LAed

I’ve never been to LA

But I know just what I’d find

I’d find Houston

Another place another time

I have finally tested the theory of a long ago song lyric I wrote after leaving my hometown of Houston in 1981. I’ve officially been LAed and my fictional musical prediction has proven correct.

Houston and Los Angeles have a lot in common, especially in the challenges of traffic and urban sprawl.

I saw the picture at left on Facebook the other day announcing Houston’s Katy Freeway is now the widest road in America. This is an accomplishment when stacked up against what I dealt with a few years ago in San Diego when a four lane interstate fed into a four lane interstate. I had been riding along in the second lane from the right and suddenly I was in the middle sixth from the right.

Or what I encountered on my way back to the hotel where I seemed to be trapped in a swarm of angry red waspish taillights. I felt I was in one of those movies about LA where traffic surrounds the star and swallows him up whole on his way to Santa Monica.

.

I learned to drive on the Katy Freeway back when Katy was a country town 30 miles in the distance. Coach Mike Maddox taught Craig Gibson and I how to merge by taking us on the Katy and yelling at us until we worked up guts enough to push our car nose out into traffic. Once there, we were greeted by the wild eyed pickup drivers and cursing housewives who populated the right lane, patrolling at high speeds ready to pick off any faint hearted attempt to join the traffic fraternity.

Coach Maddox didn’t call the lane from the feeder road to the freeway the “merge lane”. He called it the “acceleration lane” and he expected the engine to be whining by the time you became your own blocker and plunged into the defensive line of Houston traffic. I’ve been a good merger ever since.

LA was no picnic the last two days and traffic lived up reputation. Google Maps is a great copilot and the soft feminine voice got me everywhere I needed to go despite consistently pronouncing “marine” as “marin”, like the county up by San Francisco. Lady GoogleMap allowed me to concentrate on not rearending the car in front while praying to avoid getting smacked by the tailgating guy shaking his fist behind me as I pondered the conjugation of the word marine and wondered if sharks and porpoises were considered “marin life” in England.

I had some time to kill before my afternoon appointment and so went to Manhatten Beach for lunch and to have a look at the Pacific. I realized after I got there my stomach was on Central Time and my starvation was two hours ahead of the opening of the trendy luncheon places on the water. Yelp helped me find Uncle Dave’s Pancake House and so I had brunch at an outside table with a great view of the ocean. I was struck by how fit my fellow pancake patrons looked to have burned about 5,000 calories in order to earn their breakfast. All I had done was get up at 3 for a 6 a.m. flight.

One difference between hometown Houston or my current Lebanon, TN residence is everywhere you turn in Los Angeles there is someone who looks vaguely movieish. You feel like asking if you would recognize their work but remember the Nashville nonchalance mantra: “Stars are people too, just like us except with better tans and smaller behinds”.

Manhatten Beach proved the Beach Boy’s theorem about California Girls. There were several starlets jogging in revealing outfits accessorized with gloves and ear muffs to combat 50 degree weather. If the girls from Beach Blanket Bingo were out in this kind of force on Ground Hog’s day an old man can only imagine summertime with wistfulness.

I saw three surfers in wet suits trying their luck on some nice winter waves. I thought back to the last time I had surfed at Galveston over 40 years ago. I had been sitting on my surfboard out in the icy water, protected by a wet suit that kept my body warm but allowed my hands, feet and face to turn popsicle. I realized the six foot tubes from the day before as described by my high school buddies were nowhere to be found. I recognized this as a common theme to my life as an aspiring beach bum. I would hear about great waves that always seemed to have arrived the day before I got there and reappeared the day after I left. On the days I cut class the Gulf was like glass. A man should know his limitations and timing was one of mine. I paddled into shore, got in the car, turned the heater up and never surfed again.

Part of me envied the guys surfing as they looked like the types to make it their life’s work. I ate my pancakes while appreciating their technique and hardiness as well as the exercisers gliding by. The next day I returned home just in time to dive into the afternoon airport traffic that is the bane of my existence. It didn’t seem bad at all and I realized I had gotten my traffic perspective adjusted.

Who knew being LAed would mean you would learn to appreciate back home as NotLA.