Air buggies, anyone?

This weekend I had the pleasure of driving one of the most beautiful drives in the country: Los Angeles to San Francisco, then back. The 6-plus hour trek (in my 2001 A4 1.8T Avant, so zippy and fuel efficient too!) was as good a place as any to revel in my thoughts about:

1. Why on earth are we still driving around on four wheels? Really, shouldn’t we humans, in our vast knowledge, figured out a way to get around the whole touching the ground/road/wheel thing long ago? Why don’t we have air buggies? Why aren’t we all flying affordable, personal, tiny jets? High-speed trains, anyone? It’s a question I ponder often, especially when sitting in six lanes of stopped traffic on the LA County side of 101.

2. Which brings me to traffic. I won’t go on about the usual complaints. Suffice it to say, I have them and in my daily life I avoid freeways if at all possible. I will mention one significant aspect of traffic driving that I noticed on my road trip. Bumper to bumper traffic in LA is so different from bumper to bumper traffic in the Bay Area. I’d take Bay Area traffic any day: the cars are smaller, the vibe isn’t so scary, the cars move at a slow, steady pace (as opposed to LA where it’s STOP then SPEED then STOP! then STUTTER), and there are prettier things to look at. I even shared a smile (non-aggressive, non-loaded, just “hey, yeah, this sucks, but isn’t it a beautiful day” types of smiles) with a couple of other drivers also stuck in traffic on the north end of 101. Smiles! I can’t even imagine a smile in LA traffic. Sometimes I feel compelled to playfully stick my tongue out at some of the LA drivers just to see if I can make them laugh but I’m afraid I’d get shot.

3. And now on to beauty. The ocean during the stretch of 101 from Shell Beach through Pismo Beach. The curvy, fast roads through the rolling hills on the east end of 152 between the 5 and 101. The wide open Central Valley on either freeway. The first glimpses of San Francisco. The perfectly banked four lanes of 280 rolling into San Francisco. Many times I’ve said I’ll just take Southwest. And often, during the stretch of the 5 through Coalinga (Cow-linga a clever friend once called it), I’ve regretted the decision to drive. But I always get over it. And I always drive it again.

Carmalarkey

Marnie & I debated if cars alone could have carma, as I was interested in making a list of Cars with carma, and also People with carma. We're finding you can't really separate them, as carma is really properly defined as that relationship between the two. Bt example, a Hummer H1 would seem to have a low carma rating, but pair that Hummer with a crew of U.S. Marines (on-duty), and the carma rating skyrockets.

However, considering style alone, having the U.S. military go into battle with lovingly restored vintage Jeeps might be high on the carma scale, but very low on practicality. But perhaps the low practicality creates for bad carma as well. We want to figure this out!

War generally would be better if battles could all be re-enactments, with period costumes and equipment, and a decided lack of death and dismemberment. That's carma.