Yesterday, I went skiing at Mountain High in Wrightwood, CA. It was a blast! We drove up there in less than two hours without the tiniest bit of traffic. As you know, the absence of traffic is nearly a miracle for LA. That's the good part and it was not a small part of the story.
The trouble began the very moment we headed for home - we could not exit the parking lot due to a traffic back up. This was no small back up, either. It was absolutely EPIC in its scale! Let me explain.
In Wrightwood, as in many small towns, there is a STOP sign at their major cross roads. The thing is, there were thousands of cars trying to leave, all at more or less the same time. That stop sign caused the traffic to back up all the way into the parking lot at Mountain High, as each car had to slow to a stop, then accelerate again.
A little farther down the mountain, the road goes from two lanes to one. Everyone has to slow down again and merge left. Now, that was bad enough but almost immediately thereafter there is a fairly large road that merges onto the now single-lane mountain road with more slowing.
The net effect of these roads was a four mile back up from the parking lot to the stop sign in Wrightwood. It took 1.5 hours to reach the stop sign. That was followed by another 1.5 hour delay for the merging traffic. It was not snowing or raining, so weather was not the cause. There were no accidents or road closures causing any of this.
All told, it took well over 3 hours to traverse the 20 miles from Mountain High to the 15 Freeway.
I know, first-world problems, yaddah-yaddah.
The skiing was great. We had a lot of time together in the car to talk and goof around.
Next time I go, I am taking a drill driver with me. On the way up to the resort, I am going to unscrew that damned stop sign and steal it. That way, there'll be no hassle getting thru town on the way down.