Driving in LA

As much as I love my car I do not love it enough to spend two hours a day in it. But that is exactly what I have been doing my whole month in LA since everything is twenty to thirty minutes away. It is actually quite bizarre how that works. No matter where I am in LA, the place that I want or need to go to is always at least twenty minute drive away. Of course that is only true without traffic.


This can happen anytime and anywhere in LA

Traffic in LA is a bizarre thing. It can happen anywhere anytime, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I have experienced traffic at midnight more than once where there was no accident in sight and after a couple of miles, the traffic would dissipate as quickly and mysteriously as it appeared. In addition, traffic can really ruin your day because it takes your regular travel time and multiplies it by three. Normally it takes me twenty minutes to get to work in El Segundo, that is at 9:30 AM when there is no traffic. On my way back from work it takes me around an hour in rush hour traffic, though I have just recently discovered a way to get around this and reduced that time to 40 minutes. I think twice about driving anywhere during rush hour traffic and many times I do not go where I want to go because I do not want to sit in traffic.

Parking is another one of the frustrations that I have in LA. Around my apartment it is nearly impossible to find parking after 6PM. I used to come home from work and drive around for twenty minutes just looking for parking in the area and often times I would have to park blocks away from my apartment. It also does not help that I am terrible at parallel parking and in two instances I have hit a car, though no damage was done. Thankfully, once we got the apartment door opener, my apartment mates let me have the parking spot because I drive everyday, so I do not have to do that anymore. Parking in downtown and generally anywhere where there are things to do costs a lot of money unless you get validated. I have yet to walk around and explore Koreatown because I have not been able to find affordable parking. The only place I found that lets me park for the whole day, charges $14. There is no way that Ktown is worth $14 parking.

Besides the driving,everything in LA has been great so far, I love the people, food and culture. Maybe if one day LA decides to get a respectable subway system, I could see myself living here.

-muffinman