Michael’s Blog

Why do we pay taxes if people like the President are for building toll roads that change rates according to peak commute hours? Check out this collection of articles:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/bottleneck/2007/week7/index.html

I can not express how enraged I am to read such stupidity. Instead of growing with the times our government officials are taking advantage of the population increase and their predecessors lack of foresight to design Freeways that would be large enough to keep traffic flowing for decades.

Instead, the 91 freeway has been one of, if not the worst freeway tax payers drive on every day to get to work. And instead of addressing the problem and widening the freeways, these morons are capitalizing on the suffering of others. And yes, it is suffering. Have you ever spent 2 hours in gridlock to go 20 miles?

We have a choice right? We could pay the $9.25 and bypass about 30 minutes of traffic on the 91, but why? The lanes end and merge drivers into the areas where the congestions starts. Right at the 71. We still have to crawl passed the 71 and the 15, transitions so poorly designed they back up usable lanes starting around 1:30 pm and slow down the rest of the freeway sometimes until 10 pm everyday, even weekends.

Those that think capitalizing on tax payers is a great idea should be demoted to monitoring those roads during the hours of 4-6pm daily for the rest of their lives. We don’t need more toll lanes, we need more free lanes. We don’t need more carpool lanes because so many of us come from so many other directions in Souther California that it is unusable. The time spent in organizing a groups schedule to get in a car at 4:30 am to get to from Riverside to Orange County by 7 am is better wasted rotting in our own cars by ourselves. At least we can sleep 2 more hours and go to lunch that day. The whole thing is just stupid stupid stupid.

I call for a traffic renaissance revolution. I say everyone stuck in the lanes on the 91 should merge into the Express Lanes. They can’t catch us all right? Only a couple a day. One $300 fine a year vs 27 days a year in traffic sounds good to me. And yes, 27 24 hour days. At 2.5 hours a day I spend 650 hours a year in traffic. 27 solid days breathing exhaust, destroying the atmosphere, wasting gas, and killing my body to get to where the money is, and get back to where I can afford to live. There isn’t even a road from Anaheim Hills to Corona. A simple 3 mile road along the hillside through to Corona at Greenriver would alleviate so much of the congestion. I’m not sure about the status of that hillside. It may be part of the preservation of the Cleveland National Forest. All those idle cars are killing more of the habitat than a 2 or 3 lane road along the hillside would. How many millions of gallons of gas are wasted in gridlock along the 91 freeway before Greenriver?

The 91 freeway is a major corridor for people driving from all areas in Riverside. This is why carpooling does not work. These areas include, but are not limited to, Palm Springs, Temecula, Elsinore, Murrieta, Mira Loma, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Pomona, Loma Linda, Corona, Yorba Linda, Riverside, Chino. All the money is in Orange County and Los Angeles, and all the affordable housing is in the Inland Empire.

Its the people of the Inland Empire that help make Southern California what it is economically, but its these people that are made to suffer and are taken advantage of daily due to the conditions of the freeways we are made to drive on.

Forget the immigration protests. What if everybody who drove the 91 Freeway took a day off, or how about a week? What if we all went on vacation in the same week? Economic growth in Orange County and Los Angeles would grind to a halt. What will it take to open the eyes of the right people to get this freeway moving again?

Its time to take action because these morons in charge are working backwards. Instead of fixing the 4-3 lane bottleneck at the 91 and 15 they’re reconditioning the road at the 241. What the heck is with that? The congestion begins in Corona, not Anaheim Hills. It just backs up into Anaheim Hills at Weir Canyon. Hello, is anybody home, think Mclfy think!

The photos I took at the 2007 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach are up:

http://www.michaelbartholomew.com/LongBeachGrandPrix2007/

I have a good collection of cars. This was the first year ALMS ran at Long Beach. It was pretty exciting to see these cars in person. Champcars were redesigned for this year with a different chasis and layout. Ferrari 430s, Porsches, the Chevrolet C6R, the Audi R8 and more were running around the course.

Today was pretty exciting for me. Google knows I exist! Or, at least it knows www.michaelbartholomew.com exists! I’ve been posting my photography up on there for sometime now, but just today it actually lists me at the top.

Some catagories I’ve photographed:

John Agnew Sculpture
Long Beach Grand Prix 2006
One Ford Road in Newport Beach California
LA and Orange County Autoshows
NHRA Winter Nationals
Wedding Photography

I exist!

This will be short.

This morning I had an insight into my childhood. I was driving out of our complex with a freshly washed evo and on my right was an 8 to 10 year old that could not keep his eyes off it. As I drove passed I gave him a little rev and heard him give out a “woohoo yeah”. Thats exactly how I felt about crazy cars when I was a child, and as a matter of fact, how I still react to anything that grunts and roars down the street, on 2 or 4 wheels.

A couple months ago I finally registered my own domain name to host my portfolio. I’ve been updating the site with portfolios of events, but I have yet to update the front page with something nicely designed.

I’ve come up with many logo concepts and I think I’m getting closer to finalizing one of them. In the next couple weeks I should be set, but we’ll see I guess.

This week I’ve been taking 5 freeways and its been doing me a bit of good. Each day I’ve averaged between 45 and 60 minutes getting to work in Santa Ana from Corona.

I’ve added a new type of car to hate on my way in. Camry drivers have moved right up with Prius, BMW and Mercedes drivers. I tend to generalize of course, not all BMW and Mercedes drivers are horrible, but 2 days in a row I’ve seen Camry drivers going around people waiting at stop signs while reading the newspaper, and signaling right while merging left and then slamming on the brakes while the rest of traffic is moving.

Anyway, to sum up the week, I hate the SR91 freeway more than anything because of the 91Expresslane road work and the work on Ortega Highway, and I hate old Camry drivers.

Today was much like yesterday. I approached the SR91 to see gridlock. Today was no ordinary gridlock though. Mckinley St., off SR91 is approximately 1.5 miles from the 15 freeway. This wonderful junction is the beginning of my own, and many others, pain each and every day. It took me 1 hour to reach the interchange of the 15, and thats where I gave up and went home to work until 10:30.

People merge onto the 91 from all areas of Riverside. The 15 is heavy merging on to the 91 from North and South, especially with those putrid inconsiderate gravel trucks coming from South Corona off Magnolia. It is a major artery of traffic flow to Orange and LA Counties, yet it is only 3 lanes wide on either side before the 15 freeway. This creates a bottleneck going to Orange County and where the traffic slow begins coming back to Riverside and Corona. Typically the traffic flow is not alleviated until Greenriver Rd, which is the last exit in Corona.

The backup going West starts early, around 5:30 am. The backup Eastbound begins around 1 o’clock where the traffic begins to wig out at the 15 interchange and the SR91. The ripple affect builds and carries until its reached its potency at Weir Canyon in Yorba Linda. This is where most of the pain begins, and where traffic slows to a crawl all the way through Riverside passed Pierce St.

When I found myself confronted by the same volume of cars at 10:30 am I took the risk to try something different. And so, I went 15 North to the 60 West toward Los Angeles to the 57 South toward Santa Ana to the 5 South. I changed freeways 5 times and made it to my office in 45 minutes arriving at 11:15. It was unbelievable.

As I sat for the first hour listening to the traffic report for some fatality crash in Corona I didn’t hear a peep. They talked about the 405, 5, 605, 210, but never mentioned the poor souls rotting in the traffic on the SR91. Sigalert.com, a site I no longer recommend for accurate traffic information, showed 1 single red dot with cyan dots leading to it, indicating traffic was moving above 20 mphs. It was grossly inaccurate. What it should have displayed was solid red dots from La Sierra Blvd in Riverside through Serfas Club Drive in Corona.

Some day someone intelligent will get into a place of power thats actually there to make a difference, and when that happens, I hope the people in charge of traffic and roads who aren’t doing their jobs end up at backwater hole in the wall restaurants. As far as I am concerned, these individuals aren’t even qualified to operate the fry station at MacDonald’s restaurants.

Today I considered a small personal loan to buy an older motorcycle to alleviate the stress I endure every day from my 30 mile commute.

After doing that I tallied up the hours I spend on average a year in traffic on the SR91 West and East bound.

Calculating I work 260 days a year I came up with this:

650 avg hours spent in traffic every year (based on 2.5 hours per day.)

27.083 days spent in traffic at 5 mph or less.

Nearly a month. I can’t describe how much my heart sinks knowing I waste a month a year on that fucking freeway.

If I had a bike:

260 days of work a year

260 hours of traffic a year based on 1 hour total commute time per day.

If I drove the bike everyday.

10.83 days spent in traffic.

If I had a bike I would have 17 more days a year with you.

17 days would be 408 hours more a year at home.

People shouldn’t have to live like this, and I’m surrounded by thousands every day. Who is in charge of this mess, and who needs to be sewed over the hours of my life wasted in the prison labeled SR91?

I just saw the Halo 3 trailer.  I can’t say for sure, but it looks like they got more creative, or they got better writing.  Halo 1 and 2 in my opinion suffered from bad story telling.  I never knew what was going on for sure.  The balance between run and gun and story was non existent.

I guess I’ll be purchasing the next Microsoft system, the Xbox 360.  Paul has purchased enough of the gaming platforms, and I know I’ll be playing many of the games on the 360.  Games like Forza Motorsport 2, Splinter Cell, Project Gotham, and of course Halo.

My faith in Sony has gone down the drain with their latest version of Gran Turismo, called Gran Turismo 4, when in actuallity, it was more like 3.5.  Multiplayer took a huge hit in that game graphically and functionally.   Track logos and detail seemed to revert to GT2 quality, whereas, GT3 looked really good.  Fullscreen replays were a thing of the past aswell.  Splitscreen replays suck, as you can not follow the race winner only.  Its almost dizzying to try and focus on 2 cars at the same time.  The only way I could find around it was to direct each replay, setting the lead car to the rear cam.  It was less seizure enducing, but the graphic detail was so poor there wasn’t much point to watching the replay anyway.  On top of that, you couldn’t even save your crappy quality replays.  So if you and a friend had a down to the wire finish, you only get to enjoy it one time.  Yay…

Microsoft however is about to release its sequel to Forza Motorsport.  I don’t think its been more than 2 years.  Polyphony Digital released a short version of GT5, called Vision GT I believe.  Whooptidoo.  Their full version will be released in 2008.  Good for them.  It will probably be more like 2009 since they can’t meet deadlines, even when they recycle the models of the cars and sounds.

It looks like Sony and Polyphony will tank together if they don’t get their major titles out in a timely manner.  I hold no loyalty to either company, and if one of them makes a superior product, thats the one I’ll enjoy.

Just got back from the LA Autoshow this weekend and changing Scott’s exhaust system on his GSXR. That went REALLY well. We didn’t have any issues, and my halogen lamps worked like a charm. His bike is so loud now, I’d say definitely above 95 db at wot.

The autoshow was pretty fun. We went with some really good friends, in fact, with people who hadn’t met each other before. They seemed to get along pretty well, which I was happy for, because you never know how people will get along. Side not, get there early. It was easy sailing at 9:30 since most of the crowd was probably still making its way out of bed.

For the first time I got to sit in a Porsche Carerra. A $75,000 sportscar, in fact, one of the most highly acclaimed in the world next to its brother the 911 Turbo. I was very surprised they had this car open for people to sit in, as other supercar names were under exclusive lock and key. In fact, those in charge had to like you to let you in closer to the cars. So, as I waited in the line to sit in this icon, I imagined the high quality leathers and refined interiors. Finally, it was my turn to sit down, shut the door and touch everything inside. My first thought was, “hypocrites!”. The Carerra was filled with the same “cheap” plastics that “low class” supercars like the Corvette were filled with. What kind of a crock is this? $75,000 for plastic door panels and dash? 0-60 was 5.5, not even the performance was mind blowing. In fact, on paper, a $25,000 Mustang GT is faster in a straight line, and the interior is on the same level. Where do these Germans get off? BMW wasn’t any better, and neither was Mercedes. In fact, with BMW, to get something out of the ordinary (quality better than Chevrolet and Ford) one would have to reach into $75,000+ level with cars like the M class and the 7 series. Anything else was lathered with “leatherette” and plastics. How can it be called luxury, when I can’t even sit on a real dead animal?

The Carerra was definitely an eye opener, and it made me wonder, besides the exterior and the engines, was Ferrari and Lamborghini the same way? Has my deriair sat into supercar level comfort with the Recaros I get to sit in everyday? It sure feels like it. But nay, most of the Ferrari line is filled with Carbon Fiber accented interiors on the dash, floorboards and even the steering wheel. I don’t think I’d be left wanting in an F430.
Maserati had a little surprise at their display. The MC12 graced the show with its presence. What an amazing car to behold in person. It wasn’t easy to capture the right images of it either, as people swarmed the exhibit. Ropes seperated the money from the peasants, and I had to sneak around into the sacred grounds to capture some of the sweet tail on this car. “Baby’s got back” almost describes it. Its tail was wide and low. It had an integrated wing that drooped stylishly off the sides of the car, and the carbon fiber venturi tunnels seemed to bring the eye back to the duotone blue and pearl white paint. Nothing is better than Form meeting Function with such harmony. This is one car thats allowed to be an angry beauty.

As I made my way back, one of the people watching the area caught me out of the corner of their eye, and made their way over to the group of droolies called my friends. She began to talk about the other Maseratis, cars we weren’t interested in in the slightest. Then she got to the MC12. Its a 1.4 Million dollar car, she paused for effect. I leaned over to Aurelio and audibly said, “yes, but does it have cup holders”. She smiled and laughed to herself, then replied “if you were driving this car, you would need both hands on the steering wheel”. Even supercars need cupholders . The super rich have to drink coffee just like us regular folks, and where would they put it if they wanted to enjoy their cup ofjoe walking along the beach, or were in a rush to work and that was their last chance at a good cup of coffee?

This year, like last, was Big and Bland in the car world. Its definitely sobering when things are so boring. Although, it does make it easy for the bargain bin cars like the Evo, STi, Corvette and Concept Camaro to shine when compared to overpriced mediocre German lines.