Freeways of Tolerance

The City of San Ramon sits on Highway 680 between the Cities of Walnut Creek and Pleasanton, along the commute between the Central Valley and Silicon Valley, with workday traffic somewhere between bearable and infuriating.  I drove from Fresno to San Ramon and back on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, what arguably could be one of the busiest travel days of the year.   No, I’m not a glutton for punishment but rather a desperate job-seeker who had been granted an interview for that day only, and like the fisherman who gets strong nibble at a hole that he thought had long ago been fished out, I needed to keep my line in the water.

I hate driving on freeways.  I’m using the work “hate” here on purpose and specifically.  I really, really don’t like it.  I’m not a great driver.  Probably not even a good driver.  I get distracted, I get stressed, and I am quick to judge my fellow motorists, especially when they merge.  (Here’s a tip: the on ramp is designed so that a merger can get up to freeway speeds before he/she needs to commit to said merging.  Please do so.  Oh, and freeway traffic has the right of way.)

Weird things happen on freeways.  I once saw a convertible in North Bakersfield zip from the far left lane to the right shoulder, while the driver relentlessly beat something unseen in the back seat with the steering wheel locking device The Club.  I once saw a semi coming down the north side of the Grapevine with two wheels fully engulfed in flames, and a guy hanging out the passenger side door with a fire extinguisher waiting for it to slow down enough to jump.  And back in the early eighties when I drove LA freeways a lot, I saw this.

So here I was, driving the majority of a 165 mile, each way, journey on those hated freeways.  Fully expecting to be miserable for somewhere between three and much-greater-than-three hours. 

But that didn’t happen.

I started early, real early.  My appointment was at 10:00 but I left home at 5:30, well on the side of caution.  I arrived at 8:50.  Was there traffic?  Yes, there was traffic.  As I motored up I-5, there were so many RVs lined up at the rest stops they looked like dealerships.  Semi-trucks moved along in long convoys so close to one another that they might as well have had their bumpers tied together.  There were work trucks with and without trailers, SUVs with extra cargo pods strapped to the roof, and sedans with heavy and drooping trunks.  There was traffic and lots of it.

But I was among professionals.  Professionals seasoned by years of weathering Altamont Pass williwaws, Livermore construction, and accidents and breakdowns that pop up more often than Starbucks franchises.  Simple put; we moved along.  Sometimes we zipped down like leaves on a breeze, other times we clogged up like cigarette butts at a storm drain waiting our turn through the chute, but simply put, we kept on truckin’.

So a quick thank you to the drivers of the East Bay commutes.  I wouldn’t want to do it daily, but if that ever become necessary, I may abandon hate and replace it with… tolerable. 

Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign

             In September of 2004, Dad and I took a cross-country drive.  The high water mark for our trip was the Gettysburg National Monument (which ironically has its own high water mark).  That is where we turned back and where the Union turned Lee and the Confederacy around.  Somewhere along the way, after noticing that some cars motoring along the amber waves of grain sported Bush or Kerry bumper stickers, we decided to take an extremely informal poll about the then upcoming election.  We would count the respective stickers and figure who would win that election by using a complicated algorithm; whoever had the most bumper stickers would win.  John Kerry left George W. Bush eating theoretical dust.  Well, it was Kerry that ended up being the dust eater that November.  But I suppose we should have known that.  After all, there were far more stickers for “Shit Happens.”

            This recent election I noticed far fewer bumper stickers.  A couple of “NObama”s, a Romney here and Obama/Biden there, her Mitt, there a Mitt, but not everywhere a Mitt, Mitt.  That being said, there were a lot of yard signs.  I’ve always wondered who puts up signs for a political candidate in their yard.  No one I can remember knowing ever has.  Do they get paid for that?  Do they have to pay for them?  Do those signs work or do they have to a placebo effect; allowing the supporter to feel like they’re helping when in fact they may just be just pissing of the gardener who has to move it and put it back every week?

            Trying to determine the outcome of an election by yard signage proved unreliable at best.  In the more affluent neighborhoods Romney signs, where there were any, took the day, but in the less affluent burgs, there really wasn’t a dearth of Obama placards that I could tell.  There were few signs at all.  Taking the lesson I learned from the great Shit Happens debacle of 2004, when voting on Tuesday, I probably should have just written in one of the names I saw on the most lawns over the past year; For Sale, Price Reduced, or Bank Owned.

            When we lived in Auburn there is an interchange at highway 80 and Bell Road that sees a lot of traffic because 80 is the only route through the Sierras that is open all year.  Understandably during elections political signs popped up like dandelions at each corner of this interchange.  Except for one.  On that corner, the owner of the land presumably, put up a sign that said, “No political signs.”  There was however a piece of cardboard one day that had scribble on it, “No Carpool.”  I don’t know if this was a statement, lament, or informational.  If I found the person who put it up, my only response would have probably been, "Shit Happens."