OK, so, we just drove the second leg of our trip home from Oregon — a nice little jaunt from my Aunt’s house in Sacramento to our place in L.A. — in the record time of eight hours. You know, give or take a few hour-long stops to let Greta run herself ragged at rest stops and such. But, even with the stops, we made great time…and why is that such a big deal you ask?
One word: Carmageddon! Yep, that’s right, amigos…the Armageddon of traffic jams! See, for the past few months, the news out here was predicting dire things for all of California (and Los Angeles in particular) due to the closure of a three-or-four mile stretch of the 405 freeway in Santa Monica this weekend. The reason? Caltrans was blowing up a bridge or something, but, from the sounds of the news reports, you’d think the world really was about to end.
Seriously, we saw flashing “Carmageddon Warning” signs alongside the freeway the minute we crossed the state line back into California. It was crazy, I mean, here we were almost the entire state away from the freeway closure and they’re telling us to “expect major delays”. Insanity!
Believe it or not, our beloved XM Radio even had a dedicated Carmageddon Radio channel (XM 140) with constant updates on the situation. It was hilarious. But the funniest thing was, there was no situation to report. That’s right, Carmageddon was another big fat Y2K.
I don’t know if it was the fear factor or what, but the freeway and every rest stop, burger joint and gas station all the home were practically deserted. Come to think of it, it was oddly Armageddon-ish, but, you know, not in a bad way.
So, if Carmageddon clears the interstate in peak travel season for our next road trip, I say we make it an annual fucking event. Whoo-hoo…Carmageddon 2012 4eva!
