Since I turned 200k miles in my MINI, I’ve spent an additional 1,800 miles in my MINI.
How bad can it be?
Sure the stock market is tanking. Housing starts are down. The price of oil keeps dropping no matter how much production is cut. And unemployment is at all time highs.
Or is it?
You see, I can use traffic on Southern California freeways as a pretty good barometer for what is happening out here. I’ve been driving in it enough that I notice patterns for holidays, closed roads and what not.
When we were paying almost $5.00 a gallon for gas, traffic was the lightest I’ve ever seen. It might have been lighter during the ‘84 Olympics, but I wasn’t driving then.
When there is a holiday, especially if schools aren’t in session, like Christmas, Thanksgiving or Spring Break, traffic is light. Traffic is even lighter during the summer since all schools are usually on break.
Lately however, traffic has been anything but light. As you read in a previous post, earlier this week it took me 8 hours to drive about 200 miles. No roads were closed and there was only one accident.
So I ask, how back can it be? If there are so many jobs being lost and the economy is in such bad shape, getting worse everyday, then why is traffic so bad? When people are out of work, they don’t usually spend their mornings and evenings driving do they? I know I don’t, using that time instead to search for work or other things.
Maybe everyone is just so excited that gas is less than $3 a gallon that they feel compelled to get out on the highways in their SUVs again. People have short term memories like that, so it wouldn’t surprise me.
Just got back from the LA Auto Show and before I sort and post the photos, audio and video, I felt compelled to share something with you.
In the last 24 hours I have driven approximately 195 miles. Under normal conditions (like driving to Las Vegas) that distance would normally take a little less than 3 hours to travel. But you know we wouldn’t be having this little chat now if that were the case.
Because it’s not. For the time period starting 5:30p November 18th, 2008 until 5:30p November 19th, 2008, I have spent eight hours in my car. The calculates out to an average speed of 24.3 MPH.
Imagine, if you will, driving through a school zone that is almost 200 miles long.
If the economy is so bad, then where are all of these effing cars coming from?
What out for LA Auto Show stuff to follow shortly.
I’ve been posting over here for a few years now. Not promoting it so much, or linking a whole lot across the ‘net. My thoughts have always been “if they find it, great. If not, that’s ok too” when it comes to traffic here at w(t)f.
It started off with a bunch of spammers and this guy. Then a few more readers came along. The long way too, usually following the link to donburnside.com that adorns the bottom of many pages I create. This brought the readership total up to about 7.
Then I started the show. about another 10 of you took the trouble to find this. Thanks!
Then I did the theme change. Including links to all of my sites on all of my sites. Recipe posts at flickr brought in some n00bs too. And the videos at Viddler.
After all of this, you, the wtf reader, are now about 1200 strong! Yes, holy crap indeed.
Now, in comparison, you are only about 1/2 as many as the MINI site. But that site cheats. It gets mentioned in the show. It’s linked up at MF among other places. It gets better search refs too, and has a higher google ranking. For the most part, it’s been fairly organic.
Now, to do the same with w(t)f.
You might see a few minor changes around the site. I’ve added tags (since all the kids are doing it). And, I’m going to be a keyword whore. But only for the next month. But I’m not going to do any overt promotion short of the occassional link on twitter. But only if I think it’s an awesome post. Remember, I hate spam worse than you do.
Right now you are on track to be 1500 strong this month. I want to see if my tweaks and whatnot can increase that by at least 500 for the month of June. While I’m not going to ask for your help, if you do come across a post that you think is worthy of sharing, please feel free to do so. Time to bring w(t)f out of the closet and into prime time.
Here we go!
