SB2PS = 5H

The plan was to leave SB at noon to avoid the worst of the Sunday travel traffic, so I pulled out of my brother's shop at high noon, drove to the main street, and could not believe the long line of densely-packed vehicles! As I waited in stunned silence for my right turn into the traffic lane, it became "traffic on the 5's" on KNXT 1070. Believe it or not, a small plane had made an emergency landing on the freeway that is parallel to my brother's business. Really. Three cars had run into the plane and damaged it, as well as their vehicles, but no injury to any of the people involved. Just traffic rerouted off the freeway and through a very small town, and currently at a standstill.

It took me 45 minutes to travel from Goleta to Montecito, a 15-minute drive in heavy traffic; then, it took me another 45 minutes to travel from Montecito to Ventura, a 20 minute drive. At that point, I had the internal conversation: do I pull off, find a restaurant, and eat a nice Sunday dinner before traveling farther east, or do I take my chances and deal with what lies ahead? It can always get a whole lot worse before it gets even a little bit better.

I next encountered a major accident at the 134/405 junction: all lanes of traffic stopped, so everyone bailing to the left and getting on the 134, which was my direction. On the 210, an accident happened perhaps 2 minutes in front of me, resulting in an overturned vehicle across 3 lanes of traffic. I was early enough to go to the far left shoulder and around it, but I was hearing about the traffic tie-up for the rest of the drive home, which included two more traffic tie-ups, one for an car engine fire and the other for a brush fire!!

The LA freeways are not for the faint of heart on a good day, but on a bad day, they intimidate the strongest daredevils to challenge the asphalt and emerge unscathed, especially in the mile or so immediately after the obstruction, when the road-racers who were clipping along about 80-85 have to make up the time they lost waiting for the lanes to clear. They floor it, weave in and out of lanes, and somehow make it out alive most of the time.

I arrived home at 5 pm to be greeted by Mia, whom I had left home with far too much food/water for 3 days alone. Her greeting was the same I get every day I go out to run errands or go to work and then return: happy butt wiggling, some vigorous head petting, belly thumping, and dog kisses before she goes back to her floor pillow for a nap. Would that leaving people to fend for themselves could be that easy.