A Great Wall of Trucks

Posted on July 18, 2005 in Driving

Enroute to the King Tut Exhibit via the 91 Freeway: I chose to guide Lynn along this corridor to avoid the inevitable burnt-petroleum fragrance and constipation that one finds at the head of Interstate 5, at the point where it goes crazy trying to make sense of the Pomona, San Bernardino and Long Beach Freeways. The 91 proved to have its own form of congestion, unique in my experience. Trucks filled the second lane to the right. Semis and container haulers in oranges, blues, greens, yellows as well as the usual silvers and whites. Smooth sides and ridged sides. A couple of tanker trucks. A great wall of trucks that ran for I don’t know how far. Think of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Here we are moving along the side of the vehicles — not counting them, just looking to see if a single automobile breaks the line. A gardener’s truck complete with a ridged picket around its cargo area appears in the space between two behemoths.

“Does that count?” I ask Lynn.”

“Yes,” she says. It’s a truck in a line of other trucks. The rope of consciousness of heavy motors goes unbroken.

Moving at 65 miles an hour, we don’t bother to measure the length except in time. Next to them, we’re only moving at 10 or 15 miles per hour, so it takes forever to get to the end and leave them behind us. Once we do, it appears that there are no more trucks in Los Angeles County. Not along the 91, not all the way into downtown Los Angeles via the Harbor Freeway. None except a single red semi cab, looking like a decapitation or a lost brick.