The Daily I680 Drive - The California Driver

Crappy Weather

The weather service wasn't lying when it said that a major storm system was to hit NorCal Friday. I woke up to lighting and thunder, I could almost see across the street! It was pretty bad for a bit...

By the time I got out of the house and onto 680 the bad part I guess had passed over me and gave me a little window to get moving... I should have set the alarm earlier... Duh... by oh well.

As i have said before there is something about rain that turns the normal California driver into a complete idiot. There were winds, I could feel them in the Impala... feel sorry for those in smaller, lighter cars, but man i cant think of ANY reason to be on 680 doing 40 mph... if thats what you want to do take the surface streets and get to work that way!
So now we have 40 mph drivers on the highway and then there are drivers doing the same speed but have at least a 100 ft gap in between them and the next car... guess what happened??  People begin to move on over and fill that hole to go around the idiot thats doing 40 in from of them! hahaha... then of course the driver needs to make the rain required 100 foot gap and the process continues ad infinium!

Hahaha... so once getting to Walnut Creek dealing with all of that... I figured I might as well take the hit  for the car pool violation today if I get hit by the CHP. I didnt want to be in that mix of traffic this morning. I got to work no problems...!! ;-)

The storm that laying waste to this morning commute is pretty bad... its going to dump a whole lot of rain and snow onto the state... below is a image of just the Bay Area... Drive Carefully out there People!

2 MPH and 20 Hours a Year...

There seems to be a new study out that tell everyone the obvious that talking on a cell phone will keep you less concentrated on the task at hand (driving) and a little more on that call. In short I lost 20 hours and drove 2 mph slower... hehehe... not likely but an interesting read none the less... CNN Article...

Some of the statements..

"The distracted driver tends to drive slower and have delayed reactions," said Strayer, whose study will be presented later this month to the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences.

"People kind of get stuck behind that person and it makes everyone pay the price of that distracted driver."

I say poopy... people are annoyed that someone is driving slower than themselves... they go around. Teens especially I would think would go around in a heartbeat than sit behind a slower moving driver.

Tie this in with the new laws that will be enacted in California soon about 18 year olds and less not being able to use a cell phone and drive at the same time and that Headsets will be required for all drivers. Hmmm... Now how does one local police officer catch a teen using a cell phone with a bluetooth cell headset??! All it looks like is the teen is either talking to themselves or singing... which brings up another point if you sing along in your car... do you drive badly?? ;-)

And here we go...

    And here we go... NorCal is due to get three big storms that will begin to roll in today and continue for the week. That sucks sorta but hey, At least now I can get the oil off the bottom of my car that was leaking before I changed out the valve covers!! >:-)

Take a peek at the local new station KTVU for their article.

First of Three Storms...

How not to modify your car...

Well after working on the Impala and getting the new valve covers put on hopefully the oil leak will cease. I cleaned up in the garage and called it a night and then began surfing the interweb bored... I came upon a really "interesting" video on a wanna-be Soprano guy that is doing mods to his Cadillac CTS. Putting a turbo and upgrading the ignition is nice.. but man... don't do that stuff if you don't know how!

Take a peak at the video after this and tell me what you think! Funny to be sure!

The New Year... Same Traffic...

The New Year is here... 2008, Welcome!

The drive was actually not that bad... I left a little late because i needed to get some stuff ready for work that I didn't the previous night and that delayed me getting out the door.

242 was flowing just fine and as soon as I crested the overpass to get onto 680 the shine of breaklights was glaring back at me... wonderful I thought to myself. As I was merging into 680 I thought what the heck... take it easy dont be in a rush... Normally myself and just about everyone who comes onto 680 from 242 merges WAY left and speeds up... today I just stayed in the lane I was in and tooled down the highway... Sure enough.. the CHP cruised by in the commuter lane. I had the mind to merge over 2 lanes and follow the guy as there wasnt two people in the vehicle. But why temp fate.

Mr CHP took the 24 split and left with traffic backed up behind him as he was doing the slothly 65 MPH backing up all sorts of traffic behind him... that cleared out and the rest of the commute was smooth.

Getting into work, now these people are funny we have a HUGE parking lot here... and it is so funny to watch people race down the isles to try and get the best spot up front... taking short cuts... going the wrong way down isles, blowing thru stop signs... gotta get to that front spot!! Hahaha. I wittnessed someone doing just about all of the above as she entered the northwest lot from the opposite side of me. I could tell she was in a hurry and sure enough as I was comming to a stop she was just there also, about a second later than I was. She gassed the car as I went hoping that I was going to wait for her to come to a complete stop... heh sorry dear nope... she was a little miffed coming right up to the car as I rolled thru the intersection.... sheesh lady leave earlier if your that much in a hurry!

I hope everyone has a great New Years and stayed safe... no DUI check points, no speeding tickets.

Bad Driver Websites...

I forgot to mention... as I was taking a break from studying last night I was randomly surfing the web looking for interesting stuff to read and came across a bad driver website. Hahaha now this is a good idea depending on which side of the reporting you're on!! People get to report bad drivers license plate to the website and then it takes that and put a representation of the state plate with the offending numbers and letters! Pretty Cool! They also let you give a little synopsis of why your reporting the drivers plate.

Now, nothing happens legally to these reported plates but it is a public site and I see no reason why the local coppers wouldnt be interested in who was speeding, driving recklessly, or worse Drunk! So its not like Big Brother is keeping tabs on you... its sorta like a distant annoying cousin!

I did a wild card search of California and was surprised that there weren't many plates there. Must not be too many bad drivers in California... Hehe yeah right! The website was a little "quirky" did a lot of screen refreshes and such... kind of annoying but most likely just a programming glitch as its pulling data from its backend DB.

Anyway I ran my plates on all the cars I drive... Whew... none listed! Ya! Hahaha.. aheam, I mean of course! If you get the time check it out.

http://www.roadragers.com

http://www.platewire.com

Ahhh Rain...

Rain... the scourge of California's highways! I have no idea what gets into people when it begins to rain. Rather than a level, cautious approach to driving in wet weather, we the two different extremes that seem to come out in people when the  precipitation rises.

• The Safe Driver - These drivers (the more sane of the two) realizes that its wet out and people should slow down. The downside to this philosophy is that they take it to the extreme and then proceed to climb into their vehicle, enter the freeway doing 40-50 and keep it right there while in the middle lane of the freeway. This invariably causes drivers to try and get around and sometimes not too safely. I wish that they would just go the flow of that lane and everything would be fine and safe.

Now before I go throwing stones in glass houses... I am a fast driver. Water isn't all that big of a deal to me, I keep my tires properly inflated and the tread wear is always decent in the wet months. I do slow down substantially when its raining out because if you've been on 680's highway you know there are plenty of spots where hydroplaning seems to have been the design of CALTRANS engineers and not keeping the rubber side down!

• The Wet Lead Foot - These guys are nuts. Plain and simple. maybe water REALLY doesn't bother them at all and they are truly better drivers but when I see these drivers plow into a lake in the commuter lane, nearly loosing it into the K-Rail and still not learning from it. One of these days those lakes are gonna catch up with you. Now I am talking speeds in excess of 75-80 mph here.. on a dry day I wouldn't hesitate to drive those speeds but in wet raining weather... Ill pass on that to speed another day!

So the drive in was nice... wet, but nice. I guess because of the holiday alot of people were taking it off and staying home. Traffic was flowing smoothly no major speedy's or over-cautious drivers out there. I can see the lakes and rivers pudling up in the carpool lanes again. I wish CALTRANS would fix the drainage where it gets bad but every year you see the same "Flooding" signs in the same places and every now and then a nice color of a new Honda scratched into the K-Rail where some driver took his poor Honda water skiing.

ok back to driving my desk...

What a Morning...

On the drive in today I was cut off no less than 3 times. While this isn't really what I would consider alot by any standard what struck me was Why the drivers did. Not a single driver, in any of the three cars needed have changed lanes! Just mosied on over into the fast lane... La la la... Hahaha... well one Driver did give me a wave letting me know they had done the dirty and cut me off. That was nice of them at least ;-)

So basically let go thru the offenders shall we??

• The Boat... Now, I drive a boat on the Highways at times... I like my boat! Its big, Its fast, Its Comfortable! BUT, The driver of a 71 Bonneville started off my bad day commute! coming right over in front of me, not even sure if the lady saw me, but once it was in front of me the smell emanating from the rear of the vehicle was overpowering! The engine was running WAY rich to the point I bet I could have lit the tailpipe fumes! Again, she moved over in front of me for no reason that i can see... she didnt pass the vehicle that she was behind on the previous lane and just sat there crop dusting the freeway with her fumes!! Too bad the car was in the shape it was in... bonne's look ok when they're fixed up.

• The CVVC... Holy Crap! A 1973-75 CVVC!! Its been awhile since I've seen one of these on the road! Heh, and I must admit now in retrospect that I may have caused the driver to cut me off because I was Gawking at the cute little thing! Looked like a non fixed up, paint was faded but obviously had been repainted years ago. The teen driver thankfully had resisted the urge to place 20" rims on the car and stick with the stockers. So, while I was looking I guess I missed that the driver wanted to get around and in the true fashion of owning one of the smallest Hondas zipped right in between me and the car in front with plenty of room to spare... this took me by surprise but had to tip the hat on not waiting and getting to where he wanted to go. This was the driver the gave me the wave... Cool kid.

• The BMW 325... Go Figure... wanna be M3 owner, Yuppie late for his job in Silicon Valley and zipping in and out of the commuter lane to rush up 5-10 spaces and then zing back into the fast lane... as I was watching this transpire in my side view mirror and rear view mirror about 100 yards back I forget about him and concentrated on mot plowing into the person in front of me... well I should have known it! as Soon as the guy comes into my peripheral view... I knew I was gonna get it and sure enough the guy comes sliding in front of me from the commute lane. Grrrr... no more than 1 minute goes by, another car goes by in the commuter lane and the BMW pulls back into the Commuter lane and rushes of... No idea why the guy just didnt stay in the lane and go till the spot where most CHP sit... its what everyone else does anyway... maybe just a person that was in a hurry and not used to driving that way... crap... thats even more scary!

Anyway there you have it my morning into work! its got me so bad that I started a Blog about my daily commute into work... we'll see how much material I can get from the freeway and commute, My guess is LOTS driving here in NorCal...