Thursday, March 09, 2006
Driving on Freeways
Driving is weird. It is weird for me to drive. This is something I've been dealing with since moving out to LA in Dec. Of course I can get most places on my bike, but as much as I hate to say it, (and I'm sure I'll get megga flak for it from all my super hardcore biking friends) using this car has become an almost everyday thing for me. It sucks. It's isolating. It's expensive. It's scary.
I decided that I would try to write about it since it is something that bothers me alot. This culture of mass gas consumption and murderous metal/glass bubbles that I am participating in right now.
I am using my little sister's car since she is in NY this year for school. I have discovered that I am a bad driver. Driving takes patience, and skill, and requires paying attention ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Even when I'm bored out of my mind stuck in stupid, brain-choking traffic.
I'm trying to get better though. I'm trying to remember I'm inside a potential murder weapon. I'm trying to remember that I can absolutly *not* drive the same way I bike. This last one is the most difficult.
I blew two red lights (not intentionally) in the first month that I was here. Both timed I pulled up to the red light, looked both ways, saw no cars, or bikes, or people. Then I proceeded to drive right through the light, as if I was on my bicycle. Very scary. The first time I got halfway though the street, realized what I did and pulled the car back. Looking in my rear view mirror I saw the lady behind me shaking her head in the most disapproving way. She wasn't wrong. I dissapproved of myself at that moment too.
The second time was on New Years. I was meeting some LA messenger friends of mine downtown, and was talking on my nextel radio trying to figure out directions with them. My friend was in the car with me, and all of a sudden said "Do you know you just blew a light??" I did not know I had just blown the light. He said I stopped, looked both ways and continued driving. (No - I was not drunk, or high) Very alarming.
It's just that driving is SO boring, and I don't do very well when I'm bored. I want to be doing other things when I'm bored.
On my way down to Palm Springs to visit some friends, I decided to try to alleviate my driving boredom by talking into a mini-tape recorder. It was fun, and made me feel a little less crazy somehow. Especially since, because of traffic, what should have been a 2 hour car trip, turned into a 4 and a half hour car trip from hell. It was nice to have the tape recorder mostly because then I did not feel like I had to remember each 'important' thought (since there really is a lot of time to think in a car), that I thought I might want to write down later. I havn't listened to the recordings yet (I'm sure they're mostly just frusterated ramblings of being stuck in traffic) but I'm glad I have them.
I also managed to take some photo's of these murals on the sides of the freeways. I wished I wasn't just driving by though, because I would have really liked to look. They were interesting, and covered a whole range of subjects. And the graffiti on top of the murals also covered a range of subjects.
Thing is, I remember being a kid and looking at these same murals. I remember knowing which murals I was going to see based on where we were going, and which freeway we were going to take. I even remember when some of them were freshly painted, and looked all shiny and new. I remember being excited to see the murals. These were the things I looked forward to even on the most boring of drives. Especially when I was in 4th, 5th and 6th grade and went to a school that was an hours drive away. I remember trying to absorb the details in the few short seconds it took to drive by them, and trying to find more details everytime we drove by. It's like when someone flashes a picture before your eyes for a couple seconds and tells you to write down everything you remember about it afterwards.
I don't know where I'm going with this, or if I'm even going anywhere at all, but it's important to me somehow anyways.
