You’ve heard it time and time again, but the tangibility of LA traffic is nauseating. Moving to LA, I consciously made the decision that I would try my hardest to never let traffic bother me. I know it’s LA. It’s got to be bad, but it can’t be that bad, can it? It can. Believe me.

I think I’ve done a great job at not letting the clutter of the LA freeways affect my overall mood. However, I’ve realized that it is impossible to never let it get to me. I’ll sum it up: the only time I let the traffic actually get to me is when I’m late or in a hurry. Whenever I have to get somewhere in LA, no matter if my final destination is 10 or 50 miles away, I give myself at least one hour.

In an all around unpredictable city, transportation is no different. I drive the same route to work every day. I take my street (36th Place) west to Normandie, go North on Normandie to the 10 West. I take the 10 West all the way to the 405 North and end my journey at Ventura Boulevard. This is an approximate 17 mile drive. On Wednesday afternoon I left at 2:00 p.m. The roads were wide open and I was able to drive at least 70 MPH on both the 10 and the 405. I arrived at work at 2:14 p.m. The next day, Thursday afternoon, I left at 2:15 p.m. to find all the roads cluttered and slow. There was an accident on the 10, and consequently, I was never able to go faster than 40 MPH. The 405 had its usual clutter and was bumper to bumper almost all the way. I did not arrive at work until 3:19. Leaving at approximately the same time, driving the exact same route, it took me an hour and four minutes longer on Thursday than it did on Wednesday!

I was supposed to be at work at 3:00 p.m., and when 2:45 rolled around, I started to lose my patience. I left home with more than enough time to make it to work on time, yet I still managed to be 19 minutes late!!! The very worst part was that there was nothing I could do to remedy my dilemma. I became quite irritable and did not calm down until I realized, after an hour of pain-staking work, that it was not my fault, that there was nothing I could have done differently to fix the problem. But then I remembered that I only gave myself 45 minutes to make it, instead of an hour. If I had left only 15 minutes earlier, I would have only been four minutes late instead of 19.

So that’s my remedy: just give myself an hour.

Coming home from work at 11:00 p.m. usually is not “rush hour”, but two nights out of five last week I ran into gut-wrenching traffic after 11 p.m. There is nothing worse in the entire world than drowning in the endless sea of red that floods the night causeways after a full day’s work. Luckily, LA also has some of the best radio stations in the entire world. The stream of red is definitely the ugliest part of Los Angeles, but with the bad and the ugly inevitably comes the good. There’s just no way around it. Stay tuned for details…