Could I visit
a Quantas crew member at the Marriott in Costa Mesa,
asked the answering service at one a.m. Costa
Mesa is fifty miles away, but the local doctor had
just been there and didn’t want to go back.
I don’t work
for nothing or keep office hours, so I have no objection to long drives during
the wee hours. Unfortunately, the San Diego
freeway, the major route to Orange County, closes at 11 p.m. for major construction at
the San Gabriel interchange. You might think that this requires a modest detour, but
closing the San Diego
freeway, even at 2 a.m., produces an immense backup as it contracts to one lane
leading to the exit. That’s followed by a long, slow drive through city
streets.
Several aggravating
experiences have persuaded me to take an alternate route through downtown and
the Santa Ana
freeway, a bumpy truck route and ten miles longer. After driving fifteen miles,
I was dismayed to discover that the Santa Ana Freeway was also temporarily
closed, a fact not revealed on my computer's Google Maps.
I followed
the orange cones onto Washington
Boulevard, a major street that intercepts the
freeway further on. It was a deserted industrial area with little traffic, but
I grew increasingly uneasy as the miles flew by with no freeway in sight. Pulling
over, I consulted my ancient Thomas guide which revealed that I had turned the
wrong way on Washington Boulevard
and driven five miles back toward downtown.
“Siri would
have caught that,” my wife pointed out later. Siri, of course, is Apple’s
computer voice that recites your route on the I-phone GPS. She has proved
valuable on vacations despite the occasional glitch. If you wander off course,
Siri immediately recalculates it and tells you how to get back.
Thirty years
of making housecalls has convinced me that I know everything about driving Los Angeles streets, a
confidence not shaken by the rare occasion when I get lost. There’s an I-phone
in my future.
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