Beautiful day today. Almost 80F degrees, virtually no wind. Great weather for a quick ride to the office. Right? Technically yes. But the reality is that I have a birthday to go to right after work. Some alcohol might be consumed. Motorcycle and alcohol - bad combination.

Driving to the office annoyed the hell out of me. I sort of started forgetting how bad the overall level of drivers really is out here in So Cal. Tentative maneuvers, absolute lack of peripheral vision and perception of lanes, erratic braking for no apparent reason, dangerous lane changes right into other cars - these were all the “attributes” of the Los Angeles traffic I noted in my mere 30 minute drive. I was under the impression that riding felt safer at that point. To name a few - 3 cars almost merged right into my side had I not accelerated courtesy my German engineered pony, trailed at least 4 cars that were going significantly slower than the rest of the traffic while their drivers were either putting their make up on, talking on their cell phone or … reading a newspaper like this guy. It seemed like some sort of a post modern chaos. A quiet craze of hundreds of drivers secluded in their small cages slowly but steadily pushing forward not caring about what is going on around them.

It’s been about 2 hours that I rolled into my office’s parking. Having a somewhat analytical state of mind I am trying to come up with a pill to my pain. Obviously I can’t change the way people drive here. Nor can I pass the law to make it 10 times harder to pass the driving test for the automobile driver license. So I will have to change my ways. A gradual “perestroika” of my plans and itineraries. I might have to seriously consider giving up drinking alcohol all together. Hopefully my friends will understand. Or may be all this is too extreme because I am still upset and will eventually settle down later in the day.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 11:04 am and is filed under Motorcycles, Street, Auto, Cars, Riding, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.