Driving in LA
Woman in the Middle | June 19, 2017I have never been a person who loves to drive. Driving is something I have to do in order to do other things I want to do, like shopping, going out to eat, or visiting friends. I don’t hate it, except when I have to go into Los Angeles. Then I really don’t like it, not at all.
Yesterday we went into LA to take Hubby to a museum exhibit we thought he would enjoy for Father’s Day. (More on that later.) Since it was Father’s Day, I drove. That is part of the deal around here for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. You get taken someplace, you don’t have to drive, and you don’t have to touch a cat box for the day. So, yesterday, I drove into the abyss that is Los Angeles and back out again, and lived to tell the tale.
Our day out did not start well. About a mile from our house a big band new white minivan decided it needed to turn left by crossing a solid white line into the left turn lane. Unfortunately, our car was right where they wanted to be. My gut was already a bit unhappy, so the stomach muscle clenching that happened during and after that little episode of almost side swiping didn’t help at all. Then we stopped in the area of City of Industry for lunch at a favorite restaurant of Hubby’s. FYI, people in that neck of the woods are not the greatest drivers. Polite as all get out, constantly yielding right of way to others, when they really should go themselves, which makes for a fun time all its own. Good times, and I hadn’t even gotten to Los Angeles yet!
Alexander Woollcott supposedly said “Los Angeles is seven suburds in search of a city.” Well, he isn’t too far off about that. While the rest of Southern California has a much more suburban lay out with an uncrowded feel, even in downtown areas of our older cities (like the big city next door which was founded in 1870), Los Angeles is our one truly urban city, with all that goes with that.
Yesterday, we headed right into the belly of the beast, downtown Los Angeles. When I got off the 101 freeway on First Street, I was tossed right into urban street hell. There wasn’t much traffic (thank goodness) but there was a streetscape right out of an urban scene reminiscent of a New York or Chicago or Detroit. First Street had buildings on either side that crowded right up to the street. The middle of the road was crowded with overhead wires that fed electricity to a streetcar system. Every once in a while a street car would come rumbling passed, just to add a little apocalyptic color to the scene. I was on a two lane stretch of road, but the right lane or the left lane regularly became a turn only lane, which forced me to jog back and forth to be able to keep going straight ahead.
Due to the street cars, some intersections had “no left turn” signs, even though those intersections looked about the same as the ones where you could turn left. But the signs added another level of color and clutter to the road. As a final layer of confusion, white bicycles were painted on the asphalt, in the middle of the drive lanes. Around my neck of the woods, that painted bicycle means a bike lane for bikes only, and if one were to appear in the lane I was driving, it would mean I had made a big boo boo and needed to get out of that lane fast, before I hit a person on a bike or a police officer pulled me over to give me a ticket. But not in LA, apparently. I drove over and with those painted bicycles for quite a distance yesterday. In downtown LA they must mean “Feel free to ride your bike here and take your life in your hands peddling with the cars!”
Leaving LA yesterday, I was never so happy as when I got on the big, beautiful, wide, 10 freeway, free of claustrophobic overhead wires, constant turn lanes, and bicycle stencils. As I gripped the steering wheel with both hands, the trusty Camry was like a tired horse that gets a second wind when its rider finally turns it back in the direction of the barn. I had to pull back on the reins to keep it from going 90 miles an hour all the way home. Later that night, Hubby said “Thank you for driving today.” That man knows how much I love him, to have driven into LA yesterday.
I really don’t want to become one of those women who, after a certain age, refuses to drive on a freeway or very far from home. But I am really looking forward to self driving cars. Really…looking…forward…
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