My son Max picked me up at LAX around 5:30 in the afternoon.
He’d warned me that it was the worst time of day for traffic, but the 4:00
flight from Albuquerque was the only nonstop flight of the day and I really did not want to change planes on
such a short flight. Little did I know that the car trip from LAX, to Pasadena,
where Max was staying, would take longer than the plane trip from Albuquerque
to LA—and with more existential angst and near death experience than any number
of take off and landings on a mode of transportation with which I have never
come to terms.
Max already had an hour’s worth of bumper to bumper traffic under
his belt when I got in the car so we decided to take an hour off and have dinner
near the airport. He asked his smart phone where the nearest Thai restaurant
was and then the GPS app showed us how to get there. While the GPS map was
correct this time, it was only seducing us (or Max; I’ll never trust a GPS
device even if I could figure out how to use it) into a much more sinister relationship
as the night progressed.
I have an aside here. The first time I visited Max in
California was on my trip to Del Mar (see “Who Are These People” blog post). He
picked me up at the Ontario Airport and we headed south. I innocently asked him,
“So where are we now,” and he answered, “I have no idea,” and I said, “Well
then how do you know how to get where we’re going?” and he answered, “I just go
where the GPS tells me.” And he meant it literally: she told us which highways
to follow, which exit to take, and what streets led to the house. Her voice was
very confident and directive: do what I say or you are lost forever on the LA
freeways (as opposed to “beneath the streets of Boston”).
I have another aside. In California when people discuss
freeways they are always prefaced by the word “the”: the 10, the 405, the 110, the 5. Nobody had ever been able to explain this to me until Max suggested
it’s because everyone spends so much time in their cars on the freeways that
they develop a very close relationship and “the” expresses that intimacy. They
are not just some amorphous highways but something they share, “the” highways
that get them home. And speaking of getting home; on the LA freeways between 5
and 7:30 p.m., in the thousands of cars that are trying to get there is one
person, by him or her self, spending that hour or two every day in the car by
him or her self. I suppose this only increases the intimacy: you, your car,
your highway.
Back to the story.
After dinner we got in the car and headed to Pasadena, this time following
the car GPS map that led us right into downtown LA because you have to go there
to get to Pasadena. First, the guy in the pickup didn’t want to let Max into
the right lane where the GPS was telling him he needed to be to get on another
freeway, so after Max nudged in anyway the guy pulled up beside us on the left
and gave us the finger. We made it onto the freeway only to discover it was the
wrong freeway (Max sometimes actually knows where he’s supposed to be going).
So we had to get off and drive around a few blocks to get back on the freeway going
the other direction. We were trying to turn left at a light; the turn light was
red but there was nowhere for the oncoming cars to go as traffic was blocked up
on the other side of the intersection. The two cars in front of us turned left,
traffic still hadn’t moved, so we started to turn as well when one of the
oncoming drivers decided he didn’t really like the situation and decided to
drive right into the side of our car—almost. I didn’t actually see what
happened as my head was in my hands, but obviously he stopped. Max was more than
a little rattled at this point, but we got back on the freeway and suddenly the
exit onto the correct freeway was on the opposite side than what the GPS indicated
and he crossed five lanes of traffic at the last minute to make the turn.
By this time I was saying my mea culpas—I’ll never fly into
LA during rush hour again—and my hail Mary’s—please god get us to Pasadena, Max
is too young to die. I was aghast thinking about how he had been doing this
while I was at home in New Mexico where I see maybe five cars driving down the
hill from Truchas to Chimayo on any given day. But he’s not doing it anymore;
we drove to Scottsdale, a sanitized component of a sprawling megalopolis, but one
with few freeways, many wide streets, retirees who don’t go anywhere, and yes,
many of whom belong to the Tea Party ((don’t ask me why Max is living there,
even temporarily). I just know that if it’s your kid in a car on freeways sometimes
sanitation is good.
