incandragon

We went on a walking tour of downtown L.A. -- and by "we" I mean me, my mom, my sister, and her friend. There was no one else in the walking tour. If you have that picture correctly in your head, you've already gone "But, um ... wait. What?" Because my mom has two gimpy knees, and can't walk well. Especially after two full days of freaking enormous, marble-floored, zillion-staired museums that would cripple an athlete. But hey, what's life if you don't accept the challenges? Today's challenge was a septuagenarian on a walking tour ... and the challengees were 1) the tour guide and 2) the drivers of L.A.

The poor tour guide signed up for a 1.5 hour tour, and at my mom's speed, it wound up being three hours long. Bless his knowledgeable heart, the guy was never at a loss for anything to say. He never stopped smiling, he never stopped teaching us stuff. The only thing he wasn't able to adapt to was that ...

... it took my mom a long time to cross the street. The streets of downtown L.A. are four lanes across. The duration of one red light was enough time for my mother to get across three lanes of traffic. HOWEVER, if my mother was, say, five feet from the curb, and the crosswalk light changed to the White Walking Guy, the tour guide would merrily say, "Okay, everybody cross now." Five feet from the curb equals a WHOLE NOTHER LANE OF TRAFFIC, dude! So my mom would be in the middle of the road when the light turned green.

At this juncture in the story, I need to point out that Los Angeles is a town of Hispanic drivers, and half of those are male.

Also, let me point out that the above sentence reveals my (former and incorrect) stereotyping of Hispanic men. I had, previous to Saturday of last week, considered Hispanic guys to be macho and testosterone-poisoned accelerator-crazed drivers. BUT NO. You put a little gray-haired old lady on the crosswalk, and by god, grandma OWNS that intersection. Not a soul touched their accelerator until my mom was clear to the curb. I'm saying, if it was a four-lane, one-way road, and she was in the far right lane, nobody even inched toward the left-most lane.

That's a lie. Two people did. In three hours: two people. One was a city bus that drove past at 40 mph in the lane closest to us. The other was a black car that edged by at a fairly reasonable and safe speed. Everybody else? They all decided that this green light was a good time to reset their radio stations, clean their glasses, comb their hair, or whatever.

Frankly, it was freaky. Nice, but freaky. So yeah, the challenge of the septuagenarian walking tour? L.A., baby, you're beautiful.