We are spending the holidays in San Francisco with my wife’s family. We decided to drive from San Diego because it was going to be considerably cheaper, and also because it would give us the convenience of having a car while we’re up here, for things like day trips outside the city, grocery shopping, etc.
Google maps showed the door-to-door distance as almost exactly 500 miles, which is a reasonably long drive, but one that can comfortably be done in a day. Well, usually.
We didn’t bother getting up outrageously early. In fact, we figured that leaving a bit later would allow us to miss the morning rush hour in San Diego and Los Angeles, and the evening rush hour in the Bay area. We got on the road at about 11.20am, and planned to arrive in San Francisco any time between about 8 and 10 in the evening, allowing for rest stops, dinner, and traffic snarls.
Of course, in making these plans we didn’t predict that Southern California would be hit by a massive storm that would dump snow all over the area north of LA. It was raining when we left in the morning, and we knew that would probably slow things down a bit, but had no idea about the snow.
The first couple of hours were a bit slower than anticipated, thanks to two truck accidents north of San Diego, one at Oceanside, and another a few miles further on in the Camp Pendleton area. In both cases, the big rigs had done a full 180 and were facing the wrong way on the freeway. In the second one, the truck was hauling two trailers, and the back one had gone through the right guardrail and was half over the embankment. As i said to my wife, either the truck drivers fucked up, or some asshole in a car probably dived in front of them without leaving them enough room to stop, causing them to lock up their brakes. I’m constantly amazed at how cavalier and inconsiderate some car drivers are around big trucks.
Anyway, despite the delays from those accidents, we covered exactly 100 miles in the first two hours, which wasn’t too bad. The trip through LA wasn’t too bad, and at the end of three hours we had gone 154 miles, and were heading away from the city. As we started to climb, we got a few flakes of snow on the windshield, and saw roadside signs saying that Route 14 was closed. We turned the radio on to hear the traffic report, and listened for any problems on I-5. I wasn’t too worried, because i couldn’t imagine that an interstate as big as 5 would be closed by a bit of snow.
This was where our lack of local knowledge bit us on the ass. The news announced closings on 14, 15, a bunch of other local roads, and The Grapevine.
Memo to LA radio stations: not every fucking driver is a local, and not every one of us will know that The Grapevine IS Interstate 5, in a section north of LA. It would be fucking nice if you’d actually use the term I-5 once in a while, so us out-of-towners know what the fuck you’re talking about.
Anyway, by the time we worked this out, we were stuck is a motherfucker of a snarl on 5. In the next hour and 49 minutes, we traveled just under 5 miles before we were able to turn around at the Castaic turnoff.
What really amazed me in this jam was that a few people actually thought it was acceptable to try and skip down the right-hand shoulder to jump the queue. And it’s not like these people had emergencies or anything like that. One car we saw would drive a few hundred yards down the shoulder, dive back into the regular line for a few minutes, and then continue on down the shoulder a bit further. Un-fucking-believable. Once people realized this was happening, some drivers began straddling the right-hand lane and the shoulder to prevent anyone from getting by.
After about an hour in this, i had to piss really badly. I had been driving since we left home, so i’d been at the wheel for about 4 hours. Finally, we saw a large tree down the hill by the road, so my wife jumped in the driver’s seat while i went to answer the call of nature. Quite a few others were in the same predicament.
Anyway, at about 4.20 we were finally back on I-5 heading south, and debating what to do. We thought about calling friends in Pasadena and staying with them for the night, but weren’t very optimistic about whether 5 would be any good the next day either. In the end, we decided to take 126 west past Ventura to the 101, figuring that, at the very least, we could get in some more miles and maybe get a motel room. Just around 5.45, we began to hit rush-hour traffic just south of Santa Barbara, so we pulled in to have some dinner.
By this time, i was tired and very fucking annoyed, but the last thing i wanted to do was spend the night in some dull motel and then have to drive another 300 miles the next day. We decided to solider on, leaving Santa Barbara at about 7. There was still some rush-hour traffic, so it took us another half-hour or so to leave the city behind, but from then on things were pretty good.
101 is only two lanes each way for most of its length, and i was worried that it would be very busy with a whole bunch of other people like us. There were certainly plenty of trucks on the road, suggesting that a lot of truckers had decided to take 101 rather than wait for 5 to clear. But traffic flowed pretty well, and for most of the way we were able to sit comfortably on 60-75 miles an hour. We stopped once for gas, in San Luis Obispo, but other than that we drove straight through, arriving in San Francisco right on 1am.
A couple of friend of ours left on a two-week vacation to Australia yesterday, and i commented to my wife that their journey from San Francisco to Sydney would take them about the same length of time as our trip from San Diego to San Francisco.
Anyway, it’s done now, and i’m very glad we decided to drive though rather than stop and get a room. And i’m also thankful that there was an alternative route for us to take. There were plenty of people who simply couldn’t get home from LA last night. Our little second-hand Civic did great on it’s first long trip, giving no problems whatsoever, and comfortably averaging over 36 mpg, even with over two hours spent idling in traffic jams.
