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.

Saturday mornings at sunrise are a great time - meeting at McD's for breakfast and then taking the P-cars out on the twisties is a GREAT way to start the weekend!

I have done many midnight dragon runs. No traffic and no cops.

This. A warm summer morning, top off, sun rising, and solitude...it's hard to get any better.

When I lived in the City, my road was the entrance to a run down city park. It had the some serious twisty, off camber turns, and lots of elevation changes and switchbacks. It was awesome autocross practice. The park was mostly abandoned, but you could find dog walkers, and some joggers, and cyclist on the weekends. I would frequently practice driving there. Usually later in the evening, after work , or early in the morning. I would make a leisurely lap through, just to make sure there were no joggers, or cyclists, then I would rage on the place. It was my own little practice track. I had tire marks everywhere. I lived there for 3 years.
I always wanted to clean the place up, and stage a hill climb there .

On Kauai getting out very early was the way to have fun driving. Not many roads and lots of slow visitors driving slowly with their video cameras out the windows etc. later in the day.
Here in central AZ there are so many nice lightly traveled back roads in the mountains that I wait till it warms up to hit it. Having all these great roads to cruise had brought me to a new level of driving fun!

Cheers Richard

Sorry Guys,

I live in western Nova Scotia.
Imagine a place the size of southern Ontario with less than one million people. Then put more than half of those folks in a few urban areas.
Around here, we have to import traffic! SmileWavy

On the flip side some of those roads are frost-heaved and pot-holed, but you know where they are.

Best
Les

the problem with middle of the night drives is you are more likely to get pulled over for speeding at a lower speed.
when there is traffic, going 10mph over is not a big deal. at 4am 5 over might get you pulled just to see if you are drunk.

I was just thinking last night about how it sucks to get into and out of Sydney, AU on a weekend....The last time thru on a Sunday, I took the "Putty Rd" from Singleton down to Campbelltown and had a wonderful drive:

Putty Road - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Same. In Chicago in the summer it's getting light not long after 5 a.m. Great time to hop on the motorcycle and get out to the state higways before congestion hit, or take the Z4 or whatever for a run before stopping by a car show/meet at 7 a.m. or so.

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/AVuSf6tkfpQ?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Big thanks for posting that Notfarnow!
Yet another excellent video from those masters at Petrolisous, this one featuring my favorite Ferrari of all time . The beautiful Lusso. Insightful commentary . Loved it!

Cheers Richard

Nice video. Captures many sentiments of pelicans

this exact feeling

I not only go for very early morning drives, I regularly commute very early (leaving the house about 4:30 -4:45 am) to avoid traffic and enjoy the drive.

(This also gives me quiet time at work to actually get something accomplished before the "crisis of the day" hits.)

I also recently decided to drive on a solo long trip rater than fly because I like driving that much.

On weekend early morning joy rides, one has to be careful not to get too loud or you get the undivided attention of those who protect & serve.