The Bob Gentry Journal

My plans for the day? Well, I have to be down in Lakewood for a Hockey game at 7:30pm. I’m carpooling with one of the other teammates—it looks like my chances of being ON TIME are going to increase! Last week, I thought I actually might be on time until I realized that I had passed the exit. I felt like such a fool…It was as if the vehicle was on autopilot and was programmed wrongly.

Traffic here in Southern California is too easy to bitch about but even worse than traffic is the way the exit and on ramps are laid out. Growing up in states with freeways that makes sense has spoiled me. What I mean by that is… Let’s say I exit in Michigan at Telegraph Road off the 94 freeway…Once you get off, you can easily turn around and go east or west…Signs are easy to see and most of the ramps are set up in a similar way. Well…Believe it or not, some exits here off of California’s hectic 405 freeway, if you exit, you CAN’T GET BACK ON! Sometimes it spits you out and you have to HUNT for the on ramp…And THEN you’re lucky if it’s the correct direction. Not all exits on the 405 are like this but I’m pretty sure most of California’s freeways were designed by a bunch of hippies on an acid trip. It’s the only thing I can think of that will explain how crazy some of these freeways are. Once you add a billion vehicles all moving at 10 miles an hour, depending on the time of day, you have one giant PARKING LOT.

Let’s not forget the Diamond Lanes/Carpool Lanes! For those who don’t have this in their state…It’s a lane that’s suppose to encourage people to carpool by only allowing 2 or more people in one car to drive in it(also motorcycles). Well…Sometimes these lanes are a huge help but for the most part they just fuck traffic up even more. Since the carpool lanes are on the inner left lanes and all exits are on the right, if you’re driving in it and need to exit it’s quite tricky to blinker your way through a sea of single driver cars. A person needs to be a SUPER AGGRESSIVE driver here.

Another TRIPPY legal traffic law here is that motorcycles are allowed to drive in-between two other cars. I’m told that traffic has to be moving slower than 45 miles per hour in order for motorcycles to be allowed to legally drive between 2 cars that are side by side….BUT I’ve seen 2 wheelers slide through at MUCH higher speeds. The idea is to encourage people to drive cycles because they pollute the air less. It’s dangerous anyway you look at it.

Actually, driving out here isn’t SO bad but I try to do as little of it as possible. And if I do, it’s only at certain hours of the day.

I should also mention that there’s about 100 Freeways here in California…One might think it would be easy to get lost but once you figure out that going north takes you to Sacramento…South to San Diego…West to the Ocean…And East to the mountains, it’s pretty hard to get lost. But god help you if you pass and Exit