He was polite, he was compassionate, and he went above and beyond as far as I was concerned. I never learned his name, but after fighting Angelenos (yes, they even have a name out here for the folks trapped living in this metropolitan zoo-without-bars) he was a refreshing reminder that there is still a dram of humanity left, even in such a place. Whoever you are – I salute you, sir. You made my day.

You know, like my two-lane freeways and my rural lanes that I can take when I don’t want to fight traffic that only seems to be getting heavier year after year. I like being able to slow down – if I really feel like it – and enjoying the scenery along the way. I like the fact that even though our local stretch of US 101 does get crowded at rush hour, one is nine times less likely to get stuck in a traffic jam caused by the Chaos Theory – traffic jams around here tend to have more to do with “yellow-breasted lane darters” and the unfortunate consequence of their actions.

So I guess my trip to Long Beach was a vacation from the sanity of being contented with being a “country mouse,” with a reminder that sanity can survive, even in the midst of utter chaos.

An afterthought- I did, however, find a fabulous and reasonable place to eat down there. So if anybody’s in the vicinity of the Long Beach Convention Center with anything resembling an appetite for lunch, slip on over to the Shoreline Village and check out the Island Sunfish Grill. Their fried shrimp and chips is excellent! My way of paying back their kindness to me is to recommend them to anybody interested and going to be in the area.