A nightmare on the 405

Okay, granted that this is nothing new, and all my friends back east are going to laugh about Southern California traffic because they always do, but the poorly advertised closure of the eastbound 22 ramp from the southbound 405 over the weekend, coupled with heavy traffic to San Diego, and then the somewhat usual nighttime road work, really made for a nightmare on Saturday.

There's a big project going on to improve connections between the 22, 405 and 605 in the Seal Beach area, and it is one that I am intimately familiar with since I am often in the area writing sports assignments for the Orange County Register, and one of my favorite places to play trivia is nearby. When I visited in August 2011, and drove to San Diego to see the Padres and Marlins, I had the fun of a three-hour drive down the I-5 that usually takes two hours.

I had noticed in passing that the 22 was going to be closed over the weekend, so with a little thought we could have avoided the bottleneck that started in the middle of Long Beach and stretched about about eight miles, but there is not much you can do when everyone in LA decides it would be nice to visit San Diego on a Saturday. Other than the eight-lane stretch of I-5, you cannot get around Camp Pendleton unless you drive 30 miles to the east and take I-15 south.

Christina and I were driving with our friend Dan, who is visiting from Calgary, to play trivia with LILJOL, who is so well-known in Buzztime circles that Ken Jennings mentioned playing with him in his book "Brainiac." I got a chance to play with Joel a few months ago, and had a lot of fun, so when Dan said he wanted to come out west following Triviapalooza 6.0 in Cincinnati, Christina and I were happy to make the return trip.

We got there later than we wanted, but still had a great time. Then, 13 games of Countdown later, it was time for us to head back to Torrance. We said our goodbyes, and just 90 minutes later we were already in Huntington Beach zipping along into....the mother of all traffic jams.

CalTrans, in its infinite wisdom, had decided that 11 p.m. on the Saturday of the U.S. Surfing Championships was an excellent time for a full freeway closure of the 405 at Westminster. This annual event draws several hundred thousand people to town (and is usually pretty peaceful, Sunday night's riot notwithstanding), and it should not have been a surprise that many of them were headed home after grabbing something to eat or drink after the competition.

So here we were stuck on the freeway with a lot of people who all wanted to get back to Los Angeles County at the end of a long day. And five lanes of traffic being reduced to one and then taken off on a poorly marked detour that was still four miles away.

Having seen similar, though less harrowing traffic,on the northbound 405 the week before, I exited early to make my own detour at Golden West Street, and that seemed to work well until we tried to get on the westbound 22 and saw that it, too, was closed at Valley View. The "nice GPS lady," as my friend Jim Heffernan calls her, was of absolutely no use as she would just try to put us back on the 405. Luckily, Dan is a highway buff and had an actual paper map in the car, so he found us a roundabout way that took us through Garden Grove and
Los Alamitos before getting us back to the 405 north and on the way back home.

I understand the need for overnight and weekend work, but I would think better communication between agencies could help reduce or eliminate a lot of this stress that seems to happen often. The message board signs all called attention to next weekend's 405 closure, but it was only at the Beach Boulevard exit where it was finally noted that they had closed the freeway RIGHT NOW. Too late to get in the exit lane, and they were still letting people onto the northbound 405 there. Also, especially on a Saturday, an 11 p.m. closure seems a bit early. I would say they could wait until midnight or even 1 a.m., and if it is closed until 9 a.m. Sunday they still get eight hours. On weekdays they need to open the lanes by 5 a.m., of course.

Four hours to San Diego and more than three to get back is not anyone's idea of a relaxing trip. Christina noted it was the worst jam she had seen in 15 years living in Southern California. I'm just glad we did not have to set up camp on Springdale Street and wait for first light to get out of there.

Joe Williams' big write-in win

At one time in my journalism career, I was responsible for coverage of 11 towns in Rockingham and Shenandoah counties in northwestern Virginia. At the time, I was a staff writer and Sunday night wire editor at the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg.

For the most part, it wasn’t as crazy as it sounds. I went to as many town council meetings as I could, not only to get live coverage, but also to generate follows and trend stories. Between that and covering Shenandoah County it was not difficult to generate the eight to 10 stories a week they wanted from me, in fact, I sometimes provided more.

But coming into the town council elections in May 1998, I had my hands full. Thankfully, another reporter was assigned to compile the Rockingham County towns’ results, so I was able to concentrate on New Market, Mount Jackson, Edinburg and Woodstock. Still, there was a big surprise in Mount Jackson, and one that I often reminded reporters about through the next 15 years.

While five-term mayor Dewey Jordan was unopposed on the ballot, there was enough discontent in town for a write-in candidate to take hold. Wait, not just take hold, but to dominate. Joe Williams, whose campaign included handing out pencils that said “Write-In Joe Williams For Mayor,” took a 202-122 decision over the incumbent. The loss so discombobulated Jordan that he “resigned” over the phone while I was trying to get a quote from him. The formal resignation happened the next night as the Mount Jackson Town Council appointed Williams as mayor two months before his official full term was to begin.

Williams served as mayor of the nearly 2,000-population town until earlier this week, when he died after a brief illness.

I only covered Mount Jackson for another year after his victory, but working at The Northern Virginia Daily allowed me to keep tabs on the town for years after the write-in win, and I saw Williams take easy victories in 2002, 2006 and 2010. I did not see much of Williams after 1999, but he was always gracious and forthcoming in our interviews while I still covered the town.

When I started covering Mount Jackson in 1997, it was facing a serious water crisis as several of its wells showed nitrate contamination. The first attempt at drilling a new well also failed because the water was similarly contaminated. The council, first with Jordan at the helm and then Williams, worked hard to find a solution with the help of the state. 

One of the things that probably cost Jordan his job was the insistence that Mount Jackson did not need a town manager to oversee its operations. Within a year of his election, Williams and the council hired Charles Moore to take on that job, and everything I heard from our reporters indicated that the town was operating quite well through the years I was at the paper in Strasburg.

It was sad to hear of Williams’ passing, but I was happy that one of the former Daily reporters who did such good work, Preston Knight, thought to pass the word along.

If I took nothing else away from Joe Williams’ victory over Dewey Jordan 15 years ago, it was that write-in campaigns should be taken seriously in local elections where turnout tends to be lower, and people can be more motivated to vote if the circumstances dictate.

There’s the old saw about all politics being local. I know one thing, they are often the most interesting.