I didn't drive this time we came to Amrika.
The downside is always forgetting which way to go around a roundabout, once I get home. That was never a problem for me pre-Amrika, because I only learnt one way to do it. Once I drove on the wrong side, my brain was given a choice. Very confusing for a bloke brain.
I found that whenever I approached a roundabout (particularly unsignposted ones in a carpark), my brain would go "Ummm, around to the left? around to the right? Which way? Which way? No pressure at all!"
Anyway, back to the point.
I did not drive this time. We weren't going to be going anywhere that really needed one. If we had gone to Henderson looking for a Walmart then maybe. Otherwise, navigating inner cities on the wrong side of both the car and the road does raise the blood pressure a smidge.
As I probably mentioned, I didn't drive this time. From LAX to Santa Monica we took a shuttle from a tout standing outside the door. We started regretting talking to him after we saw 4 shuttles for Santa Monica from other companies come and go, with him saying "Just a few more minutes". It was starting to feel like the experience getting from the IHOP back to The Trump at Vegas.
Anyway, the guy eventually gave us the number of the van we were waiting for, written on the back of a business card so that we can order them for the return. I don't think so, Tim.
That just made it worse. We knew who we were looking for then, and he wasn't coming. Is that him? No. Is that him? No. Is that him? No. Is that him? No.
Remember that really fun game we used to play from the back seat of dad's car? "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" I don't know what made me think of that.
Okay, so we have to go with a particular shuttle with the company, and he has his specialist subject on a placard on his dashboard. Eventually ours arrived. "Santa Monica".
Now, surely the point of having a guy go to the same suburb in his shuttle, is that he knows the area. We needed to tell him the address of the Holiday Inn.
The next people to get in had to find the address also. Theirs was the "Marina Del Rey Hotel" at, you guessed it, Marina Del Rey!
Both times he needed to ring somebody to ask. OH NO. He HAD a GPS on board. He just didn't USE it.
Guess what, Jose, I am sure if you typed in "Holiday Inn Santa Monica", I bet it will show you.
When he got to Marina Del Rey, he luckily saw the hotel sign, but missed 2 turnoffs to get to the door.
With ours, he approached from the wrong way, so had to turn the corner and find somewhere to make a u-turn. Surprisingly, someone gave way and let him do it.
Where was I going with this? Oh, that's right. Driving.
Now, on the way back from the hotel to the airport, we took a cab. I sat in the back, and watched the flow of traffic.
Now the point to all of this meandering.
I will take every opportunity to take the piss out of Amrikans. They are kind of like Stralians. They give us so much material to work with, it would be a sin not to take a crack every now and then.
Anyway, I do take an opportunity when it presents itself, but this is not one of them. I have to say that the freeway system (there it is, my point at last) is very, very good.
I was impressed when I had to drive in them, and I am impressed as a passenger.
Funnily enough, last time we came here, having prebooked a rental, I looked out the window as we came in over LA, and looked at horror at the zillion-laned freeways slicing the city into bite-sized pieces.
"There's no way I'm driving in THAT" I proclaimed.
When we eventually got to pick up our car at Hertz, they were advertising a new-fangled device called "Neverlost", a GPS for the low, low price of an additional USD7 per day. (Remember, this was in '02) Great, let's do THAT.
One cool feature of the GPS was to make "maximum use of freeways" or "minimum use of freeways". Hit the "minimum" button, thanks.
The result was a very painful, stressful (stress, me?) drive through the middle of LA, heading for Anaheim. From memory it took about an hour and a half. There were many missed turns, and just as many admonishments from the smart-arsed machine plugged into the cigarette lighter. I could just hear the contempt in her voice as she said "recalculating route" yet again. I just know I heard her follow that with "idiot" occasionally.
The reality is that the local driving is the only stressful part (other than those roundabouts). Once I made the rash decision to give the freeways a try, I could not believe it. What took an hour and a half of skilful navigating getting TO Anaheim, took what seemed like 10 minutes to get back via the freeways.
And the signs are so easy to follow. Miles ahead, you are warned of the next 3 exits, so you have to be a complete muppet to get off at the wrong exit.
Having said that, can you imagine life here before the GPS? Ye gads!
The signage HAS to be muppet-proof. This is not the thriving metropolis of Christchurch.
Back home, you miss a turnoff, and you just go to the next one and double back. Can you do this on an Amrikan freeway? Hell no. Take an exit and you have entered another dimension. You have warped onto another freeway. There is no doubling back. There is no turning back at all. The only way is forward. Even the same freeway going the other way isn't always comfortingly next to you as a point of reference. It is complete chaos!!!
Or so it appears from above.
But once strapped into the ride, it is eerily logical. Everything works. The flow. It just works. (Sorry Mr Jobs)
Oh sure, they have traffic jams, but mostly because of an accident causing the traffic to back up. But with no accidents, have you seen how many cars flow along there in an hour? A day? A year?
Spectacular!
Go to Auckland, and as soon as more than 20 cars are on the same piece of motorway, the place turns into a parking lot.
The reason? They were designed by some muppet looking down on it from the comfort of a business class window seat. Our Parking lots (I mean motorways) have the shortest little off-ramps. They take mayby 6 cars and they are full. Do they flow seamlessly onto another motorway, or at least a new lane on a local street. Hell no. They end at a stop sign, or a set of traffic lights.
Once that first car stops, everything backs up behind him, and spills out back onto the motorway itself. That lane soon grinds to a halt as far as the eye can see, and any cars wanting to get into that lane to take that same exit, also grind to a halt as they wait for a gap, blocking the second lane as well. How many lanes do we have on our motorways? Often just the 2. Oh good. That'll work.
That is just what happens on an ordinary day, when one exiting car stops at a set of lights for his required 3 minutes, or at a stop sign for an indeterminate time.
Imagine this scenario repeated at every exit on every motorway in Auckland.
Good Grief. Will the new super-city mayor please send somebody on an all expenses paid junket to LA for a week, please? Get a bit of a clue as to how a REAL motorway is designed. And don't just take a peek out the window as you land, and then jet off to Vegas to check out the go-go dancers. Drive on the damn thing. See what is different.
Waited for the Hilton shuttle. Took a while. They advertise every 15 minutes. Not so much.
