The Impossible

Los Angeles has many virtues, and I like to think that I can see them more clearly than most, but I can see as keenly as anyone its faults. One of those which affects me maybe slightly less than it does others is the layout of roads. I say it may affect me slightly less because I do not drive, but I do live here, and in that I cannot avoid the roads no matter how I try. In such cities as this that even partly predate the advent of cars, the roads are sometimes imperfectly adapted for them.

A consequence of that is that some intersections are awfully complicated and nearly impossible to negotiate in a speedy fashion. I have written of one in the past where three roads intersect, but it warrants repeating. If one sees it as a wagon wheel, you may imagine that several of the spokes go unconnected by crosswalks. One corner is a triangle that juts into the intersection, and there is no legal way to walk to it save a half mile walk out of the way.

Just today I ate at a restaurant on that triangle. The food was good and the place was tolerably busy for a weekday lunch in a district with perhaps relatively few office employees. It was a vegan place that I was brought to by a friend, and so there weren't so many calories in the food that I desperately needed exercise before or after to counteract ill effects, but I got exercise anyway. It was necessary to sprint across in defiance of death's icy grip on the way there.

Happily, the way back was considerably easier, and we well might have walked in order to get back. That was fine, as we were full of food and made doubly lethargic by the muggy weather of the day. Still, something ought to be done. I suppose that in our far-flung neighborhood the city would not think of expending resources to actually add a crosswalk there. I'm thinking of unilaterally making a skywalk with a couple of tall ladders and a long plank between them.