I have experienced the 405—405 from 101 interchange and Sepulveda Pass south bound to LAX/Playa del Rey, three hours to go roughly 18 miles is common anytime after 3 p.m. and surface streets after you get through the pass into Santa Monica offers a 90 minute to 2 hour alternative.

Not a surprise. What is a surprise is that so many endure it day in and day out and think it—normal, tolerable, an endurable nuisance, just another day in the big city, fun, an adventure, good excuse for being late for a meeting—and not straight up insanity.

Insanity, now there is a word that, along with normalcy, has lost all meaning.

What we see unfolding was foretold—not in a oracle of delphi way, but in a Stanford Research Institute way—forty years ago in Seven Tomorrows. (come to think of it what was the Stanford Research Institute might very well have been a doppelganger for the oracle of delphi).

Half a century later and we are still in the same place confronting the same issues only now they are exponentially more urgent.

After all that we have seen and experienced denial trumps reality and we fill it up one more time cause you know it can't stay at $0.75; $1.22; $2.35; $3.43; $4.17; $5.85; $6.66 (a nod to Lucifer who makes an appearance further on in this thread) and I need the room for the kids, the dogs, the dirt bikes, the snowmobiles, the personal watercrafts, and the cases of food and paper products from Costco/Sam's Club.

And who are we to say the residents of the rest of the planet can't enjoy what we consider our birthright?

Besides science, technology and the free market will find a way through. I mean they have done such a bang up job to this point.