pantagruel

MINI drivers

'Just how many sets of brakes have you gone through?' asked a friend the other night, as I was driving back from dinner.

'Um… only three. Why?'

He just sighed, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like 'You MINI drivers.'

Interestingly enough, The Fabulous Lorraine said exactly the same thing about my driving a couple of years ago, when I picked her up from LAX. Apparently her Boss, also a MINI owner, drives like I do. I told her I was simply battle-hardened from driving in Los Angeles all my life. She did not believe me. Not even showing her my Safe Driver certificate from the DMV was enough to convince her that I could be let on the road without causing great bodily harm to my fellow Angeleños. You swerve out of the way of one semi, and you get branded a bad driver. (Okay, I swerved at 75 m.p.h. on the tight curve of the 110-101 interchange, but that's what MINIs are born to do!)

Sigh.

After seeing this MINI commercial, I now must grudgingly admit my friends are right about my driving.

advertising, cars, mini cooper, neil gaiman

more art, and an obligatory LA native traffic self-portrait

From a few weeks back:

Shiny and keyholing. I fail at photography.

A color theory exercise:

The challenge was to make the black horse figurine the focus. Difficult, since I was helpfully sitting with the candle in the way. Awesome.

First, a blue-and-white value study:

Then the evil cruelty of rendering something black in high-chroma.

Ahh, nice low-chroma. So much better.

Then I got to choose the colors on this one, apart from the direction to make it 'moody.'

And as a bonus, an obligatory LA native traffic self-portrait!

Yes, I drove in on my own today. Good times at 0 mph.

Technorati Tags: art, photos, driveblogging, studio, traffic

burned trees

_MG_3290.JPG
Originally uploaded by culfinglin.

from the camping trip a couple of weeks ago to rancho cuyamaca.

Camping trip

Had a lovely weekend in Rancho Cuyamaca, camping. The pine and oak forest there is just beginning to recover from the 2004 fire, so there are stretches of trees with blackened branches amidst clumps of scrub and undergrowth. Some trees oddly sprout green crowns, and others are unscathed. As the year's been dry, the meadow grass is brown and bleached gold. I saw an oak with mistletoe, and wanted to immediately cut some, but since the tree was within sight of the ranger station, decided against it.

10/10/07- dear diary: traffic edition

Dear diary,

why is it that the larger a vehicle is, the more likely its driver is to pretend they're driving a small sportscar?

Do people who rustle and crackle plastic bags in cars seriously have no idea that they're tempting fate? The Furies have a light workload these days -- let's hire them out to torment the offenders with crackling plastic in their ears.

Can we please rename the country music station in LA to 'KGOD'? why pretend anymore? it's become the same 12 bible-thumping, redneck theme songs on endless repeat.

is it bad that I can now read freeway graffiti?

i'm pretty sure that there's something in the vehicle code forbidding more than one lane change per minute.

hating the 405 to death,

me.

crunchy tendons and car lights

so boys and girls, what do you do when you're feeling a strange crunch in your left foot?

if you answered, 'go to the doctor, you dumbass,' you're right! i now have a very nifty post-op shoe to wear.

check out that style!

it's to keep the tendons in the top of my foot from bending up when i walk. after five xrays, it's determined that nothing's broken, but i am supposed to stay off my foot and elevate it for the next couple of days, which precludes going to the studio tomorrow.

apparently, it's not so good when you land a kick incorrectly on your 80 lb. heavy bag. i didn't think much of it at the time, but i managed to bruise the muscle on the top of my foot, and move my tendons to places they should not be. the crunch sensation is the tendons snapping back to where they're supposed to go, and then back to where they're at.

a closeup, sans shoe.

how i feel about my foot.

the kicker to the evening, though, was on the way home from sushi, courtesy of my fabulous best friend, when he discovered that my right headlight was out.

how i feel about the car misbehaving.

the brights and fog lamp and parking light, and turn signal all still work on that side, and the bulb is good, as are the fuses… so it's probably just a loose wire. or, some really expensive electrical system problem. let's all cross our fingers and think 'loose wire,' shall we?

this is me, officially taking to my bed with the vapors. tomorrow i'll go tackle the car, but for now, i'm done with today.

Technorati Tags: cars, xray

yes, traffic in LA really is that bad

the latest report from california's legislative affairs office on financing transportation provides some interesting reading. the increase in traffic congestion in LA isn't just the result of nostalgic thinking; it has gotten markedly worse. some interesting facts from the report:

• Demand for Highway Travel Outpaced Population Growth. From 1990 to 2003, California’s population increased by almost 21 percent. Meanwhile, travel on the state highway system as measured by vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) increased by 26 percent.
• Highway Lane-Miles Increased Minimally. Between 1990 and 2003, highway lane-miles only increased by about 3 percent. Today, California has about 50,500 lane-miles of highways, maintained and operated by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). An additional 327,000 miles of local roads are maintained and operated by local cities and counties.
• Hours of Delay Have Risen. Because of the imbalance between road supply and travel demand, delay on urban freeways has nearly doubled from about 262,000 vehicle-hours per day in 1992 to 512,000 vehicle-hours per day in 2002.
• Increased Congestion. In 2002, 43 percent of the state’s urban freeways were congested. Congestion is defined as occurring when vehicles are traveling at 35 miles per hour or less during peak commute periods on a typical work day. This is up from 32 percent in 1992.
• Costs of Congestion. Congestion on urban freeways costs Californians at least $16 million per day (or $5.9 billion per year) in wasted time and excess fuel.
• Environmental Impacts. This delay also has negative environmental consequences, resulting in an estimated 512 additional tons of emissions per day.

  so no, it's not just complaining. it has gotten markedly worse. a 26% increase in vehicle-miles traveled, vs. a 3% increase in lane-miles increased? explains a lot.

• read the full report.

no good deed...

driving home tonight, I:

-did two people a favor
-bent a rule
-got into a car accident
-got everyone through it not just alive, but unharmed
-sacrificed slushbucket
-kept calm
-kept everyone else calm
-only said, 'i told you so' once
-discovered that slushbucket is fragile
-watched a second accident as I talked with the other drivers. that one was an ugly hit & run
-was *not* issued a ticket, though technically I could've been
-waited 2 hours for a tow truck & replacement slushbucket
-went through one hell of a bonding experience
-missed karate class

and by all that's holy, I need a drink. sorry to be so cryptic, but my job's legal dept. policy is to not talk about what happened, except to the highway patrol. and since this is public, there we go.

my back is sore, but i'm fine. posting this from my cel phone on the way back.

[EDIT] all the same, i went to kaiser to get myself checked out, because after the adrenaline wore off, i began to hurt, a lot. i got diagnosed with whiplash, and given naproxen 500mg (2x daily) and flexeril 10mg (3x daily, damn!).

joshua tree