TALES FROM THE FREEWAY : Roadshow : Driver Finds Freeway Frenzy Can Be the True Test of Friendship

Since 4 a.m., I had been wide awake, staring at the acoustical spackle on my bedroom ceiling and wondering if I had time to develop a semi-debilitating disease, something that would prevent me from driving.

I was thinking about the mission that loomed ahead of me that day. I was driving myself crazy. Well, close. I was driving myself to Los Angeles.

It was my girlfriend’s bridal shower, and it was being held at her mother’s home in San Pedro. There would be no avoiding it. I would have to get on a freeway, maybe even two.

I like to think of myself as a fairly well-adjusted woman of the ‘90s. I vote. I recycle. I am thinking about joining a health club. But when it comes to driving a car on anything other than a surface street, I become a woman of the cave era.

I commute only 3 miles to work every day, and I never even have to look at a freeway on-ramp. It wasn’t until recently when my Los Angeles girlfriend named me her maid of honor that I realized I had better buck up and learn to drive the long and winding road.

Two weeks before The Day, I had my car tuned up, not wanting to take a chance on it blowing up and leaving me stranded.

A week in advance, I taped the directions to my dashboard and began memorizing them at stoplights. The night before, restless and unable to sleep, I went to a 24-hour gas station and had a real, live person fill my tank with super unleaded, check the pressure in my tires, and wash my windshield.

And lastly, I made sure there was plenty of room on the back seat for The Cake. Early in my girlfriend’s engagement, in an excess of giddy spirits and bonhomie, I had volunteered to supply the bridal shower cake.

And then the day dawned.

I first stopped at my parents’ house to say goodby, operating on the theory I might never see them again.

I was off. As the on-ramp to I-5 North approached, I bit my lower lip and hit the gas pedal, my eyes squinting in the hot July morning sun.

For inspiration and courage, I popped into the tape player my cassette of the “Chariots of Fire” soundtrack. I shot onto the freeway and immediately headed for the most inviting lane, the second one from the left.

As the sound of bagpipes filled my Honda Civic, I shifted into fifth gear and started doing 70 m.p.h. The car lurched forward with an effort, never before having been required to do more than 45 m.p.h., and I heard The Cake slide across the back seat.

I was on I-5 several minutes before I stopped pressing my nose against the windshield and stopped strangling the steering wheel. I settled back a bit and began to survey my surroundings.

I immediately was thankful for the lane I had chosen. Watching the fast lane, crowded with expensive European cars trying to do Mach 5, filled me with a kind of performance anxiety.

I was equally glad I avoided the slow lane, where I observed an Iowa couple in their Winnebago wrestling with a California road map like it was an alligator.

Sailing past Del Mar, Carlsbad, Oceanside, I began to feel at one with the interstate. Traffic was light, everyone was observing my cushion of space; I thought about becoming a truck driver.

As I neared the U.S. immigration checkpoint at San Clemente, I sat up straight, took off my sunglasses and tried not to look suspicious. I wondered if there was a fine for traveling across county lines with a cake.

Then I noticed a huge sign with bold black letters and blinking lights stating, “Caution, Watch for People Crossing Freeway.” Everyone slammed on their breaks.

Minutes later, I watched two men in a dilapidated truck being pulled over by a green-and-white Border Patrol car filled with agents. The instant the men pulled their truck over to the shoulder, they leaped out and blindly bolted across the road. Drivers slammed on their brakes, and I watched the two men weave in and out of halting traffic, trying to make it to the other side of the freeway.

Not wanting to continue on through this human obstacle course, I thought I would just turn around at the next stop and go home. But traffic was picking up again and, before I knew it, I was in Mission Viejo, stuck behind a huge Blue Goose charter bus hiccuping thick, grayish-black exhaust. Traffic again came to a stop.

After inching along for 47 minutes, I cursed myself for buying a car without air conditioning. Then I began to worry about The Cake. I twisted around in my seat and lifted the lid of the pink box, which had slid to the far right-hand side of the back seat. My fears were allayed. The buttercream roses hadn’t wilted.

Finally, I made the transition from I-5 to the 405, but as I came closer to the city, I noticed a subtle change in my demeanor. My teeth were clenched, and I had stepped up my speed to 85 m.p.h. to keep pace with the other motorists. I still wasn’t fast enough. The traffic here was more intense, more aggressive; there was less space between cars. I jealously eyed the zooming drivers using the shiny new diamond lane. I wondered if The Cake could be considered a passenger.

At last, I spied the exit I needed and shot across three lanes of traffic to get there.

By the time I knocked on my girlfriend’s front door, 3 1/2 hours after I had left my home, I simply said to her, “I’ve come to live with you. I’m never going out there again. Let’s have some cake.”