Autos, autos, everywhere

So halfway through August, I moved back in with the 'rents for a couple months. I feel that I'm doing a good job freeloading here, but occasionally I'll help the family out. Beyond, of course, gracing them with my presence and serenading them with the four (soon to be five!) chords I know on the guitar. Most recently "being helpful" has involved chauffeuring my youngest sister, Haley, to high school.

Naturally, I feel it's reasonable to sleep in as much as possible. So when it was time for Haley to leave, around 7:40 am, I was still in bed. A pair of flip-flops and a sweatshirt later, we were on our way to high school. But there was something very unearthly about the experience. Maybe unearthly isn't the right word...maybe very unVentura-ly.

I live in a very calm suburban town. For the most part, people leave here to go work in Los Angeles or Santa Barbara or other, more exotic places; they typically leave around 6:30 am for work, or if they're really anxious to go and park on the freeways, they leave for work around 7:00 or 7:30 am. That being the case, normally the streets are pretty quiet in the morning.

But that day (and the next, and the next) as we went to the local high school, I was pretty sure that every single car in Ventura was on the way to the same block we were. Maybe they weren't all going to the high school, but our high school is half a block away from a middle school, kitty-corner to an elementary school, and down the street from a community college. As a result, what is normally a simple seven minute drive became a twenty minute all-out strategic battle: cars jockeying for space in the turning lanes, only to have to wait for three or four light cycles before actually turning, cars trying to change lanes and actually accomplishing the objective five minutes later. Drivers were nice to each other, and really, no bad driving was taking place. It was simply very, very crowded.

Haley and I managed to get to school by taking a right turn when we'd normally go left (but of course, we couldn't because there was no room in the left turn inn. I mean, lane.), making a U-turn about 50 feet past the light (at an intersection, very neatly and very legally. I think.), barreling down the main road leading to all these schools, pulling some neat maneuvering around apartments, dumpsters, and back lots of grocery stores, and finally ending up across the street from the high school. Haley had about five minutes to get onto campus, get across campus, and get in her seat before the bell rang.

After Haley began her cross-campus run, I turned around and headed home, mostly retracing the route we had just taken (but minus the back lots and dumpsters). But somehow, in the ten minutes it had taken for me to retrace my path, all the cars had vanished. There was still the occasional station wagon or SUV putting along the freeway, but the masses of automobiles that had clogged Ventura's streets just minutes before had all disappeared. I'm still trying to figure out where all the cars go during that, but I've decided, in the end, it's a pretty good magic trick.