Oklahoma and its highways...

On my road trip to Oklahoma City from good ol' Los Angeles, I passed through Arizona and New Mexico to get there. There were some bad highways in between, but none of them compares to Oklahoma City in the level of frustration. There are so many things wrong with it that it's hard to know where to even start.

The first and foremost that annoys me is the fact that they place exits ramps more or less right in front of the on ramps. This has the bad side effect of severely congesting these areas and creating some dangerous driving maneuvers. When getting on the highway, particularly during peak times, the drivers getting off the highway won't make space for those getting on. This makes it so that you either end up driving right off the highway that you just got on, or come to a near stop just so that you can inch your way in and then change lanes again into one where cars are coming up behind you at 60+ mph.

This brings up the second point that's related with the bad driving experience in OKC... the drivers. Many drivers here seems to suffer from more road rage and impatience than those in LA. They will pass you on the right lane even when there is a left lane to pass on. They will start accelerating when they see the turn blinker on so that you can't change lanes and you force your way in, they now have to break hard and tailgate your ass. Come on! I turn on the signal and slip in behind a 65 mph car and they are coming up behind me at 75 mph. There's so much to list... Yes, they do this in LA too, but nowhere near as often as I encounter here.

Another annoying part about driving on the highways here is that they have random hills. The state is about as flat as any that I've seen, but when your driving, you come across constant hills. Honestly, could they not have made the land flat when they were creating the system? I suppose it wouldn't really annoy me if not for the fact that I drive a prius and see my mileage go down.

They have exits on the left side of the highway. Seriously. I remember trying to drive to a location and must have passed the place twice trying figure out where the exit was. Isn't that the normal method of driving? The right side is the slower side with all the exits and on ramps, so when you know that you have to get off in a couple of exits, you change lanes to the right side. Isn't that the norm?

Their merge lane sucks. It's really short so there isn't much time to change lanes which causes a lot of problems that I won't get into. It's regulated by their yield sign. That's all it is. It baffled me when I first came across it. Do you really need a yield sign to tell people not to turn in when there's a car coming up at 70 mph? Isn't this common sense?

I'll stop here for now... I just needed to get that off my chest.

Giving free rice to the hungry

Well, I was browsing around the websites like I usually do and ran across an interesting site. This might particularly interest those who thinks that they are the humanitarian champions. The website is called FreeRice. Now, this is how it works. You will be asked vocabulary questions with multiple choice answers. For every one that you get right, they will donate 20 grains of rice.

The entire donation is for free and is paid for by the advertisements on the bottom of the page. You might think that the amount of rice per question is rather paltry, but think about it... I just donated over 300 grains of rice over the course of about 5 minutes. Those of you who puts yourself on a pedestal for being so humanitarian... how many did you feed?

Anyways, if you're interested, visit http://www.freerice.com/

Bicycles... Cure for the Car Drivers?

Well... for one reason or another, I've grown a rather large infatuation with bicycles. There's something interesting about the whole topic, particularly for those like me who comes from car crazed society (and it really doesn't get more car crazed than Los Angeles).

Don't get me wrong. I don't have anything against cars. Hell, I enjoy a beautiful sports car as much as the next guy and I can talk endlessly about them, but that's not really the point here. There's something about cars and even motorcycles that somehow perverts a person's thoughts and this perversion is a trend that I've noticed more and more as time progressed. When a person gets into a car there's a distinct change in their behavior.

This is ridiculous. Since when did driving at the speed limit become too slow? I always thought that you were supposed to go at that speed. I mean, if in fact the true speed limit was 50 instead of the 45 or 80 instead of the 65, then I'm sure they would have posted those numbers up instead and not one that's lower. And what's with all the road rage when the car in front of you is going a bit slower than you? Just how much time do you think that you would save driving like a freakin' maniac? What's the rush?

These automobile drivers develops the mentality that they own the road and that no one else, not even other automobile drivers are allowed to use it. They lose all sense of patience and every little thing that they perceive as an inconvenience becomes an insult to their mother and every other aggressive driver becomes a person that just pissed in your family's drinking cup.

This is where bicycles can help people. It helps them to connect to the outside world and takes them out of the self-imposed little universe that they built around them. They should learn to enjoy being outside and take things at their own pace.

Nothing better to do. Really...

I have been considering on creating a new blog site specifically for personal use after creating the food blog and finally decided to do it. I figured, why not? I can write about things that holds my interests, and considering the fact that it changes fairly frequently, I'm expecting to cover a wide branch of topics. We'll see how this turns out.