Tag Archives: driving

Flaming Goat Cheese!

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Kelson

You’ve got to love this headline: Giant goat-cheese fire closes Norwegian roadway for six days. Apparently, brunost burns really well, and when a truck carrying it caught fire in a tunnel, responders were unable to get to it for days.

(Incidentally, the stuff is also really good. My family discovered it on a vacation to Disney World, of all places, where they served it in the smorgasbord at the Norwegian restaurant in Epcot.)

This is even weirder than the truck full of meat that caught fire on the 5 near Camp Pendleton a few years back, blocking the entire freeway in an area with no alternate routes for most of the day and stranding all of the Orange County & Los Angeles people trying to get to the first day of Comic-Con.

I’m going to have to start using “flaming goat cheese on a truck!” as a pseudo-curse.

Posted in Food, Strange World | Tagged cheese, driving | Leave a comment

Four Travel Lessons Learned at Chicon

Posted on September 9, 2012 by Kelson

A few lessons we learned the hard way on our recent trip to Chicago for Worldcon/Chicon 7.

#1: Don’t count on laundry being easy. The hotel we stayed at didn’t have a laundry room, but they did have a laundry service…for $8 a shirt. Fine for the business traveler who needs one outfit cleaned, but a family of three could spend hundreds of dollars on a single load. No problem, you might think: find a laundromat. No such luck: As near as we could find, there are no laundromats in downtown Chicago. I ended up spending $12 each way for a taxi out to the suburbs so we could have clean clothes for the second half of the trip. The most expensive load of laundry I’ve ever done, but an order of magnitude cheaper than the hotel laundry service.

What do people who live in Chicago do if their washing machine breaks down? Or do the high-rise buildings have extra laundry rooms for residents?

#2: Having your toddler’s own car seat on the airplane is great. Lugging it around the airport, hotel, shuttles and taxis? Not so much. J slept through the first ⅔ of the flight out and the first ⅓ of the flight back. Despite the unfamiliar circumstances of the plane, he was in a familiar, comfortable seat, and I’d recommend it for any parent who can afford to buy their toddler his/her own seat. But it’s still a pain to drag it around.

#3: Remember to factor in parking when evaluating the cost of car rental. Since we were bringing the child car seat anyway, we figured we’d rent a car and just snap it in. It worked well enough, but when we got to the hotel we were faced with a $52/night parking charge. Over 9 days, that added up to more than the cost of renting the car! And the first place we drove to, Lincoln Park Zoo, cost $30 for parking – more than cab fare would have been.

It became clear that most of what we wanted to do was going to be within walking distance, and it would be cheaper to return the car early and take taxis to the places farther out. That’s exactly what we did.

#4: How much Internet access do you really need? Our hotel had a nice setup: A) $12.95 for 24 hours for up to three devices for in-room wi-fi. B) Free wi-fi in the lobby. C) Convention areas were paid for by the con. Over 9 days we pulled out the laptop maybe three or four times, and we used the tablet every day.

The thing is, my heaviest online use of the tablet was in the convention, not in the room. In the room, I was mostly checking email/social networks or playing offline games, or one of us was reading (either to ourselves or to J). These are low-bandwidth activities where high latency isn’t a problem, and it would have been fine to fire up the phone’s mobile hotspot for a few minutes or even read email offline & let it sync the next time I was in the lobby. (I caught up on email on the airplane on the way back, then let the changes & replies sync up after when we landed.)

Obviously this will depend on how connected you want or need to be, and what other devices you have. In our case, we paid for 7 or 8 days of internet and probably only needed 3 or 4.

Posted in Travel | Tagged airplane, Chicago, children, driving, hotel, rental | 2 Comments

Question of the Day

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Kelson

Do tire stores ever hold blowout sales?

Posted in General, Strange World | Tagged driving, Tweets | Leave a comment

The Phantom City

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Kelson

Years ago, when I’d drive along the 405 freeway late at night, I’d catch glimpses in the distance of what looked like a cluster of tall buildings in a city center. Not knowing the area well, I’d wonder whether I was seeing glimpses of Long Beach, or some other city in the area that I didn’t know. And then the freeway would curve, and I’d never quite figure out where those buildings were, and I’d mean to look it up on a map, but by the time I got home I’d be so tired I’d go straight to bed, and I’d forget all about it in the morning.

It always made me think of the kind of fantasy story inspired by mirages, where someone sees something from a distance, but when they get close it turns out not to be there, or to be far less grand than expected.

Somewhere along the line I realized that those lights I was seeing in the distance weren’t a city far off from the freeway. They were the lights on the oil refinery right next to the freeway a few miles down in Carson. I’d just catch glimpses of it between trees and closer buildings. With no reference points and no sense of scale, it wasn’t clear that I was looking at a compact cluster of small towers, not a larger cluster of taller buildings. By the time I got close enough to see the actual refinery towers, they looked different enough that my sleepy and driving-focused brain didn’t make the connection to those distant lights.

The South Bay is dotted with oil refineries, built here in the days when it was a major oil producing region, and I assume kept here because it’s so close to the Port of Los Angeles. Every once in a while I’ll be driving or walking over a hill and catch a glimpse of a too-regular “skyline” where all the lights are yellow, and I’ll think back to the time when I wondered about a vanishing city.

Photo: Exxon/Mobil Torrance Refinery, seen from a hill up on 190th St.

Posted in Strange World | Tagged driving, Los Angeles, Refinery, Skyline, South Bay | Leave a comment

50,000 Miles

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Kelson

This morning, I hit 50,000 miles on the Prius. We’ve had the car for four years now, and it still feels like a new car — or at least, it doesn’t feel old yet. That’s why, though I’d love to have the plug-in hybrid model launching next year (and Toyota keeps sending me ads for it), I don’t feel any need to get onto any waiting lists. There’s plenty of life in this one yet, and no reason to trade it in early.

For the record: Typically around 43 MPG on an eight-mile commute that mixes city streets and freeways, plus errands and occasional longer trips. It was a bit higher when I was commuting 25-40 miles each way, mainly on freeways, but I don’t remember exactly how much. I think it was around 48 MPG.

Posted in General | Tagged driving, prius | Leave a comment

Do You Really Need THIS Space?

Posted on June 18, 2011 by Kelson

Parking structure sign showing 264 open spaces on level 5, 326 on level 4, 469 on level 3, 247 on level 2, and level 1 full.

It’s astonishing how many times I’ve seen drivers stop near the entrance of a parking lot or structure and wait for someone else to load their car, get in the car, start the car, fumble around for sunglasses, make a phone call, put the car in reverse, check their messages, and then back out…even though there are 1306 open parking spaces on the upper levels, and a line of six cars behind them waiting just to get inside.

If the other driver is actually ready to back out, then yeah, it’s nice to pause and let them out. But if they’re not even inside the car, or if they haven’t even started it? The only thing you’re accomplishing by waiting for this space is annoying the people behind you.

Though I suppose for some people, that’s reason enough.

Posted in Annoyances | Tagged driving | 2 Comments

Driving Costs May Be Exaggerated

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Kelson

While writing up my last post, I remembered something that really bugs me on Metrolink’s website.

The fare calculator tries to make the train cost look more appealing by showing you how much you’d spend driving the same trip, using a factor of 54.1 cents per mile from AAA’s driving cost formula.

Two problems:

1. They’re using the average value of all the cars on the road. Drive a gas-guzzling Hummer? A fuel-efficient Prius? Same cost estimate.

2. They’re using the formula wrong. It’s not intended to answer the question of “How much does this trip cost?” but “How much am I spending overall to use this car?” So in addition to fuel and maintenance, it also includes static costs of owning a car, like registration, insurance, interest payments, etc. Things that you’ll be paying whether you drive it today or not.

So unless you own an average car and plan on getting rid of it entirely, the comparison doesn’t actually tell you anything useful. But it does make Metrolink’s ticket prices look cheaper.

Posted in Annoyances | Tagged driving, Metrolink, trains | 2 Comments

Commuter Zombie Wants Traaaains…

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Kelson

A couple of months ago I started a job near LAX. I live in central Orange County, 40 miles away. Unfortunately, that includes driving through the mess of Los Angeles freeways during rush hour. It’s a horrendously frustrating slog through stop-and-go and slow-and-go traffic that has me ready to gnaw off my own leg well before I get to work.

To make things easier, what I’ve been doing is driving about half-way to the end of the LA Metro Green Line in Norwalk, then taking the train the rest of the way. It’s worked out pretty well so far:

It cuts my driving time in half.
The part of the drive that it cuts out includes the worst of the traffic (east-west on the 105, or 405, or 91).
I get some extra reading time.
It’s relatively cheap ($1.50 each way, plus 35¢ to transfer to a local bus for the last mile).

It saves a lot of stress. The main downside is that I can’t drive anywhere during lunch, but at least there are a lot of options within walking distance. Unfortunately, the parking lot in Norwalk is often full when I get there, so some days I end up driving the whole trip anyway.

In theory, I could take trains the entire way. There’s a Metrolink station a couple of miles from where I live. Unfortunately, the Metrolink system and Metro system only share one transfer point: Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles. I’d have to go really far out of my way, and transfer across two or three different Metro lines. Or else stop at Norwalk/Santa Fe and take a bus across town to the Green Line. With all the extra transfers, it didn’t seem worth it.

Still, the first day back at work after J was born, I figured my sleep-deprived self could use the break.

The Metrolink Experience

The thing to remember is, Metrolink isn’t light rail. It’s commuter rail.

The ride itself? Great. The trains were nice and roomy. Some of the cars had seats with tables. I even tethered my laptop to my phone to catch up on some blogging.

On the downside…

It’s expensive. Metro costs $1.50 to ride anywhere in the system, plus 35 cents to transfer to a bus for the last mile. Metrolink costs me $7.75 each way, but includes free Metro & local bus transfer. Monthly passes, of course, would cut down both prices.

Trains don’t run as frequently. I missed a train and had to wait 40 minutes for the next one. (I actually missed two trains, the first because I had to drive around the block to the alternate parking lot…so I spent an hour waiting just to get on the train.)

Trains don’t run into the evening. The last Metrolink train heading south from Norwalk leaves at 6:51. With two buses and a train between me and that train station, and every transfer a potential delay. This time I lucked out: The bus I took from work got me to Aviation station just in time for me to catch the green line, which got me to the end of the line just in time for me to catch the Norwalk bus, which got me to the Metrolink station with 5 minutes to spare. Just a couple of minutes at any of those points could have added 10-20 minutes of waiting and left me scrambling for an alternate way to make those last 20 miles home.

That last one is the kicker. For me, the main point of taking the train instead of driving is to reduce stress so that I can focus better when I need to. If I have to spend half the trip home worrying about making that last train, what’s the point?

Posted in General | Tagged driving, Los Angeles, trains | 2 Comments

Links: Traffic, Scott Pilgrim, Soviet Hobbit, Facts, Moon, Toyota and New Spice

Posted on July 16, 2010 by Kelson

Want to see what Los Angeles traffic looks like on a typical Friday evening? You can! A co-worker pointed out to me that you can view statistical traffic on Google Maps in addition to live traffic. To see it, go to Google Maps, enable traffic, then look at the inset traffic key and hit “change.” You’ll be able to choose a day of the week and time.

A Scott Pilgrim fan tracked down the real-life locations in Toronto that Brian Lee O’Malley used as reference, then took photos to match them up with the comic panels.

It reminds me of a story that O’Malley told at Comic-Con last(?) year about the movie production. They tried to use actual locations when possible, and at one point went to film a scene with a particular phone booth, only to find it had been torn out. They rebuilt the phone booth for the scene!

How To Be a Retronaut has a fascinating gallery of illustrations from the 1976 Soviet edition of The Hobbit. (via @dixonium)

Copyblogger presents: Five Grammatical Errors that Make You Look Dumb. Please, people: learn the differences between your and you’re, and between they’re, their and there! (via This Is True)

A university library has put together a great parody of the Old Spice ad campaign: Study Like a Scholar, Scholar. (also via This Is True )

NPR story: In Politics, Sometimes The Facts Don’t Matter

New research suggests that misinformed people rarely change their minds when presented with the facts — and often become even more attached to their beliefs. The finding raises questions about a key principle of a strong democracy: that a well-informed electorate is best.

This makes me feel a little less enthused about the next two items:

It’s incredibly cool that we’ve got photos of the Apollo 16 landing site. But that won’t convince people who are absolutely certain that the landings were faked.

And a U.S. Department of Transportation investigation of Toyota crashes blamed on sudden acceleration has implicated driver error in nearly all cases. Of the 75 fatal crashes investigates, only one could be verified as a problem with the vehicle: the Lexus crash last August in which the accelerator was caught on the floor mat, leading to a recall. Of course, the court of popular opinion has already made up its mind…