Adventures in the Car

I am not a very patient person. Yesterday, as I spent nearly 2 hours going approximately 5 miles on the freeway I realized this even more. I have always hated waiting – especially when it came to plays being cast, colleges sending out acceptance letters and, now, job interviews. But waiting in the car is the ultimate agony.

When people ask if I would like to live in LA again, I can answer an emphatic NO. Living in LA during college was fine and I love the great friends I met there and who still live there. But to have a “real” life in Los Angeles? Hell no. The city is way to spread out and has the most heinous traffic virtually 22 hours a day.

Terrible Car Story #1: The last week I was in college I was heading over the house of the boy I was dating at the time. I lived in Playa del Rey and he lived in Long Beach, roughly 17 miles away. I hoped on the freeway around 7:15 (I know, I know, too close to “rush hour” which I am pretty sure last from 2:30-9) and it took me an entire hour to get there. An hour. And there wasn’t an accident, no one had been pulled over by the police. There was nothing that people were stopping to look at. Sitting on the 710 made me so anxious that I literally wanted to get out of the car and run in circles around it. It was the worst car experience of my life.

Until yesterday. At least I got to see a cute boy at the end of that obnoxious hour.

Terrible Car Story #2: But yesterday as I drove from my parent’s house in Stockton to Sac State for a meeting with my thesis advisor I didn’t really have anything that great to look forward to at the end of the waiting. Apparently a big rig truck flipped over and blocked every lane of I-5 North…so, for those with knowledge of this area, I went from the Laguna exit in Elk Grove to the Pocket Road exit in Sacramento in two hours. The entire trip took me three hours when it should have taken one hour max. I felt like my entire day was wasted because after the meeting I still had to drive back to Davis. I stopped to get lunch and by the time I made it home I was completely exhausted. I ate, sat for awhile and then went to an excellent yoga class. Afterwards I had dinner with friends, which was good too.

This experience seriously adds to my desire to live in a city where a car is not necessary for every day travel.