Fun in Traffic

I'm a fan of the dance party. Anywhere. Anytime. And car karaoke. So a lot of singing and bouncing takes place on the seats of my car (that sounded so wrong). Honestly I have a lot of fun in my car. I'm probably quite biased on this topic as my office is 3 blocks (2.5 if I take the alleyway entrance in) from my apartment. The concept of rush hour in LA is slightly foreign to me. And I'm trying to keep it that way. I'll be going back to grad school round dos in the fall at UCLA, which on a good day from my apartment is an hour drive... one way and on a bad day upwards of two hours... one way. If I did that five days a week I'd spend 5-10+ hours per week just driving to and from campus. That doesn't even count commuting to my fieldwork sites, libraries, and other fun stuff. This would up the potential for all kinds of badness I won't get into (not the point of this blog). It certainly doesn't need to be spelled out to anyone who's spent any amount of time stuck in traffic how much of a downer it can be. Moral of that story, I'll be moving to reduce time spent in traffic. But in the meantime I've spent significant time stuck in Atlanta traffic when I lived there and do have to drive places for work (on the non-profit's limited dime and time) and fun and have discovered some ways to keep your sanity if you have no alternative but to hang out on the freeways. And keep those other fools from going postal on you.

Dance Parties and Karaoke: Bring your favorite CDs or ipod with you or tune to your fav station and rock out. If you keep the windows rolled up no one can hear you (they may wonder what you're doing, though). If you roll them down and are on the 405 you could start the world's largest dance party.

Books on Tape: Saved my life in Atlanta. Although I'm not an audio learner by any means and have no recollection of anything I listened to.

Bring Friends: This opens up the carpool lane. And you get to chat with peeps you like. If you're carpooling with randoms make new friends.

Eat: I know doing anything other than driving is frowned upon but if you aren't moving and can multi-task even slightly you should be able to pull this one off.

Make Phone Calls: Again, frowned upon and in some states (such as California) illegal without appropriate hands free devices (which I find more distracting than actually holding the phone) but if you have those it's a great time to catch up with far away peeps.

Make Up Stories in Your Head: I cannot be the only one who does this.

Visualize: For those of you who Secret it up or even for those who don't there's plenty of scientific research to back up the benefits of doing so. Make it full of the good stuff!

What do you do to stay sane in the car?


Best bro ever driving us through Death Valley with no AC! He didn't even need these tips!