Expert on Beating Traffic Got His Signals Crossed
In the “How to Win at Everything” issue of Men’s Journal magazine, NASCAR racer Kurt Busch explains “how to beat traffic.”
His secret: “At a stoplight, you need to know when the signal is going to change if you’re going to have momentum as you cross the line. Look across the intersection at the crosswalk signal. When it hits red, let off the brake and gently hit the gas.
“Then at the flag -- I mean, green light -- drop into and really step on it.” Yeah, great advice for Southern California drivers. Step on it when the light turns green -- and risk smashing into all the drivers running the red light in the cross traffic.
Me, I’d be more interested in advice on “how to survive traffic.”
Guide to Dining Adventurously: Today’s specials du column (see accompanying) include:
* A recipe involving some chickens that obviously never had the ability to cross the road (Larry Armstrong).
* An eatery whose barbecued ribs are attached via special tools (photo by Bob Padgett).
* A taco shop with a clever parody of stupid product-label warnings -- at least I hope it’s a parody (Margaret Gomme).
* And a pizza shop where the toppings are 18 times more expensive than the plain variety. (Louise Bowman). Yes, even for anchovies.
A whale-watcher who didn’t need binoculars: Michael Kazma wrote to Surfing Magazine that, in the water near Oceanside Pier, “as I sat on my board waiting for the next set, a 35-to-40-foot gray whale surfaced under me. Its back rose out of the water, carrying me on it. Not realizing what was happening, I rolled back off the whale into the water.”
Kazma said the creature then submerged, hit him with a wall of water and left him “thinking about the ride of my life.”
Serial splasher? Surfing Magazine’s editors noted this was the third story they had heard in recent months of a frolicsome whale answering to that description in those waters.
Spyros Vamvas earlier had told Surfing that, off San Clemente, he was lifted in the same manner as Kazma, at which time Vamvas “looked directly down and all I could see was the back of the whale and a whole lot of barnacles.”
“But it positioned me so perfectly, it lifted me up and then it gently lowered me back down so that I remained in the same position. I never fell off my board,” Vamvas said. “The whale expert I talked to believed that the whale actually wanted to communicate with me.”
Maybe the creature wanted to know if a successor to Disney boss Michael Eisner had been named.
MiscelLAny: Allen Wilkinson of Whittier was exiting a fast-food store with a cup of coffee when a panhandler asked him for change. When Wilkinson said he had just 11 cents in coins, the guy asked, “Could I borrow your Visa or MasterCard for 10 minutes?”
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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATimes, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012, and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.