\jeff{krimmel}

An Interesting Trip To and From Long Beach

Ariele’s mom flew into Long Beach today for a series of classes she’s involved with through her employer. Ariele and I drove out to her mom’s hotel tonight to have dinner with her. We left around 5:30 PM or so, and about five miles onto the 710, we hit deadlocked traffic. And not just for a few minutes. Half an hour’s worth of never getting the speedometer to 5 MPH. We switched from the CD player to AM radio to try to get traffic updates, and since it’s Sunday evening, the frequency of these reports is much less than during the week.

Finally, after playing around with both FM and AM, we stumbled across a traffic report, and sure enough, there had been an injury collision on the 710 with one reported death. The traffic reporter recommended exiting at the exit we had just passed or any exit prior to that. Tough luck for us. After continued puttering along at about 2 MPH, we finally came up to the accident, and it was a bad one. An eighteen wheeler had flipped onto its side, having noticeably taken out at least one car with it. A second car seemed to have plowed into the eighteen wheeler after it had tumbled over. One death seemed to be a bit conservative based on the total destruction we saw as we passed the accident. The five lanes of the 710 had been condensed to one, thus the traffic.

On the way back from dinner (around 9 PM), the backup along that side of the 710 was even worse. Of course we had the better fortune of seeing it from the other side of the freeway, but it was horrendous. Miles and miles of headlights without any movement to be seen. During the daytime on our trip down, the other side of the freeway had come close to a standstill as a result of the rubbernecking. The accident really was that bad.

The one bright spot: on the way back from dinner, we passed a truck pulling a boat. As we got closer, we noticed the name of the boat: “Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy.” And yes, it was being pulled by a low-rider duelly. Hot.