Friday, September 16, 2011

Living in the Los Angeles area, dealing with traffic is the norm.  Routes that would normally take fifteen to twenty minutes can stretch into several hours as thousands of motorists share the concept of getting on the road at the same time.  Couple that with the massive freeway overhaul project we’re now subjected to over the next two years and things can get messy.

Thankfully, we have modern equipment such as navigators and map programs on computers to help us avoid some of the congestion.  Though this thinking ahead does take some extra effort, it can salvage huge time spans of our lives.  After all, who wants to be stuck parked on the freeway when a good portion of that could be avoided by familiarizing one’s self with alternate routes?

Born and raised in southern California, I’m just recently finding myself needing to intricately get to know many alternative routes to help save time driving places.  Though I’ve driven to many of these destinations in the past, I was able to do so on my own time frame, thus avoiding peak traffic hours.  But now, quite often, I find myself right smack in the middle of navigating during hectic traffic.

I keenly recall the days of trying to read an opened Thompson’s road guide, flipping from one page to another, while driving and not crashing into cars in front of me.  Or better yet, having a huge map opened wide, trying to pinpoint exactly where I was while figuring out how to get to where was needed.  Now, I’m a mere tap of computer key away from gaining that same knowledge in a safer more efficient manner that doesn’t make me want to exit my vehicle in tears of frustration.

Just like printing out a plane boarding pass the night before, I try to plan out my navigation routes to and from heavily congested areas prior to heading out.  Often, that means I travel with pages I’ve printed out just in case my navigation device decides to get stuck on stupid.  I find this helps mitigate my frustration level with Los Angeles area traffic that now seems to occur at all hours of the day and night and will likely continue until the major freeway overhaul project is complete.