That is a truly appalling looking road.
The left two lanes are for people willing to pay a toll (or HOV, pretty rare during rush hour). Four lanes worth of pavement has gone into producing two toll lanes, which are backed up nearly as bad as the main portion of the highway. And that, my friend, sums up driving in Houston.
Yeah, LA did these stupid PACE lanes which basically meant you couldn't carpool the 110 or the 10E without paying the state $5 a month and owning a $40 pass. Everyone hates it, a private company makes the lions' share of profits and the road is totally empty for motorcyclists. Seattle did the same damn thing except since you can get in and out of the carpool lane whenever you want I-405 is like "sometimes carpool, sometimes not, sometimes free, sometimes $18 to drive two miles, who the fuck knows, take a risk and see if we send you a ticket." So they sacked the bitch. And you can call that partisan warfare but FFS between the bullshit 405 lanes and the bullshit tunnel somebody should be shot, not fired.
I chose my apartment almost solely based on proximity to the meager light rail system. The only thing about driving that I miss is the privacy, but you don't really get that with a bike. This is how Texans identify a Californian, by the way....the 110 or the 10E...
Torontonians say the 401, the 404, the DVP, etc. I always chose my place to live so it is no more than a 15 minute walk to work.
Do you mean "is" as in "a local cultural majority decides truths" or "is" as in "the government puts 'THE ###' in official documents, on street signs, etc."? Genuinely curious. It could be on every billboard there, I wouldn't have noticed. This whole going-to-California-but-only-working thing sucks. Did manage to have lunch in Chinatown the other day, but never laid eyes on the Golden Gate.
"is" as in if you say "take 405" in Los Angeles, people start repeating you in a Russian accent to illuminate what a rube you are. The government calls it "the San Diego Freeway" because fuck you, that's why. Know what's funny? The road between the 10 (the Santa Monica Freeway in this case, but also the San Bernardino Freeway) and the 1 (the Pacific Coast Highway) used to be called the 187 until, well, So now it's called "Moomat Ahiko Way" because apparently that's the name of a river that may or may not have been there in the language of a tribe that may or may not have lived there. Or so the story goes. I mean, they crowdsourced this shit.
The 26 lane highway in the article I posted above is actually IH-10, but it's called the Katy Freeway in Houston. If you drive 200 miles to the west, it's the McDermott Freeway. So when you tell me that 1350 miles later, it's got a new set of names, I shouldn't be pissed off, right? No, it's fine, to compensate, we'll build plenty of roads that aren't anywhere near contiguous, but have the same name. Season's greetings, hopefully your mother and grandmother didn't try to diagnose you with a mental illness on Christmas morning. Don't worry though, they managed to make it a worse time for my girlfriend than me. We've already booked a cruise during Christmas of 2017, so fucking done with my mom. Sorry dad, if you're reading this, you fuckin' rock.
Well, mother-in-law is hopped up on Oxy from her shoulder surgery and wife and daughter have a bad case of the flu, but otherwise we be jammin'. As my ex-girlfriend's dad (the psychiatrist) pointed out: anxiety and depression are often psychologically appropriate responses to stressors. Medication may ameliorate the symptoms but the treatment is to remove the stressors, not change the patient. Don't let the cruise be your next vacation. Get a weekend away somewhere fun and cheap.
Great advice, 'bl00. Thanks. Yeah, I'm gonna be A-OK. :)