Traffic

On the way from downtown Los Angeles to Valencia today, I sat in traffic for and hour and a half.  In the early morning, my traffic-free commute in the opposite direction was about 35 minutes.  Even with all sorts of portable entertainment (thanks to my Iphone and it's Ipod feature) and my car's XM satellite system, which offers a wide range of stations ranging from music to audio feeds from CNN and CNN Headline News, the experience is still insanely frustrating.  

I could have taken the train, but I had a mid-day meeting that required the use of my car.  I'm very fortunate in Valencia that I live only a mile or two from our inter-city Metrolink system.  It brings me right into Union Station downtown, from which I take a shuttle to Little Tokyo, where I work occasionally.   Having decent, convenient mass transit is rare in LA.  The City of Los Angeles' Metrorail system, which extends to various corners of the city, is nevertheless missing from the most heavily traveled corridors of the city.   Even the limitations of travel within downtown Los Angles made the train option unworkable for me in this case.

I'm going to look on Itunes and see if I can find a good thriller.  Hard to find a good, but very effective in these situations.