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Wednesday, February 11, 2004
9:46 AM

Welcome To Southern California - Now Go Home!
Did I miss a news story about a sudden influx of several million people into Southern California? Based on the traffic the past week or so, it would seem that I did. (Perhaps I have been focusing too much on the goofy news stories from my earlier posts.)

The disadvantage of the beautiful place I live is that it is about 20 miles from my office. In normal areas, that really shouldn't be an issue, but in SoCal it can be hell. Traffic generally isn't all that bad. Takes about 25-30 minutes to get to work. A few spots of stop and go, but usually it's tolerable. Until the past week or so that is.

Take today for example. I leave home a little after 8:00, cautiously optimistic that I'll be able to get in by about 8:30 with plenty of time to chat with my paralegal Debbie and perhaps even to get coffee. Alas, my hopes were cruelly dashed about 5 miles from home when I hit bumper to bumper traffic with no end in sight. No problem, I'm still able to take the toll road at that point and decide that I just can't stomach the traffic and am willing to pay the unreasonable toll to retain my sanity (to toll road is an occasional treat saved for special occasions or desperate times - kind of like chocolate). So I detour over to the toll road. Ahhhh. All is well. Sanity intact. Little did I know that my sanity was to be a very temporary state.

After a few all too brief minutes of speedy driving my happiness ended. What is this? More bumper to bumper traffic!! How is this possible? So there I am, again, sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, even more frustrated than before.

I determined many years ago during a particularly bad traffic experience in LA that, for me, hell would be being stuck in unending traffic (yes, I know that there are much worse things, but after 3 hours of such traffic you really aren't thinking straight). And today I was in that hell again. To add insult to injury, I was still sitting in bumper to bumper traffic at the exact moment when I passed through the electronic device that debits your toll account. Like I needed to be reminded that I was not only in hell, but paying handsomely for it. I revise my prior statement - paying to be in unending bumper to bumper traffic is even worse than normal hellish traffic. If I wanted to sit in traffic, I could do that for free back on the 5 freeway!

Fortunately, the traffic did let up after a few miles and I was able to finish the drive in relative peace. But I still got in later than planned and didn't have time to get coffee. So here I sit drinking green tea, which we all know is nowhere near as good (but probably better for me).

A brief recap of my day thus far:
1) Horrible traffic;
2) Paying to sit in the aforementioned horrible traffic;
3) No cappuccino.

I sincerely hope my day improves. The only silver lining I can think of is that because I wasn't driving the Lexus I didn't have the ubiquitous French Lady mocking me during my Hideous and Expensive Traffic Experience.

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