Road Trip - part 2

Ugh. If I EVER choose to complain about traffic in the Bay Area, I'll just look at this picture. This was on I-5, around 7 at night. I was so tired of this sh*t. Every few miles, BLAMMO! Brake lights and stoppage. Not to mention the bone and filling-jarring WUMP, WUMP, WUMP on the slabs of concrete on the freeway. I know the state of CA isn't broke because of all of the freeway work, because this is definitely worse than 680 in the East Bay, and I swore I thought it was the crappiest, bumpiest freeway in the entire state. I see that I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

On my way home, I took I-405. You'd think it would be gentle and nice on a Sunday. Well, it was, for quite awhile, then it jammed up. I should have gotten a picture of that for the memory banks... 6 lanes (or so) in both directions, totally gridlocked. I'd kill myself if I had to drive on this stuff every day. Really. Couldn't deal with it. Once I-405 cleared up, it was only severely jammed going Southbound, near the Getty museum. But then... I entered I-5 northbound... Holy crap. I think I would enjoy my stays in SoCal if I chose to leave on a Monday morning, at 5 a.m. I think it must be like this often on Sundays... It is every Sunday I've ever been on it. And through a serious mis-judgment, I missed getting onto the truck bypass for NB I-5. Man, I regretted that... I very nearly drove over the curb, but thought otherwise. Good thing. Not 2 minutes later, a CHP passed by. I'm sure that would have been a fat ticket.

I ended up taking a detour (one of two), and taking highway 14 towards Santa Clarita. I knew I could sneak back through onto I-5, and even though the mileage was greater, it beat sitting in the God-awful traffic jam on I-5! I got off at Newhall, then followed to Railroad, then I think Magic Mountain Parkway. By the time I got back on I-5, it was smooth sailing (for awhile)!

This time, the dog slept nearly the entire drive home. :o)

Douchebag!

A powerful word. I rarely get to use it though. It's just so rare when someone does something so lame that you think, "Wow, what a douchebag!". Well, today was that day. Want to know what a douchebag looks like? I could, of course, post his picture. But that might be bad. Instead, I'll post what he did...

We have teensy parking places at work. That's why I always park on the street. Best to be safe and not get my car dinged up. Today, I got back from lunch to find an email that had been sent to everyone in our building. "To the owner of the green VW bug who tried to park so that nobody would park next to you. Well, it didn't work. If you leave before I do, please come and see me, as I'll probably have to move my car." It was actually said in a normal email tone. Nothing sinister. Till I looked out my window.

Sweet Jesus! It, of course, looked a little different from upstairs. In fact, I had incorrectly estimated the distance between cars to be roughly 1/4 inch. I'm not quite sure it was that. I know that I couldn't get my finger between the two cars (I tried, see below).

Now, I'm looking at the VW. Yeah, it's parked on the line. BFD. It's not like we're a driving shop, for crissakes. And deal with it, douchebag. People just don't give a shit about taking the time to park their car in the morning. I'm just wondering how long it took this guy to park THAT effing close to make some type of point. Talk about a Jurrassic Jackass... Then, to email the entire building about it. "Hi, I'm an angry douchebag. Oh wait, that's MISTER douchebag to you.". Then the guy changes his IM status to: "people need to l2park". Uhhh... Wait a minute... Part of me wanted to reply to his email with the picture above and say, "That's not a very nice thing to do!", but clearly the guy has some anger issues he needs to work out!

Anyway, the owner of the VW opted not to move or contact the guy. And he ended up stewing all day and moved his car on his own.

Jeesh...

Laupahoehoe Point and Tsunami Victims Plaque

On April 1, 1946, a tsunami blew into Laupahoehoe Point and swept several small schoolchildren and a few adults out to sea. I'd read about this before, but never got to visit the place where it happened. I knew there was a plaque for them, so I made sure to visit this time. What a powerful place. Just the sight of the plaque brought tears to my eyes. Some as young as 2 years old. Several children from single families. Wiped out. In seconds. It struck at 7 a.m. Really makes you think...
The waves on this side of the island are CRAZY intense. Raw, powerful and really, really scary. There's a story inside my guide book which tells about a barge of brand-new Toyotas crashing near here. An insurance adjuster came to assess the damage, insisted on the helicopter he was riding in land on the barge, a wave came in, swept over the helicopter, tossing it, and killing the adjuster. You don't mess around with the ocean on this side of the island...

Looking into the mouth of Hell

I was pretty stoked to find out that the lava was flowing to the East side of the lava fields. This meant that we could DRIVE to it, and then a short hike to a lookout, and voila! Last time I was there, the stuff was flowing to the center of the field and the Park Ranger told me: "Yup, it's a 6.5 hour round-trip hike. Well worth it." F*ck that. This was after doing a hike in the park which lasted just over 2 hours, and got me soaking wet when it rained. I took the plane ride instead, and it was great.

This time... we drove to it. And hiked. 1 mile each way. Over lava. Damn. That counted as double. I got freaked out a few times when there was hot steam coming out of the cracks in the lava. And one such area was SILVER, instead of black. WTH??? I later learned that it was lava FRESH from AUGUST. Yeah, 2 months ago August. No wonder... There was no one else out, except two girls that we finally caught up with on the edge of the world. I took their picture, they took my Mom's and mine, they gave me some cool advice, and told me to perch on the ledge above and that was that. I stood on this ledge for a long time, watching the delta below. There was a crapload of steam (and sulpher, gross) from the lava hitting the ocean (it was RIGHT THERE). When the clouds moved out of the way, there it was - a shelf with orange lava flowing across it. Every time I saw it, I tried to take a picture. And every time, the steam clouds obscured it. I couldn't see the lava through the view finder, but I could with the naked eye. We played this game for a good 20 minutes and I finally snapped a few pics. In this one, when I zoomed in, I could see the orange (faintly) on the shelf. Thank God. I sure didn't want to hike back out there for more pics!!!

It was cool, definitely. But it was at least 2 hours of hard hiking to get 2 miles, round trip. And with steam all around, and only the forest to go by (for the safe harbor), I got freaked out more than a few times (and checked to make sure the soles of my shoes weren't melting!!!!). I almost aborted the hike due to concerns (and very few markings, and no other souls out there). But in the end, I'm glad we stuck it out (my Mom had a hard time with the hike and the heat coming off of the lava). We got to look out onto new land being created, see lava flowing into the ocean, and I kid you not: it was like staring into the mouth of Hell.