Matthew Wayne Selznick

I left work in Santa Monica this evening at about a quarter of seven. Traffic was thin — a mixed blessing of the many fires all over Southern California throwing off people’s commutes.

And then I reached the transition of the 210 to the 15 freeways. Things ground to a halt due to a small shoulder brush fire and the nine fire trucks that had mustered to stamp it out — no one’s taking any chances. I sat there for about forty five minutes, then the fire was out and things got moving again. This was about eight or so.

Then everything stopped. The 15 freeway was closed, north and south, from Sierra (near Fontana) to Oak Hills (at the top of the Cajon Pass.) I live just over the Cajon pass, on the far side of the closure, some forty miles beyond where I sat in dead traffic.

Couldn’t get off the freeway until Sierra, where I hoped for a detour that would get me home. By the time I got off the freeway, it was eleven o’clock. No easy detour to be found. I turned around and headed back south on the 15, defeated. I’d find a hotel and try again tomorrow morning.

My wife suggested I try the hotels around the Ontario airport. I know the area, it’s where the New Media Expo was just held. First I tried the Residence Inn, where I had stayed less than a month before. No vacancy. Then the Marriott. No vacancy.

I tried eight hotels around the Ontario Convention Center. No good — everyone else who couldn’t make it up the hill had beat me to a room. Finally, I found the Nite Inn, where they had just had a cancellation, and here I am.

It’s one fifty in the morning and I’m about ready to finally sleep, seven hours after I left work. I felt like sharing, though. Frankly, I’m lonely and displaced and a bit troubled. I hope to be able to get home tomorrow morning. I strongly doubt I’ll be driving to Santa Monica tomorrow… especially if the damn road is still closed and I have to detour through Riverside or Big Bear or something insane and hours and hours long.

The fires, distant though they are, and the wind, pervasive and brutal, make me feel closed in and corralled. I’m going to need to see the ocean soon, I think.

Time for hotel bed sleep. I predict a headache.