Riverside Fleeway : Traffic: Commuters who are fed up with the snail-pace ride into Orange County each morning are finding alternate means of transportation.

Gerry Rymes had had enough.

Each morning, the Corona resident spent up to half an hour waiting in traffic just to get to the Riverside Freeway on-ramp. Then it would take another hour on the freeway to get to work in Orange. By the time he got to the office, he already was stressed, tired and angry.

In July, Rymes changed all that. Now when he sees clogged side streets, bumper-to-bumper traffic and irate drivers, he is passing it all by. By riding 24 miles to work on a bike every day, Rymes has joined a small group of Corona residents who have found ways to beat the 91, arguably the worst freeway mess in Orange and Riverside counties.

The dreaded Riverside Freeway is a lifeline, connecting the people who live in the affordable housing of western Riverside County with jobs in Orange County. But as houses and workplaces have sprung up, the freeway has clogged up, and the commuters have had to come up with innovative methods to conquer it.

While Rymes switched to cycling, Dale Ploung and Dave Reichert fly to work along with two fellow employees. And one woman has found what is perhaps the simplest solution. She just quit her job, and never has to set her eyes on the traffic jams.

Bicycling was just a hobby when Rymes moved to Corona almost five years ago. The commute was manageable then. But by 1990, more than 200,000 vehicles were passing through the Santa Ana corridor daily, and it could take him two hours to get home on a Friday night.

“It just got so bad, I couldn’t take it anymore,” said Rymes, 39, an installer of 911 emergency computer systems for PRC Public Management Services Inc. in Orange. “I was ready to quit my job. It got to a point where I wanted to either walk or ride a bike.”

He opted for the two-wheel solution. Rymes said his decision was made solely to avoid the freeway.

“I’m a commuter, not a cyclist,” he said. “I had to work up to it. . . .

“I had only been in a couple of fun rides. Then a few weeks ago I was in the OC Classic and rode 50 miles, and I had no problem at all.”

In the morning, he starts off by passing over the Riverside Freeway at Green River Road in Corona, cycles to the Santa Ana Riverbed bike trail entrance at Green River Golf Course, rides through Featherly Park and Yorba Regional Park and heads on down the Santa Ana River to the Lincoln Avenue bridge in Orange. From there he takes city streets until he gets to PRC on Town and Country Road.

For much of the 90-minute trek, traveling about 18 miles per hour, he never sees the freeway. Instead, his scenery is just the greenery of the riverbed. Occasionally, he rides with two other cyclists he has met since starting the commute.

“It’s like another world,” he said. “You don’t even notice that there’s a freeway there.”

At night, he does the same, even when it is dark, wearing a light on the top of his helmet.

“I don’t worry about getting into trouble with gangs or highwaymen because I’m usually moving too fast,” he said. “What I worry about are rocks that someone might have thrown in the path.”

The risk at night, he said, is worth it. He gets a proud feeling passing by motorists at Gypsum Canyon Road, where traffic is backed up by commuters seeking shortcuts off the freeway. On Friday nights, and when the freeway is stalled more than usual, he can even beat traffic by as much as half an hour.

“Traffic will be slow enough so I can hear what they say,” he said. “They will talk to me and say, ‘I wish I had a bike.’ Others would say some not so nice things too.”

Rymes plans to seek a reduction in his insurance premiums because he no longer drives his car to work. And the time he used to spend working out at a gym is eliminated. By commuting by bike, he said, he kills two birds with one stone.

“I have my exercise, and I don’t have the stress,” he said. “The best part is going by all those hundreds of cars.”

At about the same time Rymes pedals to work, Dale Ploung and Dave Reichert are flying from Corona Municipal Airport to Fullerton Municipal Airport, an 11-minute flight that has cut down their commute to Hughes Aircraft Co. by as much as 75 minutes.

With soft-listening music playing on headphones, the two private pilots, along with two other Hughes employees, soar 3,000 feet above the Riverside Freeway early each morning. The sun has yet to rise, and from their point of view, the freeway traffic is just a quiet river of light.

“I hate to say this, but the more traffic there is, the more beautiful the sight,” Ploung said. “It’s all streams of white and red. They look like beautiful ribbons.”

According to Fullerton Municipal Airport officials, about four groups of commuters fly daily into the airport, many of them pools of people who work at large office complexes in and near Fullerton.

Ploung, 42, purchased his first plane in 1976 while he was earning his pilot’s license. In 1982, he and three others began commuting by plane on a semi-regular basis, flying only when the freeway traffic was heavy. Now, the freeway is almost always jammed in the morning. For Ploung, what was once a hobby is now a necessity.

“We used to look at the freeway and then decide,” Ploung said. “Sometimes it wasn’t bad at all. . . . But three years ago it became mandatory.”

In fact, Reichert, 39, eventually got so used to flying in Ploung’s pool that he bought his own plane three years ago.

“There were times when Dale would take off for a week, and I didn’t like to drive,” Reichert said. “I didn’t want to deal with it. It would take me longer to get on the freeway than it would to fly to Fullerton.”

Reichert bought his plane for $13,500 and Ploung his for $20,000, and each said his is appreciating in value. The four in the pool split the weekly fuel and servicing costs of $150 a week. Tie-down fees of $45 a month, and the $900-a-year insurance costs also are shared.

But the savings in time is just one of the perks. It can be a gray day, but the commuter pool gets to see the sunshine when they ascend above the clouds. And at that altitude, the sights can include bird’s-eye views of blimps, forest fires, Disneyland hot-air balloons, and, most recently, a full-circle rainbow.

“On the freeway, it’s the same roads, the sames houses, the same cars,” Reichert said. “But if you’re flying, it changes every day.”

When they land at Fullerton, all four have one mile left on their commute. They used to have to either hoof it or hitchhike.

“We used to hold our Hughes badges out and get a ride with other employees,” Ploung said.

A few years ago, they pooled their money and bought a beat-up 1975 Volvo for $500. Now most of them leave their homes at 6:20 a.m. and are at their desks by 6:50.

In the past three years, the two pilots estimate they have made 1,500 flights.

“This is safer than cars,” Reichert said. “We’ve never had any engines quit or anything like that.”

As far as Susanna Branch is concerned, the Riverside Freeway isn’t much of a problem at all anymore. In July, she quit her job at the Orange County Environmental Management Agency in downtown Santa Ana.

“That’s the ultimate way to avoid the freeway,” said Branch, 37, who has lived in Corona for five years.

“It just ate so much of my time in a non-productive way,” she said. “It had a greater toll on me than I knew.” She and her husband now are managing on one salary.

When she first started commuting to Santa Ana three years ago, the drive was 70 minutes. By last July, it was 90 minutes. That left her with little free time in Corona, where she was eager to become involved in community events.

“When I told people I was leaving, no people seemed surprised,” she said. “Everyone seemed to go, ‘Yeah, I can dig it.’ No one said I was wimpy.”