Anyone go for drives at extreme hours to avoid traffic?
 

You've gone out for a pleasure drive to nowhere, (not a commute to work, but a specific 15 to 60 min local joyride) and finally got to the twisty 1 lane road part of the loop.
It's inevitable, a sluggish mini-van will insist on turning right out in front of you, slowing down the rest of the drive.
Or you get stuck behind a garbage truck, or 90 year old lady, and somewhere the car gods are laughing down at you.

I came across someone who goes for a drive at 5am on Sundays. 5am!?
When I first heard this, it sounded fanatical.
Now, I am starting to understand the rationale.

Anyone else go for drives at extreme hours to avoid traffic? What time? What day?
I'm not talking about trying to miss the rush hour commute, but I am talking explicit joyrides.

Anytime I take a trip down to Florida or down south, I always plan it so I hit the Baltimore/DC area, late at night. Otherwise the traffic there totally sucks.

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Have you seen the Mulholland thread?

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-discussions/323773-what-happened-mulholland-king-hill-rsr.html

That's why all the group drives are Thanksgiving morning and New Years Day!

SmileWavy

I'm almost always awake at 5 AM and I love Sunday mornings, I've done it a couple of times. In addition to that, my job requires me to work weekend night shifts so I'll sometimes take the P car to work and drive home on the quiet Sunday morning roads and watch the sun come up.

Occasionally, I''ll pick up extra shifts and we get paid for travel time to areas outside our regular location. A few times I've taken the P car on those shifts as well so I'll be getting paid for 911 seat time!

when I lived in sag harbor on the east end of long island I would always plan my visits to Connecticut or new York based on leaving at night

Before I retired I set my work hours to ease my commute. I'd be on the road by 3:45 am solely to miss Los Angeles traffic.


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Obviously, different locales present unique issues.

Around here, the best time is either weekend mornings before 8am or most any evenings after 8 pm.

I avoid the highway going north on Fridays and then the southbound traffic on Sundays.


We have a lot of back roads that are a blast to drive and are usually pretty deserted.

I have not only done it, I have had the pleasure of running into my own personal RCMP roadblock, at 5:00am.
230kph in an 80k zone. She let me off with a verbal warning.

Always. Traffic sucks. There's no greater waste of time than sitting in traffic and it kills the driving experience. I don't deal with it too much here (I use trains anytime I'm going into the city - I refuse to drive inside of I-95 in / around Boston for any reason). Where I live it's mostly a non-issue but I'll go out of my way to change my route or timing if there's traffic. Going to Cape Cod I'll usually leave early early AM (like 3 or 4). Getting there or back at other times can be 2-3 hours of totally wasted, seething-with-rage hell.

I do road trips....

rjp

Every AM, up at 4:45 out the door 20 minutes later. At work by 6. Leave at 3PM. Otherwise 2 hour potential each way due to the asshats.

We used to leave at 8PM to take my son to his college. That departure put us in Chicago at about 2 AM and cut about an hour off the total drive time.

No, I don't get up weirdly early to go driving. I like to sleep at those hours. And I don't know that there are any drives near enough to me to matter. I think that for any really good driving, I'd have to drive 1-3 hours just to get to the good stuff. There are a few areas around Houston where I have gone to tool around. Most of the time, they have fairly light traffic anyway, but it's not like they are far enough away from things to really let 'er rip.

I take the Porsche's out early Sat or Sun on the back roads. Never in the dark or at dawn. Lot of deer around. I hate urban traffic and the idiots on the roads. I had to drive in Raleigh/Cary traffic for 30 years. I almost never drive in the direction of the city. Just drove 55 miles to a powder coater away from the city on back roads to avoid going 25 miles into the city.

I love driving when no one else is on the roads, especially early in the morning. Do it all the time.

Hell yeah! Jaunts on Mulholland after the night clubs closed in Marina Del Ray on my way home to Sherman Oaks back in the early 70s. Drove all day and night from Vail to Michigan just to get through Chicago before rush hour. Had ZZ Top cranked up for the pace and to stay awake in a GTV6 that I had just bought in northern Ca. The deer from the Mackinaw Bridge to Lansing can be hazardous late at night, but not passed or passing any vehicles for most of the trip is bliss. Even during peak tourist season in hours of the day in northern Michigan there are many roads that are curvy and lonesome at most hours of the day. Off season its real lonesome. That's probably why I moved here.

Diverdan

I used to love to take a morning cruise, but the damn cyclists put a stop to all the fun.

Damned dopers.

When going to Florida from NW Ohio, we try to stop South of Atlanta later at night, so we miss the evening rush hour, and stay somewhere South of the morning rush hour. 14 lanes of insanity through Atlanta.

I'm not exactly referring to avoiding the rush hour commute, I was specifically talking about taking a short local loop just to drive your 911 and hit a few downshifts and 5000 rpm turns.
If you go for this kind of drive to nowhere, do you do it at a weird time when roads are empty? I am going to try a 7am drive one of these days.