Woke up this morning and finished the drive to Isle of Palms, unloaded my car, unloaded mom and dad’s car, went to lunch and had a zoom call while sitting on the outdoor patio (it was 55 and nice) and then went back to the cottage and decided that rather than stay the night and sleep on a bed I hate, I would get a couple hours of driving in to make tomorrow easier. I am not in Mooresville, NC (just north of Charlotte and near Lake Norman), and I could be home by 1-2 tomorrow if I leave early.
Long fucking day. Also, this is still true:
I could never live a California because it takes me eight minutes sitting in traffic to go from “oh no an accident I hope no one is hurt” to “SCRAPE THE BODIES OFF THE ASPHALT AND OPEN A LANE LETS GO”
— John Cole (@Johngcole) October 1, 2021
Peace out, I am off to bed.
Scout211
Oh come on, man! The vast majority of California is not LA, San Diego or the Bay Area. We’ve got lots of roads and byways and quiet routes with very little or no traffic.
And I’m not defensive at all. Really.
Alison Rose
As a Californian who used to drive through Bay Area traffic, trust me…it takes far less than eight minutes. More than once, the moment traffic stopped, I’d said out loud “someone better fuckin be dead up there”
ETA: Me and Scout offering contrary views :P
satby
Two years ago when you tweeted that I had lost a relative to a horrible car accident a few weeks before and it still made me laugh. Because that’s just so true of human nature and we all get that way.
Martin
Well, that’s the beauty of California – you can have road pizza on the number 1 lane and the number 7 lane and still have 3 lanes open. You move slow, but you move.
Jeffro
Growing up in NoVA, I used to think it’d be swell if there was a Sikorsky sky crane with a huge electromagnet assigned to patrol the DC beltway for similar issues…
Old Dan and Little Ann
Traffic would force me to move where there is less traffic. The Beltway, Boston, Denver. FUCK THAT SHIT.
Never been to California.
tybee
@Alison Rose: I, too, have oft expressed that opinion: “someone better fuckin be dead up there”
Barbara
@Martin: Sometimes you might even have a private plane land in one of the lanes. Srsly impressive that he only took out a single vehicle and no one was hurt.
Personally think Bay Area is worse than LA where driving seems to be a way of life.
CaseyL
What’s particularly funny (in a mordant way) about John’s tweet is that bodies are usually taken away pretty quickly; it’s the investigation and cleanup of broken vehicle bits that takes forever.
raven
Shit, I made the mistake of going through Atlanta on our way back from the beach yesterday.
thruppence
OT: Season 3 of Slow Horses starts tonight. I know a lot of Jackals here liked it.
Barbara
@thruppence: One of the few shows that tempts me to get Apple TV. I read all the books. Some are better than others.
dlwchico
@Scout211: Yah, California is a big state. Most of it isn’t a big city with huge jammed up freeways.
From my visit back east to Martinsburg WV years ago many of the roads seemed super twisty two lanes full of cars.
My experience here in NorCal is that it’s much nicer to drive here.
Gvg
I don’t live in a big city anymore…it’s been more than 30 years since I lived in Orlando, but I grew up there, learned to drive, and delivered pizzas for a while. It never leaves you. I still normally arrive way early for everything because I can never adjust my thinking about how long it takes to drive anywhere. It’s not normal for anything to only be a 15 minute drive, but it is nicer. I remember my aunt complaining about the rush hour traffic here one day and I was confused and asked her “what traffic?” I thought 3 light changes at one intersection (only 1 was that bad) to get home was reasonable, and hadn’t really noticed till she complained.
But it does take longer to get home these days, and they keep approving more neighborhoods being built without funding and building wider main roads. That will cost down the line.
Wombat Probability Cloud
Safe travels, Cole. Martin’s “road pizza” is now burned into my brain permanently.
Rusty
I live where there is generally less stop and go traffic, it’s the clueless drivers that don’t move when the light turns green or can’t keep up with traffic that make me crazy. I end up yelling “IT’S THE PEDAL ON THE RIGHT, IT’S THE PEDAL ON THE RIGHT!!!”
Hoppie
We’re fine down here in the People’s Republic of Hillcrest (San Diego Pride Central), thank you. I saw five construction cranes out the north window this morning.
And traffic isn’t any worse than I-75 in Fayette County KY on a summer Friday as everybody from Ontario, Michigan, and Ohio headed south.
But we are not LA. We only go to LA now on the train, because 5/405 really is that bad.
eclare
Drive safe, Cole.
Steeplejack
@Barbara:
I binge-read all of the Slow Horses novels a year ago, and, as often with other series, I wondered about that experience vs. reading the books as they came out in real time. I think with binge reading I sometimes get impatient with passages setting the mise en scène, whereas if it has been a year since you read the previous book you might need that to get up to speed again. I particularly noticed it in the Slow Horses books because the mise en scène is so grungy.
That said, I am looking forward to watching the series on Apple TV. I am halfway through a free trial period after buying an iPad and haven’t gotten around to Slow Horses yet.
kindness
Oh John…. You would LOVE California. Just not the city part of it. It’s a big state. You have to see for yourself when you move out to AZ. It’s a close trip from there. I always have fun in S. Cal but I’m a N. Cal guy. There is a difference.
Marc
I live in Oakland and work in Palo Alto, I hated commuting by car here so much that for the decade before the pandemic I’d take public transit (bus to SF, walk, Caltrain to PA) nearly every day, despite the fact that it would take 2 hours each way. Now, thankfully, I can work at home 2 or 3 days per week, but the transit schedules have been crapified to the point where it takes as much as 3 hours. I’m originally from Boston, at least people there drove in a predictably bad fashion. Out here you have to be continually alert for completely unpredictable random driver tricks.
Alison Rose
@kindness: I could imagine Cole up in the Mendocino area.
Martin
@Marc: Hopefully Caltrain will sort out once the new trainsets arrive.
Albatrossity
@Jeffro: Great idea! But electromagnets might not work on today’s cars, which are mostly plastic!
RevRick
I’m a mile and a half from the entrance to one branch of the NAFTA highway running from the Texas/Mexico border north to Canada or NYC*. I-78 was built in 1989 to bypass US 22, the central artery of the Lehigh Valley, relieving it of traffic congestion. What it has done in the years since is spark a huge boom in constructing warehouses with a corresponding surge in truck traffic. The Lehigh Valley is part of a larger region that ranks second nationally with 521 million square feet of warehouses.The Lehigh Valley has 143.5 million square feet.
*I-35 north to I -40 east to I-81 north to Canada or the junction east of Harrisburg to I-78 east to NYC.
frosty
@RevRick: For us, I-78 is a crapshoot getting to New York. There is almost always a jam, from construction, congestion, or an accident. Even so, I avoid the PA and NJ turnpikes.
22 is also a mess, going from 2 to 4 lanes at random.
BellyCat
Once saw a car being shoved by a purpose-built road crew vehicle (imagine: armored tank with wheels) through one of the two lane tunnels into NYC. Sparks showering off the walls.
Very Bladerunner. I approved, regardless of whether passengers were involved.
evodevo
@Hoppie: Or Sunday, when they’re all headed back north after visiting Ma and Pa Kettle in Paintsville…
NotMax
It’s all relative. Set the WABAC machine to Curitiba, Brazil, 1961. True story.
In a sedan being driven on a very recently opened four lane divided highway (may have been the first in the state). Vehicle being piloted by a chauffeur (don’t ask).
Anyhoo, occasionally saw another car on either side of the road here and there, maybe a grand total of six or eight over the course of ten miles. Otherwise, empty pavement. Each time chauffeur kept muttering in Portuguese “Look at all this traffic!”
RevRick
@frosty: And there’s little chance of escape since old Rte. 22 is a two-lane, hilly, curvy road. Once got stuck for three hours coming home on 78 during a snowstorm. I count us lucky.
Hoppie
@evodevo: Indeed, that too. We learned quickly when to avoid the interstates and take back roads. (1984 to 1995 with a house in Paris (KY for you heathens)), and after that for many years in Lexington just off Versailles Rd. Just inside the Circle on Calumet’s old orchard land.
NotMax
@Hoppie
Avoid taking the Louis XVI cutoff.
:)
RevRick
@NotMax: Doesn’t it come to an abrupt end?
NotMax
There was for a long time an unfinished highway in the Reading, PA area. When was living in Sinking Spring, just outside Reading, best directions for getting to the abode were “take the Road to Nowhere to the last exit.”
NotMax
@RevRick
Nice.
Hoppie
@RevRick: I will happily cut this colloquy off.
Hoppie
@NotMax: For many years the Baltimore Beltway had an exit to the “Future”. Shame it never worked.
Sure Lurkalot
@Alison Rose: I once took a driving trip up north from SF, focusing on the area from Jenner to Mendocino. It was lovely!
I had my chance to be a Californian when my parents moved there the year before I was off to college. I got accepted to UCLA but even in the 70’s, LA was too big a city with too many cars. So I went to college in Colorado and now I live in the traffic hell otherwise known as Denver. Sigh.
But I’ve been up and down the California coast from border to border and there are some gorgeous spots.
eclare
I know Cole is asleep, but I just remembered he asked us for road trip songs a while back. I wonder if he has set up his playlist yet and tried it.
Alison Rose
@Sure Lurkalot: The northern coast is gorgeous. My parents lived in Fort Bragg for a few years, and it did turn out to be a “nice place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there” deal, because it’s just so far from everything and remote. But it’s a wonderful area for a vacation.
NotMax
A 1940s film noir B-movie moment encountered earlier today:
“Watch yourself. Those guys with her are dicks.”
Different times, different meanings. :)
SpaceUnit
Dead thread but I lived on Sullivan’s Island for a few years, just one skinny inlet down from the Isle of Palms. Can’t imagine going there and not wanting to spend a couple of days just walking the beach and stuffing myself silly with low country chow and seafood. Dang.
You’re a crazy dude John Cole.
Ruckus
Born in Los Angles – Queen of Angels hospital, a rather long time ago and have seen much of it go from orange groves to miles and miles of homes, businesses, roads and freeways. And now I’m back living in SoCal for the last 11 yrs and it’s only gotten slower on the freeways. Long ago, one day it took me 4 hrs to drive 33 miles to work. There was an accident at every major freeway intersection, nobody went anywhere. I now normally use the train to go any distance because in several places the train is in the center of 5 lanes in each direction and the train often goes faster than the traffic. Occasionally a lot faster. And that’s not even during the not very fast rush hours.
Ruckus
@NotMax:
Different times, different meanings. :)
Not always…..
Chief Oshkosh
@Scout211: Yep. Check out episodes of “Jay Leno’s Garage” on YT. Several of the test drives show clearly that, within a short drive (10 min?), you can be up in the hills around LA and not see another car for…well, at least up to the next bend in the road.
It’s remarkable.
Hannah
@johngcole I just read that SLOW HORSES season 3 starts today! I’m so excited!
Steve in the ATL
@raven: everyone bitches about our traffic but I never have ot change planes to get somewhere!
Paul in KY
@Alison Rose: I could imagine me up in the Mendocino area! Heard it is very nice.
Paul in KY
@Hoppie: Know exactly where you were, Hoppie! Not a bad area of town.