Runner's Heights: No End to the Freeway

Cumulative mileage: 54

Crossing 50 miles doesn't seem like much at all but after two weeks of sickness and indisposition, I am relieved to have reached this milestone. This was a chequered run about the 50 with several firsts for me since I started recording the cumulative mileage -- I ran on consecutive days, gave up espresso (my favourite), and worked through some strange cramps in my calves. All in all, this was something that I have been meaning to keep for a while -- a runner's log without too many fancy frills. It would have been great to keep this log from the very first time that I ran in these shoes. The support on these New Balance 766 feels a little different after all these runs and it'd be nice to know how many actual miles I have put on these shoes.

There was a massive traffic jam on the 405 South this morning because a crane got jammed in an overpass. The snarl in traffic lasted for miles and I am sure that a lot of people were either late for work or missed their doctor's appointments. If you take the 405 freeway, you must have noticed that they are trying to add one more lane to both directions of the freeway along parts of West L.A. I can only swagger a guess, but this entire project, including, rebuilding those sound-proof walls, must cost close to a billion dollars, not counting the time wasted due to the increased traffic jams due to the construction. Broadening the freeway was either a madcap idea or someone's clever scheme to get rich quick. The funds that the city/state is spending on this hair-brained project could have easily gone towards developing mass-transit along the same stretch of the freeway. Adding an extra lane does little to alleviate traffic -- it is perhaps, conventional wisdom, that that extra lane will soon be clogged up because more people will chose to take the highway since there is significant housing development around the Playa del Rey/LA airport area that abuts the freeway. And no one's counting the environmental impact of more cars on the residential communities next to the freeway. Once again, it's making the coffers of some councilfolks and construction workers heavy.