We’ve meandered back to the Southern California/Inland Empire area for the holidays, in order to visit with the many and varied family members and friends here. Seeing all the people we’ve missed over the last almost a year has been wonderful. Visiting some old haunts and favorite restaurants and hang outs from the old days has also been nice.

What hasn’t been so great is the traffic and the level of crowding and construction that’s just… EVERYWHERE.  Holy crap, I do not remember it being like this, and wow, but what did you guys do to it while we were away??  Okay, so it’s probably not so much worse now than it was only a short year ago, it’s more likely that I’ve just grown out of the habit of being in it regularly. So, so many places we’ve been to have nothing even close to what it’s like here, and the difference now is dramatic.  It’s almost overbearingly stressful at times being bumper to bumper almost anywhere you want to go and having to add sooo much time to each trip to allow for traffic and the seemingly endless construction delays.  It’s possibly that it’s just me, but many, many times it seemed as though every freeway and side-street on our route was under construction.  Yeesh.

On top of that, people do not drive nearly as well as they think they do, and they drive badly much more aggressively here then elsewhere.  Following way to close, cutting in on my front safe space, massively speeding while lane weaving, being woefully unaware of surroundings and other drivers,  and let’s not forget lots and lots of really piss poor merging.

Ugh…  I’m sure I couldn’t live here again.  I’ve been spoiled by the open roads and skies, poetically beautiful vista’s, uncrowded (or less crowded) civilization and new countryside whenever we want.

As has been said long before me, “It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live here. (anymore)”

We’re hanging around off and on through February as we await the end of some family business, but after that, we are headed east for the distance.