Recently in Driving Category

If you're planning a move or a trip to Los Angeles I hope you can wait until after July 17th. This is Carmageddon weekend when the 405 will be completely shutdown for 50+ hours esentially cutting everyone in the valley off from the rest of the world. No one wants to be stuck in the valley in the middle of July for an entire weekend! We demand the freedom to drive our cars long distances. We demand the freedom to suck natural resources dry for the sake of a weekend drive. We demand the freedom to crowd and pollute the beaches! This is America! This is Los Angeles! But I digress...

As a citizen of "the valley" I will take this opportunity to park my car and use what are known as LEGS to get me to places I need to go. Thankfully I don't need to get to Santa Monica or the west side this weekend so I'll probably miss the mayhem. I'm thinking I might walk to the bridge over the 101 and watch people suffer though. Maybe hang a banner over the side that says "suckers!" or something more clever.

Speaking of clever, I'd like to leave you with this amusing clip of Hitler's response to the 405 shutdown. Funny, but possibly offensive to certain populations.

I had a scootering friend from Denver question me on the legality of splitting lanes on motorcycles here in Los Angeles. I told him that as far as I could tell it was legal even though it may not be in the Los Angeles DMV motorcycle riders handbook. Since this question was posed to me I've been a bit wary (especially having heard of the increased fines for every traffic violation) to split lanes in front of the police. There have been a number of occasions I've been late for work and split the lane down Cahuenga/Highland and passed cop cars but today while doing the same thing I received confirmation.

Sometimes while riding the line through stopped cars there are two cars too close together and you can't pass. Well, today one of those two cars belonged to the Los Angeles Police Department and bless his law enforcing soul he was the car to move to the opposite side of the lane to allow me to pass. I gave him a nod and a thumbs up and carried on my way.

PS - The new blog format offers picture suggestions. What do you think?

Now that we live more than a mile from my work I have to do the dreaded L.A. commute. Granted, 6 miles isn't all that far either but in L.A. it can feel like 40 miles if you take the wrong route. Thanks to some great advice I have been able to avoid a lot of traffic.

For a long time my Fountain route took me directly through Hollywood via Highland - do not do this to yourself! Hollywood and Highland is a major cluster f. between the locals, the tourists, and the massive amounts of crazies this is the worst place in L.A. to drive! I found a different route to the hills via Outpost which is windy and bumpy but a whole lot less congested. Unfortunately, to get to Outpost I was taking La Brea which was all fine until the Oscars closed streets and backed up traffic for miles.

On to my perfected route...
I now take a hidden little gem of a route via Gardner! Gardner is a nice wide street with hardly any congestion. Just watch out for Runyon Canyon Hikers crossing the street they DO NOT LOOK BOTH WAYS! Also, Famke Janssen seems to be a regular in the area and you do not want to be that person who ran over Jean Grey -- X-men fans will never forgive you.

Since we no longer live incredibly close to our jobs and haven't been able to afford a second car I've been riding my scooter to work nearly every day.

The Southern California weather allows me to ride it probably close to 300 days a year, it gets around 80 mpg and costs $3.50 to fill it up with premium gas (which gets me around for a week). Also, here in LA you're allowed to split lanes. I can't begin to comprehend how much time this has saved me. Even during rush hour I can make it from the 101 to Beverly Hills (Wilshire & Doheny) in about 20 minutes. If you know LA that is ridiculous fast.

All that being said, it may sound like a motorbike is the perfect vehicle for a place like LA but it comes with huge risk. People here don't like to use their blinkers. When you're passing an SUV and you're in his blind spot and he doesn't signal that he's coming into your lane and just starts getting over it can be pretty scary. Everyone here is in a hurry and they ALWAYS run yellow lights and very often run red. As a motorcyclist you're the first in line at every light and if you don't check both ways before pulling out it's likely you could get clipped by a fast moving vehicle running the light. Most importantly, it's very, very easy for a car trying to make a right or left turn into or across fast moving traffic from a side street or driveway and not see you. They're focused on the gaps between the cars passing by and looking for one big enough for them to fit through. They're most likely not thinking about you on your scooter splitting lanes between these cars. In my opinion this is the easiest way to get really hurt.

With that, some tips on how to not die while motorbiking it in LA:

-Always look both ways before entering the intersecting when the light turns green.
-Always be on the lookout for cars entering or cutting across your lane of traffic from side streets/entrances. Even when going slowly!!
-Same rule above goes for cars turning left across your lane. Assume they don't see you and depth perception in this situation is crap (for both drivers). A tip here: Look at the spokes of their wheels, are they turning? Then they're probably going to turn right in front of you.
-Sometimes it's impossible to not tailgate. When doing so be on the lookout for wheel swallowing potholes directly in front of you until you can gain some space between you and the bumper of the car ahead.
-I think there is only one bike lane in all of LA (Santa Monica Blvd, West Hollywood) if you're riding in it (illegally) watch for heads in the driver seats of the parked cars as well as cars turning across your lane. Running into an opened car door will be ruin your day.
-If you're splitting lanes and the cars ahead slow down for no apparent reason, you MUST also slow down. There is a high probability there's a pedestrian walking across the busy street and stopping traffic (and you won't see them until they're right in front of you).
-Never make any sudden lane changes. Even though motorcycles here change lanes often, other drivers don't assume that. They could be passing you quickly and you may not hear or see them.
-Wear face protection. I've hit bees at 40+ mph a number of times and had them get stuck INSIDE my helmet, ALIVE! Bad times.
-You may think you're the only awesome dude splitting lanes. You're at full throttle on your scooter at a good speed (you think) and then a Ducati comes up behind you. Let him pass before he does something that puts you both in danger.
-This may be a racist stereotype but I don't care: Watch out for Asian drivers. Especially female Asian drivers. Not joking.
-I'm not religious but I pray before every scooter ride. Can't hurt right?

Good luck.

(just ate some buttered noodles. Mmmmmmmm nom nom nom!)

For the past five days I've ridden my scooter down Cahuenga/Highland and witnessed true LA traffic. Why just the last five days you ask? Well, Hollywood Blvd. has been closed for the Oscars and apparently people here are so stuck in their routines that even though every news channel reports this closure they still try and either turn on to or continue on Hollywood Blvd. during this event. The first day I assumed people just hadn't caught the news. The second day I thought for sure they'll be avoiding this tomorrow. The third day I realized the majority of LA drivers are just ignorant cows.

Whatever. I split the lanes on my scooter and get to work on time.

Frustration number one: West Hollywood isn't listed as one of the local offices on the CA DMV website. I drove all the way to the Santa Monica office only to get stuck in their parking lot for 30 minutes and then find that you can't park in the surrounding neighborhood. I had to pee so I just left.

Frustration number two: Google maps can find the West Hollywood office but their website can't! I traded the car for the scooter and thank heavens I did because there was a line of 15 cars waiting to get in to the parking lot. When I got inside I found that there's a line to just get a number. I now have my number: B259. The automated number calling system is now saying it's serving B157. It's going to be a long day. Glad I have an iPhone.

I guess I have time to tell you why I'm here in the firstplace... My registration expired in June. In CO you get a letter and a 30 day grace period. I never received a letter and there is no grace period. On top of that I'm getting fined $120 in addition to my $250 registration fee. Sucks. They could at least make it easy for me to pay the $370 but when I called the lady said I would have to do it in person. Sucks more.

Only 99 people left ahead of me...

People often ask me what's the best piece of advice I can give on LA (ok, so no one asks me but when someone finally does I heard a great piece of information that has helped me immensely which I can pass on).

I have a friend who was personal assistant to Estelle Getty and during an interview he told me she was asked what's the best piece of advice she could give on Hollywood. She answered very simply, "Take Fountain". For some reason people in this city are much more like lemmings than anywhere else I've been. They see everyone else using the well known streets like Santa Monica or Sunset so they use them and don't seem to mind averaging 5 mph or less during rush hour.

As you can see on the map (highlighted in green) Fountain goes through most of Hollywood and West Hollywood and no one uses it. Most prefer to use the streets highlighted in red.

So, the next time you're crusing though Hollywood and Sunset gets a little jammed just go on down to Fountain. Just make sure you watch out as often when cars are parked on Fountain it gets slimmed down to one and a half lanes in each direction.

Hello there. I feel guilty for not posting in a long time. Please forgive me. I've been busy at work and it seems one good job begets another so I've been busy with side work as well.

Anyway, Nicole and I recently flew out of LAX to return home to Denver for a wedding. I looked up LAX parking online and found a number of places where you can park for $5 a day. I wrote a couple down and we headed off to the airport. Upon arriving at LAX Parking Center we were notified you had to reserve a spot online to get the $5 a day and that it was going to be $8 for rooftop or $9 for the garage. In a hurry I elected to pay the $9 a day. At this point I figured it was still cheaper than a cab ride to the airport (which is about $45 from West Hollywood). We parked the car without much trouble and hopped onto one of their free shuttles to take us to the terminal.

The trouble happened when we returned home from our trip. Our ticket instructed us to call the number on the back and tell them they needed to send the shuttle to come pick us up. We called and the guy at the other end just send "Hello" making Nicole think we called the wrong number. He said she did not so she said we needed a shuttle to pick us up at our terminal which to this he hung up the phone. Uh, ok. I guess we'll go wait by the red sign.

Flash forward to 45 minutes later, having watched every other parking garage shuttle drive by, we called them again. He said the shuttle is on its way. Ok, so we waited another 15 minutes for it to arrive but when it arrived it was full and the driver just kept driving. Flash forward another 30 minutes and the second shuttle finally arrives. This company must only have two shuttles to service their garage which must hold 3,000 cars. On our trip to the parking garage we passed six other frantically waving people trying to flag down the driver so they could be taken back to their cars. No such luck, our shuttle was full. By maintaining only two shuttles and three employees LAX Parking Center must be able to offer cheaper parking rates.

When arriving back at the parking garage we were overcharged by $4 but at that point I didn't have the energy to argue with the Persian kid working the register. I paid our $49 due and got the hell out of there.

On our next trip I think I'll be going with one of the more reputable parking centers at LAX (by that I mean one of the companies that had shuttles going by every few minutes, not half hours). It may cost a little more per day but it'll be worth the sanity when we return home.