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End of Week Car Zen
Driving in L.A. can be nasty business. In traffic today, I thought about tallying the hours a week that I spend in my car. I decided against it, as what would it get me but heartache. If I could only use that time to spread a little love around… I send you my wishes for a weekend with an open road!
Painting by Killy Kilford
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Hugs Wendy, I wish you same…Sunday, I’m spending a few hours in Atlanta Midtown with friends at a sports bar watching the Formula 1 GP race in Austin TX. Yeop, I’m sick that way….a true lady motorhead in the most European fashion. NASCAR bores me silly & always has. My love of machinery has been handy when the necessity of fixing whatever needed fixing came up.
Rebecca, I love that you’re a “motorhead.” That’s so cool!
I’ve spent my fair share of hours, days, weeks, months and years on the L.A. freeways (born and raised in L.A., and 23 of my years there were as a licensed driver), but I’ve always been mostly immune to the stress of the gridlock.
But I knew I was in trouble when I was visiting a friend in a rural area of northern Wisconsin, and we ran into their version of “rush hour traffic” – four cars waiting to turn left from a dirt road onto a paved state highway. I grew impatient when I saw many opportunities to make the turn that the drivers in front of me didn’t take, that I would have taken in a heartbeat.
I don’t know – maybe it’s easier for me to get angry at four cars holding me up at an intersection than it is for me to get angry at 14 gazillion of them that are in the exact same predicament – and have just as little control over it – as me.
Thanks, Stacey. That’s a very useful perspective. Everyone in L.A. complains about the traffic, but if there was no traffic, it wouldn’t be L.A., the vibrant, complex city that it is.
I concur with what Stacey said…driving in a large congested city makes you pretty aggressive – you have to be, or you’re not going ANYWHERE. When you go to less congested areas where people aren’t as aggressive, it’ll drive you mad. Even if you’re not cutting turns or lane changes too close out of anger – but necessity – in large cities, seeing people NOT do it will get under your skin.
Unfortunately, I ran into all the idiots on the road today, and it turned me into a monster. I noticed today that, since moving to DC, my driving posture has actually changed so that I can beep the horn by just leaning forward a little. Wow. And I only drive once every few weeks and almost exclusively on weekends and only short distances from home. I don’t even OWN a car, and I’m still a “typical city driver.”
I’m a much better driver in L.A. than I was in San Francisco, because I do so much of it. But my parking skills have fallen way off. (Lots of parking lots here.)
I hope my parking skills don’t fall off. I’m widely regarded as a master-level parker (I can get a giant SUV into a compact spot, can tell whether the parallel spot is big enough before even pulling up to it), and I kinda enjoy that. 🙂
Since I ditched the car, I find myself being a better driver. It’s weird. I didn’t drive much before, so my needs were still slanted towards walking, biking, and taking public transit. But now that there is no longer a car sitting 20′ from my door at my disposal, I’m much better about checking crosswalks and whatnot. Don’t get me wrong, I never ran anyone over before, but my responsibility as a driver is just so much more central now.
An excellent skill to have, JoDa. I’ve really gotten out of practice in L.A., especially now that I have a 2-spot garage.
Central Illinois would be more than happy to share our “magnificent miles” of minimal honking, passive/leisurely driving, and abandoned construction zones with you! The biggest downside is the winter weather… :[
I’ll take the traffic and the 70 degree weather in November.