Had breakfast with Mrs TWC at Mimi's before whisking her off to Orange County's John Wayne Airport.
LAX could take some lessons here, starting with John Wayne's dedicated offramp lane from the 55 that drops in and loops around to the front of terminal row. No muss. No. fuss. No stop lights. Same deal on the way out. You want the 405? Right this way. Wham. Bam. Thankee Ma'am. Were done.
In contrast, the dummies in LA, with the help of the state and the feds, built a multi-billion dollar freeway (the 105) that doesn't go anywhere. Instead of routing it along Century Blvd and into the airport terminal, the freeway abruptly ends in El Segundo, dumping LAX bound traffic into the suffocating gridlock on Sepulveda Blvd, a mile from the airport.
The smugly self-satisfied politicians and bureaucrats, who want to shove you into mass transit while they tool around town in a limo, signed off on the light rail project down the 105 median. Just like the freeway, that slick lookin' train doesn't go anywhere, neither. You can't take the train to the airport because it doesn't go there. WTH? You can't take it to the beach, neither. Close. But no Cohiba. Worse: the train doesn't come from anywhere you're at, it just sort of begins at the 605 Freeway. But, it's cool. Like the Monorail at Diz. And, Boy Howdy! Dam thing runs down the center of the freeway. That's the important thing.
Most of America will recognize the 105 from the Sandra Bullock movie, Speed, which was filmed just before the freeway opened in 1994, a quarter century after many of the homes along the route were condemned.
TWC can clearly remember the erie deserted streets, lined with forlorn windowless houses and long-dead lawns. Except for the plywood sheets screwed to the doorframes, the scene could have been drawn from a post-apoclyptic Stephen King novel.
And if all that wasn't bad enough, they bulldozed the Beach Boys home where it all began.
As Always,
TWC 🍷