We know the sites along the freeway by heart now. Interstate 10, the road that starts at mile marker zero in Key West, Florida, seems like a short extension of the highway leading from Phoenix to a strip mall just slightly farther away than where we shop in town. We drove to Southern California yet again. We could not be more familiar with the 10 by now; as I have stated before, we may have driven this freeway more than 70 times. About thirty miles from the 10’s terminus in Santa Monica, we veer north on the 101, passing through downtown Los Angeles to points further north en route to our destination in Santa Barbara. It is Labor Day weekend in America and the last three-day weekend of summer, which typically makes for crowded roads. Not this weekend, though. Although getting out of Phoenix was time-consuming, the rest of the drive was a piece of cake. Maybe everyone else is weighed down with high mortgage payments and high gasoline, electricity, and food prices, so they can’t afford any leisure travel. For whatever reason, we made near-record time of only 8.5 hours to drive the 507 miles from our house to Santa Barbara, with two stops for gas and one for dinner in Los Angeles.