Drove south From Santa Barbara to San Diego County

 The traffic was really bad, bumper to bumper most of the way. Driving from Santa Barbara to San Diego County is especially not a good idea on a Friday I realized. Maybe leaving at midnight might be a better idea or something like that if it's a Friday?

There is this thing where Fridays and Sundays are often like this in Southern California where it takes 2 to 3 times longer to get ANYWHERE south of Santa Barbara. This was definitely true today.

For me, the best part of today was finding out that my automatic driving feature in our car actually works down to a stop on bad traffic days. It stays stationary and then the automatic cruise control and automatic steering shuts down. But then, if you flip the toggle switch on the steering wheel it starts up again fully autmoatically driving each time it comes to a full stop and goes forward steering automatically and braking automatically if you have it programmed to do this properly.

For me, this saved the day somewhat otherwise it would have been impossible to do at age 76 to drive this long through heavy bumper to bumper traffic for 6 hours or more straight. (without Traffic this should have been 2 1/2 to 3 hours). So, it was at least double as long as it should have been mostly because it was a Friday.

I can see why people would either drive at midnight or fly from Santa Barbara to San Diego and then rent a car if they can. This was pretty awful. Also, the temperatures were about 100 degrees to 103 degrees most of the way too. However, I do have a good air conditioner so this saved the day too.

Note: if you are sensitive (your lungs) to air conditioning I have learned a trick to stay cool. Unless it's a full heat emergency I turn the air conditioner on my feet and my feet cool the rest of my body without harming my lungs. I have gotten a bronchitis before just from the air conditioner in my face from a car. So, if your lungs are also sensitive to this issue then try what I do to save your lungs from a cold or bronchitis by running the air conditioner full blast on your feet. Your feet might freeze but it cools down the whole car and your body too. end note.

My daughter says her 2017 Forrester does this too except it doesn't steer the car for you too. (the 2017)