Tour de Farce : Duo Buckle Up, Hunker Down to Prove That Some of the Best Things in Life Are Freeways

It all seems like a pretty good idea at 8:30 in the morning as we gun up the Harbor Boulevard ramp and onto the northbound San Diego Freeway--the 405. We have a Thermos full of hot coffee, a sack full of croissants and 9 hours in which to drive every mile of freeway in Orange County.

An entire day in the fast lane, whizzing along in that magical halo of speed far enough above 55 to be minimally stimulating yet still close enough to be legally acceptable.

Every inch of Orange County freeway in one working day. Not even the most zealous CHP officers do that. But at 8:30 a.m., with the morning traffic beginning to move along nicely, it seems like a worthy task, a lead-footer’s tour where the journey, and not the destination, is the goal.

Thus liberated, photographer Henry DiRocco and I are free to gawk to our hearts’ content. We can transcend that peculiar alpha state that so many freeway drivers sink into from the moment they merge into the slow lane, a sort of rolling catatonia that causes them to block out any outside stimulus until they finally set the parking brake.

The trip is good for a few laughs almost from the start, as we slowly pass an Alamo rental car, a black Buick filled with what appears to be foreign business people desperately poking at a large unfolded map and pointing in several directions at once.

Their confusion almost causes us to miss the singular sights of a freeway-side miniature golf course near Magnolia Street that features an ersatz Big Ben tower, and the two immense American flags and the tethered advertising balloon at Sunset Ford that has come to be known as Willie the Whale, an Orange County icon if ever there was one. And, almost immediately after that, the mysterious rows of mounds at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station.

What do people think--say, people who fly in from Iowa, get off the plane at LAX and head south immediately--when they pass all that stuff? That Orange County is probably one big nuke repository and that Willie is a clever barrage balloon? That the plowed fields next to the weapons station are filled with immense mutated beans?

We swing north in a wide right-hand arc and merge onto the San Gabriel River Freeway, Interstate 605, heading into Los Alamitos, elevation 25 feet, soon passing quickly in and out of Long Beach, Lakewood and Cerritos. Most of this stretch is technically out of the county, but it is the quickest way to get to the Riverside Freeway eastbound. It is also remarkable principally for its buff-colored sound walls.

Only moments onto the Riverside (or California 91), we spot our first vanity plate. It is attached to a gray Volvo station wagon with a mountain bike screwed to the roof. It reads NHIGEAR. Moments later near Walker Street we spot another, a Peugeot with I CYKLE on the plate. We respond to the glut of healthy cyclists out for a freeway drive by dipping into the croissant bag. And, on cue, a white Taurus appears ahead with a license plate frame reading Yes I Am the Muffin Man. The driver wears glasses, a tie and a glazed expression.

For the next 7 miles, Henry cannot stop whistling “Yes, I Am the Muffin Man.”

We see our first California Highway Patrol car near the Santa Ana Freeway--Interstate 5--interchange. The officer has stopped a car on the shoulder and is issuing a ticket. Traffic slows down nearly 10 m.p.h., upsetting the natural rhythm of the uncongested freeway. Why is it, we grumble, that everyone seems to believe that the poor cop, his head buried in his ticket book, is suddenly going to sense that someone has just passed him at 60 m.p.h., drop everything and take off after the scofflaw in relentless high-speed pursuit?

We quickly polish off the short stretch of I-5 between the 91 and the Los Angeles County line, twice passing the surest sign that one has just crossed into the commercial-industrial no-man’s land on the way to Los Angeles: the block-like building north of the freeway with the big sign on top that reads NABISCO.

Back on the 91 eastbound, I begin to squirm as Henry aims the car between a huge Pepsi truck and the center median. Along this stretch, the fast lane is badly paved, irregular and uneven and the ride is not smooth. Henry is unperturbed, however, and shoots through the gap in seconds.

Trucks begin to appear everywhere: cement trucks, flatbeds, beer trucks, trucks carrying pallets, dual trailer rigs, sand and gravel trucks. Even a mushroom truck, we discover, as we stop to talk to a Caltrans crew clearing a spill at Kraemer Avenue.

The night before, explains Caltrans maintenance superintendent Ed Burton, a rig full of mushrooms ran down the embankment, spilling a good part of its load into the ditch. Equipment operator Diego Valencia is scooping up the roadside salad with a small hydraulic shovel, and supervisor Keith Samson is standing above him on the shoulder--the most vulnerable position at the scene--keeping an eye on the traffic.

“You see it all after a while,” said Burton, waving a hand at the pile of mushrooms. But those (drivers) up there are interested in what the equipment’s doing, so they aren’t looking at us. We had three guys killed in Southern California just last month.”

Leaving the crew and walking back up the Kraemer freeway ramp, we notice that nearly every foot of the shoulder of the ramp is flecked with shards of green-and-brown glass, the residue of hurled beer bottles. Unnoticeable at freeway speeds, it makes you want to walk lightly when you’re on foot.

Santa Ana Canyon is a welcome sight, as we make the wide bend into it and skirt the northern end of the Costa Mesa Freeway, California 55. There is a long freight train winding around the foothills to the north, and the expanse of valley gives this stretch a wonderful “open road” feeling, making us wish we were driving a convertible. It’s what most of Orange County looked like back in the days when development meant improving your mind. A newly terraced, bulldozed hill near Gypsum Canyon Road, a harbinger, spoils it.

The reward at the county line is Green River Golf Course, a layout nearly pretty enough to take away golfers’ realization of the fact that they’re playing hard by a freeway. Still, said Bill Hubka, a visiting golfer from Bothell, Wash., raising his voice over the din of traffic after sinking a putt on the first green, “you just have to drown it out.” The cars speed by the course slightly above the level of the golfers’ heads, but the channel of the Santa Ana River, filled with rushing water, that separates the freeway and the course provides a needed feeling of security and distance.

We backtrack west, passing lines of campers and RVs along the banks of the Santa Ana River Lakes, and turn north on the Orange Freeway, California 57. This is a working stretch of freeway, filled with large trucks, commercial vehicles, vans and unadorned, practical cars. Cars have names here, like El Camino and Tercel. They do not have model numbers and definitely do not have cellular phone antennae.

The stretch around Cal State Fullerton is filled with apartments--student territory. A couple of miles farther on, however, the Brea hillsides sprout rows and rows of tan and buff-colored houses, antiseptically new, another reminder that what I thought of as a sprawling wild lands area only 15 years ago has become much less wild and much more of a sprawl.

We turn around just south of Diamond Bar and join the traffic heading south toward the high-rise buildings of Santa Ana and Orange, which we can see swimming vaguely in the haze. We turn west on the 91 and backtrack to the I-5 southbound, where we run into the first real traffic slowdown of the morning. For 5 miles, Henry rows his way through the gears.

A car passes with a bumper sticker that reads “Lose Weight Now! Ask Me How.” I fight down the impulse to roll down the window and scream, “OK . . . How?” at the frozen-faced woman behind the wheel.

Personal expression is more frequent here: a Mercedes 500 SL with tinted windows--a true ad man’s chariot--sporting plates reading ADV STAR, a black Trans Am with fuzzy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror, an empty flatbed truck near Ball Road with a “Don’t Shoot, I’ll Move Over” sticker. A car carrier truck laden with Chevys looms up on the right. High above our heads, the cars’ undercarriages sparkle. One of these days, I think--bringing up what I think is probably a freeway fear peculiar only to me--one of those cars is going to drop off.

“You know,” says Henry, “one of these days one of those cars is going to drop off. . . .”

Things begin to get touristy: hotels, motels, billboards that reach a crescendo near Disneyland. “SEE FAMOUS OUTLAW BUTCH CASSIDY GUN” reads a marquee at the Station Inn. During the perennial temporary halt at the interchange of the Orange, Garden Grove and Santa Ana freeways, true natures become evident. Sports car drivers, I notice, tend to sink and slouch in their seats, relaxed, loose, perhaps drumming out a tune on the door frame with their fingers. Drivers of the big, expensive cars, if they’re not on the phone, look rigid, upright, purposeful. The econo-box drivers look like they’re late, harried. A Buffalo Springfield song comes on the radio. I slouch.

After a lunch near the Saddleback Inn in Santa Ana (which displays a banner on its street overpass that reads “Santa Says . . . Say No to Drugs,” we slide down the 1st Street on-ramp, traverse quickly into the fast lane and head south. We pull up behind a flatbed truck with a pair of angry-looking, prong-like extensions jutting backward toward us, about at nose level. Henry and I confess to a mutual hatred of the prongs, which we have seen many times before, and he fairly leaps into the adjacent lane.

The recently pristine agricultural land bordering the freeway in Irvine has begun to fill up with auto dealerships and huge specialty stores, obscuring what would be a crystalline view of the hills. We envy the uncluttered view of the F-18 pilots as they make braking turns low in the air above, blasting over one of the few orange groves left in Orange County, near the Laguna Freeway.

Passing through the commercial strips south of the junction of the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways, things begin to take on what Henry and I both recognize as the distinctive look of the south county: wider lanes, broader landscape, greener hills. The feeling that your next stop certainly must be San Diego. You can sense yourself getting more and more expansive behind the wheel, settling a little deeper into your seat, thinking that, were it legal and safe, a little Cordon Rouge would hit the spot. That breezing-along-through-early-California contentment.

The cozy little mission neighborhood comes and goes, and then comes that lovely, parabola through Capistrano Beach and the long undulations of the hills through San Clemente. The air is crackling and salty and bright. We consider taking on provisions, gassing up, saying to hell with it and heading for Cancun.

We don’t. We turn around at the county line at Trestles Beach, a couple of miles shy of the nuclear plant at San Onofre, passing up a lingering sea view that extends all the way to Mexico and the Coronado Islands, and backtrack once again. We have covered nearly 200 miles, and white line fever is beginning to creep in.

It is 3:15 when the traffic begins to back up near Crown Valley Parkway, and the quintessential Southern California vehicle appears in the next lane: a light blue Mazda pickup with a license plate that reads LVTSURF. It is less amusing now than it would have been 6 hours ago. Welcome relief comes in the form of the first one-finger salute of the day. We see it from behind, delivered lustily by a man who had been cut off while exiting at El Toro Road.

We polish off the Laguna Freeway--the shortest and probably the most lovely stretch of freeway in the county--too quickly. Groves of oranges, lines of eucalyptus, a running stream, all pass by in a flash before we backtrack north on the I-5 and wind onto the Costa Mesa Freeway northbound.

At the wheel, Henry is excited, anticipating rocketing up the car pool lane. However, the freeway is loose enough that he elects to stay in the conventional lanes.

Hope for the world at Chapman Avenue: a bumper sticker that says “I A Good Book.”

We reach the 91, then turn around and backtrack the 55. Only a few more miles to go. Take care of the stretch of 57 from Santa Ana to the 91, then the 55 from Santa Ana south, then the 405 northbound to Harbor Boulevard. We’ll miss the worst of the afternoon traffic. Henry slumps at the wheel.

“I hate to say this. I really hate to say this. I really, really do. . . .”

We have forgotten the Garden Grove Freeway.

Now it is a race. We quit grumbling after we take care of the eastern end of the 22 and then the 57, but the traffic has started to swell and slow as we bend back onto the 22 and head for Long Beach. The sun is setting in our eyes and, even though it is lovely and turns the glass towers at the City shopping center a deep gold, our minds are on one thing. We want out of that damn car. The coffee has run out.

It is second gear all the way back from Los Alamitos, but there is a penultimate lift of the spirits as we realize that there are two of us in the car and we can use the car-pool lane on the Costa Mesa Freeway southbound.

“We go into light speed now, right?” Henry asks happily. I nod and he does, chasing a landing 737 into the pink evening glow.

We have forgotten the Corona del Mar Freeway, too, but it doesn’t matter. It’s on our way. And the flyover ramp from the southbound 55 is a wonderful, smooth arc around the airport high-rises, which are starting to wink in the dusk. Then a quick surface street dash around UC Irvine, back on the 405 and. . . .

Lock-up. The last 2 miles of the journey are the slowest of all. Barely crawling, we shout and curse and pound the dash, mired in a growling, humming mass of glazed commuters. We ease up next to a car with a sticker reading “I Swerve and Hit People at Random.” It is a good time to pack it in.

Fifteen minutes later at 5:30 p.m., nearly 250 miles of freeway after we chuckled smugly at the frantic foreign map readers, we pull off at Harbor Boulevard, frayed, frazzled, thoroughly cuffed around by modern life. About 14 hours of sleep sounds like just the thing.

Still, a trace of warped pride remains. We see one last bumper sticker, attached brazenly to an RV: “We Drove the Alaskan Highway.”

Big deal.