Ordinary Nothing

The US part of my trip started at Los Angeles, proceeded to San Diego, and ended in San Francisco. A few days were set aside for getting to San Francisco from San Diego, and for stops along the way.

We decided to take highway 1, going along the coast. The only real options seemed either 1 or the 101, with 1 being touted as a scenic route. Highway 1 also went near most of the places we wanted to stop at along the way, including Santa Barbara, Solvang (requiring a very small detour), Hearst Castle, Carmel, and Monterey.

I’ve been warned that the highways and freeways in the US are of a somewhat different scale than what I’m used to from around here. Driving on the 101, 405, and 5, I could certainly agree with that. Large wide roadswith a sometimes insanely high number of lanes. So when it became the time to get on the Highway 1, I was expecting more of the same.

And was in for quite a surprise. For the most part the thing looks like an upgraded dirt road, and even that would be a compliment. A single lane only in each direction, and for the most part the lanes touch each other just like in a regular inner-city street. Heck, most inner-city streets I know are wider than this so called highway.

We joined it a little north of LA, in exactly where the map showed the connection. And there were those signs on the side of the road showing that it’s California Highway 1. And still we spent the first part of the drive seriously worried we’re on the wrong road. The word highway carries with it some expectations of size and construction levels which were just not there.

I do not expect a highway to have just one narrow lane. I do not expect it to be pitch black at night without any lampposts. I do not expect to have cars going in the opposite direction using the same road. I certainly do not expect such a large number of simple junctions inside it, requiring frequent stops and a constant state of alert on my part for joining vehicles.

At many many points, without any apparent change in the road, there would be a sign stating “highway ends” (or was it “freeway ends” ? I’m not sure, but I think highway), followed by a junction, and a “highway begins” sign. Sometimes they didn’t bother with the signs, though. Maybe they know themselves that it’s not a real highway anyway.

And all those are what we got on even just the non-scenic parts, before we reached the shore area. Once it became scenic, a few more factors joined the list. Namely, having one border of the road consisting of the face of a cliff, and the other one consisting of a long drop.

The so called highway just goes on and on as a narrow (narrow lanes, and no space on the edges of the road at all, except for the occasional shoulder intended to allow a few cars to park. No safety margins at all during driving) mountain road. But it’s still a highway, so nobody thought to maybe lower the speed limit along it. They’re not entirely insane, though, so whenever there was a sharp turn (which is almost every turn, and which happened on average a lot more than even once every kilometre, this is a narrow mountain road after all) there was a sign lowering the speed limit just for it. Yep, that amounts to lots of speed signs, each very localized.

And the drivers used to the region, or maybe also drivers with a death wish, or just drivers who aren’t too bright, actually tried to go along at full speed. Not all of them, but more than just a few. So OK, it’s true that normally I never go accidentally out of my lane when driving. But I’m a lot more relaxed knowing that I could if I had to or if it happened, without either smashing my car into a rock or dropping it down a sheer cliff. I tend to drive more carefully under such conditions, and to avoid driving too fast.

A few other drivers did so as well. But plenty just went on speeding. There were a few times I stopped in one of the available points with wider road shoulders, just to release the road so these people could overtake me. One lane each direction, I did mention that, right?

Worse yet, those parts of the road were full of bicycle riders. By the dozens. A highway lane full of bicycle riders. Followed by cars that couldn’t quite overtake them because they only had one lane, and the road twisted too much for them to have a clear view into the opposite lane to know if it’s going to be free for long enough. You can imagine what that did to the traffic speed on that direction. Which was thankfully on the opposite from ours, so even while I drove slow I didn’t have to slow to the crawl of the speed of a cyclist on a narrow mountain ledge.

Keeping the best for last, there was just this one extra factor that really brought all this together to absoloute perfection. Fog. Lots and lots of fog. At points (Though the one advantage of being high, and not directly at sea-level, was that most of the fog stayed down) the road was foggy enough that it was almost impossible to see more than a few meters ahead. This was good since I couldn’t see the drop, but was very bad because there was a drop there and I couldn’t see where.

Mind you, we were purposefully taking this road because it’s the scenic route. Never mind that I was too concentrated on staying perfectly inside the lane to pay a lot of attention to the view all the time. But the scenic route was fogged all over. So we couldn’t see the scenery even when we tried, most of the time. There were a few points where we had a clear view, unhindered by fog, and the scenery is indeed beautiful and well worth seeing. But mostly it was just driving on a lousy, narrow road, taken especially so that we could see a view which wasn’t even visible.

Fun.

October 17th, 2005 at 13:16 EET | Categories: Trips | Track comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.