Bottleneck

One serious disadvantage to living in the High Desert is that there’s only one real reasonable route to get “down the hill” to the San Gabriel Valley and Los Angeles – the I-15 freeway.

If that’s got an accident or a brush fire or construction or just heavy traffic going to or from Las Vegas, you’re screwed. That 35-minute trip to Ontario International Airport can turn into 1:45+ in a heartbeat.

Yes, in theory, there are alternate routes. You can head west toward Antelope Valley on a (mostly) two-lane state highway, complete with stoplights, crossings, driveways, small towns with 35 mph speed traps, and after about 45 miles get on the 14 Freeway south, which in another 45 miles will get you to the San Fernando Valley, which in another 15 to 45 miles will get you to Downtown LA or Orange County. Of course, if 100,000 or so of your closest friends are also trying to squeeze into that alternate route, it might slow things down even more, as difficult as that might be to believe.

If that’s not your style for an alternative, head west toward Big Bear or Wrightwood and try to get down the hill on some of the two-lane mountain roads, twisting and turning for mile after mile after mile, stuck doing walking speed with no option to turn back or pull over if you need gas, coffee, or a bathroom. Good times!

It did occur to me at one point that, since I was picking someone up at Ontario Airport, it might just be faster to find a way to turn around, go north to Apple Valley Airport, spend a couple hours with the flight school there, get my bi-annual review done and get current on my pilot’s license, rent a plane from them, and fly the fifteen or twenty minutes down to Ontario. The question wasn’t whether the idea was crazy, it was if it was crazy enough!

Soooooo much red ahead… An extra ten minutes, my ass! Try an extra 20-25 from this point, and I was barely a dozen miles from home after more than an hour on the road already.

You can’t get there from here.

And let’s hope there’s an extra special place in Hell reserved for the self-centered, narcissistic assholes (ALL driving Mercedes, BMWs, or Teslas) who think it’s okay to cruise down the shoulder or the center divider to pass everyone, because of course when Karma rears her ugly head and wipes them out, they’ll take some innocent folks with them and make the backup EVEN WORSE for the rest of us.