Well, as you know, I am an East Coaster trapped on the West Coast (I moved here to get married so forgive my whining) and I LOVE Rainy days – it makes me feel like I am in a season (pick a season- any season). One crazy thing about living out here is that you lose a sense of the seasons and I didn’t realize how important they were for me UNTIL I didn’t have them.. Seriously, it affects me in many ways but one odd way is that I can’t remember when anything happened anymore – I used to use the seasons to narrow down when things happened (e.g., there was snow on the ground.. so we must have started dating in the winter J ).
But here is the craziest thing about rain in LA. ANGELENOS CAN’T SEEM TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO DRIVE IN THE RAIN! Aren’t most of the folks who live here from somewhere else? I don’t know what it is but if you venture out on a rainy day, the roads look like Virginia roads during an ice storm. People are braking incessantly, sliding, and bending fenders all over the city. At the same, there seems to be this tug of war between drivers who see the rain as an opportunity to drive even faster and the drivers who believe it is a signal to drive half the speed limit.
But here is the dirty little secret. ANGELENOS CAN’T DRIVE WHEN IT IS NOT RAINING! I lived here 16 years ago and traffic was bad BUT folks seemed to be paying attention. I came back and I was SHOCKED to see how bad things had become - I am not lying when I say that not a day goes by when I don’t see someone behind the wheel:
⌂ With a dog in their lap,
⌂ Reading a book or newspaper
⌂ Typing emails or texts at a green light,
⌂ Doing their makeup (or shaving),
⌂ People/star watching
⌂ Or some combination of any of the above.
Add to these distractions this weird thing that I have observed in LA – people are not the friendliest drivers in the world. If you put your blinker on to change lanes, for instance, a lot of folks out here see that as a signal to speed up and NOT let you in. Also, there is a tinge of hostility that I always “chalk up” to the fact that folks are driven mad by sitting in their cars for hours just to drive very short distances (it is maddening). In addition, folks act different (read, a lot bolder) when they think they are anonymous (you don’t flip someone off when you know you are going to see them at the 7-11 or your child’s school later that day).
Put all of those factors together with all of the tiny people driving HUGE SUVs and you have the perfect storm for an interesting (read, miserable) driving experience.
P.S. Golfers, rainy days in LA are the best days to hit those public courses that you typically avoid because of the crowds – just tell yourself that you are working on your “bad weather game.”
But here is the craziest thing about rain in LA. ANGELENOS CAN’T SEEM TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO DRIVE IN THE RAIN! Aren’t most of the folks who live here from somewhere else? I don’t know what it is but if you venture out on a rainy day, the roads look like Virginia roads during an ice storm. People are braking incessantly, sliding, and bending fenders all over the city. At the same, there seems to be this tug of war between drivers who see the rain as an opportunity to drive even faster and the drivers who believe it is a signal to drive half the speed limit.
But here is the dirty little secret. ANGELENOS CAN’T DRIVE WHEN IT IS NOT RAINING! I lived here 16 years ago and traffic was bad BUT folks seemed to be paying attention. I came back and I was SHOCKED to see how bad things had become - I am not lying when I say that not a day goes by when I don’t see someone behind the wheel:
⌂ With a dog in their lap,
⌂ Reading a book or newspaper
⌂ Typing emails or texts at a green light,
⌂ Doing their makeup (or shaving),
⌂ People/star watching
⌂ Or some combination of any of the above.
Add to these distractions this weird thing that I have observed in LA – people are not the friendliest drivers in the world. If you put your blinker on to change lanes, for instance, a lot of folks out here see that as a signal to speed up and NOT let you in. Also, there is a tinge of hostility that I always “chalk up” to the fact that folks are driven mad by sitting in their cars for hours just to drive very short distances (it is maddening). In addition, folks act different (read, a lot bolder) when they think they are anonymous (you don’t flip someone off when you know you are going to see them at the 7-11 or your child’s school later that day).
Put all of those factors together with all of the tiny people driving HUGE SUVs and you have the perfect storm for an interesting (read, miserable) driving experience.
P.S. Golfers, rainy days in LA are the best days to hit those public courses that you typically avoid because of the crowds – just tell yourself that you are working on your “bad weather game.”
