An Image of Hell

(Hey, anybody ever read this blog anymore?)

It's true. I saw Hell, today.

People think of Hell as really hot, flames everywhere, pitchforks poking you in the ass, little devils scratching at your flesh, etc. That's not Hell. Let me explain.

I was driving on the I-10 freeway* from Phoenix back to Los Angeles. I was pulling a solid 85 miles per hour (or, for you Unamericans, somwhere in the neighborhood of 135 kilometers per hour). Traffic was flowing. And yet I knew it was coming--traffic.

Let me interject to say that I figured that if I left Phoenix at 11:30 AM, I would be home by about 5 PM. My calculations depended on the traffic not happening until about twenty or thirty miles out of LA.

No. I was wrong. So wrong. And when I saw the brakelights, I announced to nobody, "I shall never, ever drive to Phoenix--ever, ever again."

My friends, about 110 miles outside of LA (just before Palm Springs), I saw the brakelights, and then found myself in stop-and-go, rushhour-like traffic. But it was not rushhour-like. Why? Because it was a looooooong line of traffic that I assume was jammed all the way into LA. I thought, "Hopefully, it's just a really bad traffic accident and it'll speed up again once they scrape the body off the highway."

But then, at about 10 miles per hour (16 km/h), I crested a hill and saw the longest line of traffic I'd ever seen. My imagination could not produce a sight like this. At the top of this hill, I could see out about twenty or thirty miles in front of me. The road stretched out and sort of zig-zagged across the plains and then disappeared into the horizon. And covering this were cars. As the road got farther away, it just looked like a ribbon of sparkles, hardly moving. Do you think I saw this, and did not weep? To quote The Big Leboski, "Strong men also cry. Strong men...also cry." Are you surprised at my tears, sir?

And there I was, stuck in it. It's not that it didn't move, either. It moved at about ten to fifteen miles per hour. Luckily, my assumption about the jam stretching all the way to LA was wrong--the long traffic jam only lasted to Redlands (about fifty miles).

But that's what Hell is. Hell is sitting in your car (a stickshift, mind you) shifting from neutral, to first, to second, to third, to first, to neutral. To first. To neutral. To first, to second--BRAKE!--to neutral. Stop. You can't just stop and take a nap or read or shoot-up, because traffic was actually moving (albeit slowly). I had to keep my attention on the road. And yet I knew that the idea of getting home by 5 was now out the window, though my bladder was depending on this. Luckily, I have a good AC, some good radio reception, and my mommy packed me some sandwiches.

However, this was just a glimpse.

What Hell Really Is
In Hell, your destination isn't another 103 miles. It's 8,384,929,948 miles with the next rest stop in 168 miles and you bladder is ready to burst (the rest stop will be closed; in fact, all of them will be closed). The AC won't work. It'll be stickshift. Traffic will move no faster than 10 miles per hour, but will usually be between 4 miles per hour and 8 miles per hour--fast enough that you're moving, but slow enough that you can't take your foot off the clutch or you'll go too fast and hit the car in front of you. And the CD collection you'll have available will consist of three CDs you've already heard a 450,000 times. No radio reception. No company. Nothing to see, so you can't even play "I Spy" with yourself.

Now, what would you prefer? I'd prefer the little dudes with pitchforks and all those flames.

Vacation was fun, by the way. And thank you for your concern.

*FUN FACT: Around Palm Springs to about Redlands, the signs proclaim that this is called the Sonny Bono Memorial Freeway. Come on. That's wierd, right?