Last week, as we were navigating around the greater Los Angeles megaurbanplex, we started discussing the differences in driving styles between our West Coast brethren and the folk in Salt of the Earth Central, aka Colorado. Around 75 seconds after getting on the 405 freeway from LAX we realized that our driving skills had atrophied after three years in Colorado. And we quickly saw why.
See, out here in the scenic wonders of Colorado, people just drive along getting from point A to point B with nary a care in the world. Perhaps it's the mountains: maybe seeing them over there to the West just relaxes you or something. When we first moved here from San Diego we'd find ourselves screaming at the locals, because they have a tendency to do things like stop at the top of an on-ramp instead of accelerating into traffic. But then we started relaxing and contemplating flowers and sitting around campfires singing those great cowboy ballads of yesteryear. And going quietly but unremittingly out of our minds. So we took a trip back to the Coast to get the juices flowing again.
While driving around LA, or more often, idling in stop-and-go traffic, we started comparing the relative abilities of SoCal drivers with their counterparts elsewhere. The conclusion we came to is that in LA you learn to drive aggressively or you get on public transportation. Drivers will unhesitatingly change lanes if there's a car length and a few inches to spare. They accelerate when they change lanes. And you can see them, even when they have phones in their ears and are watching a movie on the DVD player mounted on the visor, constantly scanning for an opening that will allow them to shave twelve seconds off the commute.
On the other hand, here in beautiful Colorado the average driver is, quite frankly, a wimp. They don't change lanes unless there are a couple of football fields of room. When confronting the awesome and frightening task of entering a highway from an on-ramp, they start slowly and continue slowly accelerating until they reach the highway itself, hopefully having attained the immensely impressive velocity of 30 miles per hour.
When we first moved here we thought there was something wrong with everyone, when we saw an open highway with no traffic jams and people were actually doing 65 mph. In a similar case (not that these occur more than once in a typical Presidential administration) Californians would be attempting to break the light speed barrier, and in some cases succeeding. But Coloradans actually obey the speed limit and to transplanted Cal drivers, that's downright scary. You just can't trust someone who won't go as fast as road conditions and human reflexes will allow.
So, yeah, our first couple of hours back on the mean streets of Southern California were a little knuckle-whitening. But once we threw out all fear and compassion for our fellow man, we were back in the groove. Fear us!
