May 9, 2003
For the past two days I have been avoiding the 101 on my drive down. Last night I tracked my mileage and time (I’m driving 100 miles a day to get these shots). The freeway is 13 miles from my house. I bypass the freeway and take the surface streets on the way down and I take the freeway on the way back out (less traffic going north). Here’s the difference for just the freeway part: It’s 8.6 miles and ten minutes if I take the surface streets, and it’s 7 miles and 7 minutes on the freeway. Amazing on the time. I would have thought it was much longer to take the surface streets.

Yesterday’s Republic ran an article about how the DPS (Department of Public Safety) teaches a class for officers on how to survive on the 101. Officers have been rear-ended (unfortunately while standing between cars) and lumber trucks have dumped entire loads coming around the curve right onto the poor officers. One of the reasons sited for the atrocious driving (800 accidents and 8 deaths in 8 months!) is that so many people are driving drunk in this area. It’s right off the Princess golf course, where the PGA tournament is held, Westworld and Rawhide are right there, so when events end, like rodeos or car shows like the Barrett-Jackson Auction, they all jump on the 101 and start rocking and rolling.

Yesterday morning I was waiting for my shot and overhead another guy two chairs down tell the nurse he was waiting for a heart transplant. He went on to say he has been waiting for three years and that he was born with a defective heart. I looked down and the guy was about 35. I whispered to my nurse Tanya (her real name but not the correct spelling), “That’s what keeps me from feeling sorry for myself.” She pulls up her nurses smock to reveal a diabetic belt and battery pack deal. “I know,” she deadpans, “if this goes off I have literally minutes to live. I live every day knowing I could lose a foot or hand. And if I really get my pitty pot going, I go over and work in the hospital for a day.”

In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, I still manage to get my “pitty pot” going. Just raw talent, I guess.

“The great secret of successful marriage is to treat all disasters as incidents and none of the incidents as disasters.”
—Harold Nicholson