No, this is not some angst-driven, existential musing with a clever title. I really mean to discuss how to get to downtown Los Angeles on the Pasadena Freeway during morning rush hour.

Why should we stop the presses for what might appear to be a trivial scrap of commuter info? A number of people, deeply troubled and intimidated by the daunting size of this problem, have asked me to advise them. What, are they all moving to Pasadena? Regardless, it is my duty as a citizen to help them if I can.

LA-area real estate prices are always bloated, so Angelenos are ever in search of cheap digs. More and more people are pouring into the film industry, so housing in Burbank and Glendale - the locus of new showbiz growth - is tight. It makes sense for these folks to foray further east, to the San Gabriel Valley, where prices are (somewhat) lower, charming bungalows are abundant, shade trees grow in profusion, and the culturati - at Caltech, JPL, the Huntington Library, and the Pasadena Playhouse - bump elbows with the glitterati on the newly hip boulevards of Old Pasadena.

Still, central Los Angeles is where so many of the jobs are and, no matter where we may live hereabouts, eventually we reckon with the uncertain adventure of a morning drive "downtown." If you live in Pasadena, you will have to consider a ride on that odd, curving, three-laned, 55-speed-limited highway which happens to be the oldest freeway in the world, the spur of Interstate 110 known as the Pasadena Freeway.

Opened as a scenic highway in 1940, the Arroyo Seco Freeway boasted complete freedom from the dangers of intersections - most crossroads are bridges or tunnels - and the brave new world of onramps, which have about as much in common with a modern freeway access lane as your driveway. The designers allowed the concrete thoroughfare - two lanes each direction - to meander for most of its distance along the path of the Arroyo Seco wash. That dry creek twists and curves, and so does the freeway. This was thought an asset, affording motorists a constantly changing view as they wound their way downtown.

In later years a third lane of asphalt was added each way along the median, and the road got its modern moniker, the Pasadena Freeway. There is some confusion about just how much of Interstate 110 is called the Pasadena Freeway. Officially it begins at the I-10 Santa Monica Freeway, but most local traffic reporters call it the Harbor Freeway until it crosses under the world-famous four-level interchange at the Hollywood Freeway. To further confuse things, here is some official government gobbledegook (which I am, sadly, unable to attribute) on the exact naming of the Pasadena Freeway: That part of the California highway system frequently referred to as the Pasadena Freeway, which is the section of Interstate Highway Route 110 lying between milepost 25.7 and milepost 31.9 is hereby designated a California Historic Parkway pursuant to Section 280, and is named the Arroyo Seco Parkway. Rest assured, everybody still calls it the Pasadena Freeway.

But enough smalltalk. Here's how to do it:

• Find your way to the Pasadena Freeway sometime before 7 a.m. if you can. (Recently I happened south on it at 5:30 a.m. - don't ask - and returned, northbound, about 6:30 a.m. Southbound traffic was busy even at that earlier hour, and near capacity at the later time.) I've never driven it after 7:30 a.m. when traffic didn't lock up by Avenue 43, about halfway down the freeway's length. Earlier is better!
• Enter this modern paradise of transportation first by coming to a dead halt at a posted stopsign at the foot of the perilously tiny onramp. Wait there - craning your neck - for an opening in the hurtling traffic before risking your life in a breakneck acceleration that - you pray - gets you up to speed before you're crushed by the onrushing traffic behind you. DO NOT, repeat, do not pull into traffic only to stop your car, like a deer in headlights, to see whether that onrushing vehicle in your rearview mirror will fail to screach to a halt in time to avoid striking you. (Someone actually did that to me on this freeway.) Overcome your lurid fascination with your own possible doom, and ACCELERATE!
• Wend your way south until you get to the brakelights.

At this point you will inch forward in heavy traffic at perhaps 8 miles an hour until you reach your exit downtown. However - and here come the cute tricks - you can save a few precious minutes by applying the following simple techniques:

• Move to the right lane about 1/4 mile past Avenue 43. The right lane bleeds off traffic to the upcoming I-5 Golden State Freeway exit, and so moves more quickly.
• Move back to the left lane and stay there all the way up and over that big hill ahead (the one with Dodger Stadium just out of sight to the right, the cause of additional traffic headaches during the baseball season; but that's a different story). Traffic entering from the southbound I-5, plus cars merging from Figueroa, will slow up the right lanes. The first big offramp downtown - Hill Street - lies just over the hill, and exits to the LEFT, which bleeds off, and speeds up, traffic from the left lane.

At this point you're on your own; find your offramp and escape.

• THE RETURN: drive northbound in the left lane (to avoid incoming traffic from the north Hollywood) until you pass Stadium Way. Now move your car all the way to the right. (The left lanes, through the four tunnels just ahead, tend to jam up as cars move over to take the left-lane exit for the north I-5.) Traffic opens up nicely just beyond the railroad overpass (the one with the cool 3-D graffiti), and you're pretty much home free.

This system should save you at least a few minutes each way. Use it! ... On the other hand, should EVERY person who drives the Pasadena Freeway read and follow these instructions, they won't work anymore. Hmm...

In that case, never mind! Please disregard everything I've said here. Thank you.