The institute puts out the Urban Mobility Report every year. This years report puts San Diego County at number six in the country for the length of time motorists are stuck in rush-hour traffic. This is time drivers spend in their cars in addition to the time their commutes would take if traffic werent an issue. The national average, by the way, is 38 hours a year. Traffic delays have grown faster in San Diego over the past 25 years than they have in any American city besides Dallas.

I know a lot of people say this is bad news. But I think its great. Consider a couple of facts. For one thing, its good for public radio. People stuck in their cars have to spend even more time listening to Morning Edition and All Things Considered on KPBS. Im tempted to put my own show on that list too. But These Days comes on a little bit after rush hour.

Secondly, if we get sick of being stuck in traffic, we may actually be motivated to change our communities to move away from aggressive suburban sprawl.

Think about it. What if people could live 50 miles from their place of employment and still drive to work at the speed limit? There would be no motivation to change our dependence on cement freeways and steel, gas-powered cars. And you know the rule about creating more road and freeway capacity: If you build it, they will come. More roads mean more people, more cars and even more hellish sprawl.

San Diegans are spending more and more time stuck in traffic because our population has grown a lot faster than our road capacity. Thank God for that! Otherwise our county would be covered with concrete from the shoreline to the mountains. Maybe you cant stop people from moving to San Diego. But you can insure that theyll have a miserable commute if they contribute to sprawl.

Im optimistic enough to hope that we will eventually come to our senses and understand that living close to where we work and shop is something thats going to make our lives a lot better. Hopefully well understand that cutting down on car use is the thing we can all do to stave off global warming.

So be glad that its not easy to drive at rush hour. And if you do insist on driving, stay tuned to 89.5 FM!

Spending time with far-flung family is a hybrid model of vacation. It's part fun and part obligation. At any rate, the excessive mobility and dispersal of modern American society makes it necessary to travel long distances to see relations. If there are any people whose core and extended families live only in San Diego, I don't know them.

In my case, vacation meant going to a foreign country. It's a place where they speak English, eat sausages and talk quite a bit like we do. Correct! The answer is Canada. My destination was, in fact, Toronto. I'm told Toronto became Canada's commercial center partly because money fled Montreal due to fears of a possible Quebec secession from the national union.

Toronto is a wonderful city but not a beautiful city. Residential areas are stuffed with rather drab brick homes. This is due to an old ordinance that required construction of brick buildings, only, following a disastrous city fire early in the city's history. The only iconic structure in Toronto worth mentioning is the CN Tower, located downtown.

As for the Torontoans themselves, they're civil yet very reserved. We Americans expect a lot of "Hi, how're you doin'!" And we often have these conversations with people we've never met. Canadians, at least in Toronto, are not overly friendly. Good folks and helpful, yes. But don't expect them to meet your eyes, nod hello and strike up a chat as you encounter them on the street.

All in all, I had a great time in Toronto, a large cosmopolitan city with lots to do. Rochester, NY, was my next destination. Today, Rochester still has some great neighborhoods and some fine educational institutions. But a lot of jobs have been lost and some parts of the town are looking down at the heels. It's the home of Kodak, of course. But some rascal had the nerve to invent the digital camera.

Now that I'm back in San Diego, I'm in the city I'm lucky to reside in. Sure, not all things made by humans are worth mentioning. But we've got the weather and the Pacific. And it's good to be home.

At These Days we struggle with this question from time to time. Recently, a group that appeared on the show left us several tickets to a local sporting event. The tickets would normally cost some money. So, by accepting them for free are we wrongly accepting something of value? Im not talking about Padres tickets, by the way. This is an event that is in far less demand and not something we were dying to attend.

Freebies are a dilemma for all journalists. We always have someone trying to give us something because theyre looking for publicity for their product, whether that product is a service, an artistic event or a manufactured good. Sometimes theyre trying to create a good relationship with a reporter.

I remember a local TV producer in the Midwest who told me that members of his stations staff would get all sorts of freebies around Christmas time. The most generous gift givers, he said, were local funeral homes that would drop off lots of cigarettes and whiskey for people who worked in the newsroom. Given the health hazards of their gifts, I wondered whether the funeral homes were really trying to buy favor, or whether they were just hoping the reporters would die sooner.

When the issue of freebies comes up for These Days, it often involves free tickets to an event. Is it right to accept the free ticket? Well lets say were thinking of doing a show on a local play. We may want to see the play so were better informed about it or so we can make a decision about coverage.

Could we pay to see the play it ourselves? Yes. But our stations budget for such events is small, to say the least. And you may know that public broadcasters are not typically paid royal salaries that allow us to pick up the cost of a pricey show anytime we want. In the case of the play, if we dont accept the free ticket that may simply mean that we end up ignoring the event. That may be bad news judgment and bad for our audience.

What about free books from publishers? KPBS receives free books all the time so many that we have no idea what to do with all of them. In truth, very few of them become subjects for our shows. But should we send them back to the publisher, saying we cant accept free stuff? I think thats going too far. It would be a big hassle and, besides, we never asked for the books!

In the end, we have to make decisions about free stuff on a case by case basis. Its really that simple. Are we accepting something for free that we really want and would consider paying for? Or are we only accepting it because we have to read it, see it or analyze it for our jobs? There is a difference between one and the other.

You also have to consider the true value of the thing youre being offered.

If someone gave you free tickets to a Rolling Stones concert, thats one thing. But if the tickets are for some small theater production, which is unlikely to ever sell out, thats something else.

In other words, accepting stuff doesnt necessarily mean you are compromising your journalistic values. It depends on the value of the thing, your relationship with the source, and its relationship to your work.

Returning to KPBS has been a gratifying and interesting experience. It follows at least of month of rehab in which I was surrounded by many other people who suffered similar accidents resulting in brain injuries, both major and minor. I had six good weeks there. The only problem with rehabilitation, I find, is it requires you to focus on your own problems. By now, Im tired of thinking about my problems! Cant I start thinking about someone elses problems?

Some of you may know that I was hit by a car two months ago, while cycling to work on Montezuma Road. The accident gave me a concussion, put me in intensive care, tore a lot of flesh from my legs and its prevented me from doing my job since then.

In a way, the accident seemed profoundly unfair to me. After all, part of the reason I rode my bike to work was to do the right thing. It was supposed to be good for my health AND good for the environment, since I was taking a car off the roads. Getting clobbered by a car while riding my bike was the thanks I got for trying to reduce global warming.

Strangely, today I have no memory of the accident. I have no recollection of being hit, lying on the pavement or waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Maybe this is the minds mercy, blocking out distinct memories of pain weve received. In the press, we tend to view repressed memory as a negative thing. Ive learned that, sometimes, its natural and even desirable.

In my case, even the week following the accident is a lost memory. My family has told me fascinating stories about conversations I had with them and with my physicians, in which I was apparently coherent, listening and making sense. For some reason I have no recollection of those discussions.

For the past couple of weeks Ive been very limited in the number of hours Ive been able to work at KPBS. Ive felt a bit like an emeritus member of the These Days staff, since Im been around but Ive had not real ability to affect the show.

But now Im back on the air, returning to tasks Ive had eight years to polish. Its great to be back, though Ill be spending the first part of the return working part-time and not hosting the whole show. Im afraid this experience has reminded me of my humanness and my fragility. Ill be back to normal soon, but for a while Ill still be healing my body and recovering my old energy.

Maybe itll be good for me to view summer as a time of rest, just like it was when I was a kid. This Fall, Im sure Ill be jumping into the job just like I used to. In the meantime, thanks for the welcome back (Ive received a lot of them from listeners) and I hope youll keep on listening.

Tom Fudge here. I hope that most of you know that I'm the host of "These Days" on KPBS, and that I've been absent from the airwaves for several weeks. At KPBS, we've received many e-mails and calls from listeners wondering what's going on and asking where I've been. I've decided it's time for me to write a personal note of explanation.

On April 16, I was cycling to work when I was hit by a car. My bicycle did not survive the accident. As for me... I was left a bit of a wreck. My body made hard contact with the car that hit me. That day, I ended up in intensive care, and I was hospitalized for more than a week.

Today, I'm happy to report that my doctors expect me to completely recover. The question of when I'll be back hosting "These Days" again is a bit hard to answer. I very much miss my work at KPBS. I miss my relationship with our listeners and I'd love to be back at work tomorrow. But my doctors expect my recovery to take a bit longer than that. I will say that I fully expect to be back in the host's chair sometime early this summer.

I want to thank you all for being KPBS listeners, and I hope you will look forward to hearing me again in the "These Days" host chair. Above all, I want to thank the many of you who have sent heartfelt e-mails and letters that have wished me well during this difficult time. I consider myself so lucky to have survived a serious traffic accident, and to have so many kind people express their sympathy to me. I can only feel humble, grateful, and very fortunate to be alive in the fellowship of such outstanding fellow humans.

I can tell you that I am feeling better every day, and each day I look forward to the time when I can once again lend my voice to the discussion of our community's present and future. Thanks again for your kind thoughts and words of concern. We'll be in touch over the airwaves again quite soon.

-Tom Fudge

On the political right, it means supporting increasing troop levels and continuing American combat operations. To some on the left, it means declaring the war a lost cause and pulling our troops out of a dangerous situation.

Like most Americans, I find myself tackling this question with no military experience to draw on. Ive never served in the armed forces. The closest I ever got was registering for the draft.

But Im pretty sure that if I were serving in Iraq, I would not want to see it as a lost cause. None of us likes to put our blood, tears and toil into something, and then hear someone tell us its a bad idea. And thats a dilemma isnt it? Because it looks more and more like Americas involvement in Iraq is a bad idea, and it may have been a bad idea from the start.

When I think about sending our troops to Iraq or bringing them home, I think about John Kerrys testimony to Congress when he came back from Vietnam. Back then, Kerry was a Vietnam veteran and a prominent war protester. He called for an end to the war by saying to members of Congress, How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

It was a loaded question and theres no good answer to it. Yet I do hope all Americans believe that theres honor in sacrifice and its not a mistake to serve your country. To me, there is nothing more terrible or untrue than telling the families of Americans who died in Iraq that their kids died for nothing. On the contrary, they died for all things that make this country great: freedom, equal rights, human dignity, and the belief that all the people of this world deserve the same.

Unfortunately, our fighting men and women serve at the will of fallible politicians. And while a soldiers sacrifice is noble, his assignment may not be. While our hearts should be with the troops, our minds need to stay focused on whether continuing a military conflict is the best thing for this country and for the rest of the world.

I wont say what I think should be the United States next move in Iraq. Decide for yourself whether setting a deadline for withdrawal is a good idea. Decide for yourself whether we should stay the course or cut our losses. Everyones right to do that has got to be one of the things our troops are fighting for.

I interviewed This American Life creator Ira Glass and asked him whether any radio puritans resented him for going into television. And he said, for him, moving into TV has been a bit like Dylan, going electric.

Im no puritan. But as I watched Iras TV show, I did try to imagine how those stories would work on the radio. Interestingly, I couldnt do it.

Visual images are just too dictatorial. They are the Hitlers and Stalins of mass communication. When you see a picture on TV youre stuck with it. Storytelling on the radio is far more democratic. Its easy to imagine what a radio story would look like as a film or a TV show because youre free to paint your own pictures. And no matter how we receive information, were always drawn to visual images, whether theyre real or imagined.

I have many memories of listening to radio broadcasts that spoke to me in a very visual way. One of them was a rather mundane campaign story I heard on Morning Edition.

Many years ago, Senator Bob Dole was running for President and he held a press conference to respond to some political attack. In the NPR feature story, we heard Doles angry voice on a cold windy morning in Washington D.C. The emotion in his voice and the sound of the wind was arresting in the way it so often is on radio. But the thing I remember about that report is visual.

I see Bob Dole, standing in front of the U.S. Capital talking to a group of reporters. His face is grim. He looks vulnerable standing in the cold as his hair is tousled by the wind. Thats the picture I created for the event. I have no recollection of what he said or what made him upset. All I have is the picture in my mind.

As This American Life moves to television it will be a different animal. Iras not going electric and his show will continue to air on public radio. But his TV show will leave much less up to the imagination.

And by the way lest you think Iras radio show will become the poor cousin to the TV version, keep in mind that This American Life is expected to have about half the audience on TV that it has on the radio. Thats right public radio is the big dog in this show. Picture that.

Of course, were not really interested in serious scandals. Most of us think its par for the course when politicians lie about important facts or pursue one policy while they espouse another. Even financial misconduct is seen as part of the game. As much as political rivals try to make hay of that stuff, it just causes most people to yawn and turn the channel.

The scandals we really enjoy seem to involve sex and racism. Its hard to resist a good sex scandal. A few weeks ago we learned that Gavin Newsome, the Mayor of San Francisco, admitted to having an affair with his campaign managers wife. Gavin is divorced, and its no secret that hes had an active social life ever since he got his marital walking papers. But I guess having sex with your buddys wife, behind his back, is going a little too far even in San Francisco.

Perhaps more than sex scandals, we love racism scandals. When actor/comedian Michael Richards unleashed a racist tirade at a black heckler in a comedy club a moment that was captured on video and broadcast on YouTube the press and the public couldnt get enough of it. Richards apologies turned into a traveling circus that encompassed David Letterman, Jesse Jackson, and all manner of hustlers trying to get in on the act.

More recently, though less dramatically, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden stepped in a very large cow pie with his comment about Barack Obama. Biden called his U.S. Senate colleague the first mainstream African-American who is articulate, bright and clean.

At some point, of course, we have to take these things seriously, at least when they involve politicians we may vote for. But does a tawdry personal life have an impact on your work performance? Is a President who cheats on his wife more likely to lie to voters about important public affairs? Im not convinced the two are connected.

Furthermore, Im willing to bet that Joe Biden is actually a decent guy who does not think that black people are dirty. The big difference between him and the rest of us is that his stupid comments make headlines and are broadcast from coast to coast. God knows what people would think of me if I were judged by the dumbest thing I ever said.

In the end, voters seem to have a large capacity for keeping scandals in perspective. Plausible accusations that Arnold Schwarzenegger had a habit of groping women didnt prevent him from becoming governor. Bill Clintons alleged philandering (remember Jennifer Flowers?) didnt prevent him from being elected president.

Keeping things in perspective means keeping in mind that nobody is perfect. We should judge people by all that they are, not by just one thing theyve done or said. Yes, some people do harbor racist thoughts. Some people violate their marriage vows and a lot of people have broken the law. This doesnt necessarily mean they should be banished from polite society, and it doesnt mean theyre not good at what they do for a living.

On the other hand, lets not feel too sorry for the Bidens and the Newsomes of the world. Nobody forced them to live in the limelight. And if they want the glory, they also have suffer the humiliation that comes with screwing up when everyones paying attention.

The San Diego Chargers just followed up their best regular season in team history by bombing out in the NFL playoffs. Their loss to New England was a body blow to local fans. And it underlines the strange fact of sports in our lives. We invest so much ego and emotion in something we have virtually no power to influence a home teams performance.

I grew up playing and watching sports. Living in the rural Midwest, my spirits would soar and then plummet with each win or loss by the Iowa Hawkeyes. Kids from corn country suffer a certain inferiority complex, thanks to the snobbishness of the coasts. An Iowa win made me feel more significant, while a loss felt like fodder for ridicule.

With time, I learned how foolish I was to believe my favorite teams ups and downs cast some reflection on me. As I followed pro sports, I learned that the athletes and their coaches were mercenaries, moving from team to team in search of the biggest paycheck. Baseball Hall of Famer and former Padre, Tony Gwynn, was as exceptional for his loyalty to one team and one city as he was for his uncanny hitting ability.

The late great columnist Mike Royko, a Cubs fan, once suggested that we should cheer for the city, not for their avaricious sports teams. Ironically (for me), he mentioned this while writing about the 1984 World Series between the Detroit Tigers and the San Diego Padres. Royko said he favored the Tigers because Detroit was a town full of salt-of-the-earth, sausage-eating working folk while San Diego was a shallow suburban morass more like Disneyland than a real city. (People who know their baseball history understand that Cubs fans had other reasons for hating San Diego that year.)

But despite what Ive said, I actually find myself becoming more wrapped up in sports in recent years. I feel my emotions rising or sagging based on the fortunes of the Chargers and the Padres. Even though I now live on one of those snooty seacoasts, I manage to cast my home team as the underdog as a team somehow more worthy of victory than the other guys.

Objective studies show that a city has little to gain, financially, by hosting big league sports. But emotionally, sports are a treasure trove. We love the highs they bring us when they win, and in a way I think we also love the lows. Win or lose, our passion for the team makes us feel more human, and it makes our city feel more like a community.

Unfortunately, money does rear its ugly head. In San Diego County we now have to put aside our emotions and give sober consideration to whether the Chargers deserve some civic subsidy so they can build a new stadium. I remember living in Minnesota when the Twins were begging for a new baseball stadium and, of course, threatening to leave town if they didnt get one. A very clever bumper sticker at the time said: Go Twins! And take the Vikings with you!!

Funny? Yes. But that bumper sticker doesnt tell the whole truth about pro sports. Im the first to say that cities need to hold professional teams to the fire to recognize their greed and their willingness to play communities against each other to get the best deal. If teams make unreasonable demands, we have to be willing to cut them loose. But of all the lows the Chargers have brought us over the years, I think that seeing the team pack up and leave would be the lowest of them all.

There isnt much that I trust in this world. But I have total faith in the ability of capitalism and relentless advertising to whet the American appetite for excess. Heres a sample of what I expect will be next years hot new gift items.

Porn Star Barbie.

The folks at Mattel, who make Barbie Dolls, are sick and tired of losing market share to Bratz. Those slutty Bratz dolls have gotten way too popular with Americas sexually precocious little girls. But two can play at that game! Next years blockbuster toy will be Porn Star Barbie, and this little gal is off the charts on the trash scale. She comes with lights, camera and action. Co-star Ken will be sold separately.

Play Station Godzilla.

Maybe you think Sonys Play Station 3 is powerful, but you aint seen nothin. Play Station Godzilla will be the ultimate gig pig, featuring super computer capacity for the first time in a video game platform. In addition to storing and playing (simultaneously) all your favorite games, it has enough power left over to coordinate the launch and navigation of the Space Shuttle. (Expect NASA to be in touch). The Godzilla will be pricy, but you can be sure people will camp overnight outside Wal-Mart to be the first in line for this bad boy.

The Bradley Fighting Vehicle

You saw them rumble into Iraq as American troops proceeded to kick some Baath Party butt. Next year, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle will be available for Americas daily commutes. Forget the Hummer! Its puny. Its yesterdays news. The Brad Fighter is the perfect idea for the gift giver who thinks big. Imagine the look on Dads face when he finds this sucker parked in his driveway on Christmas morning. Imagine how powerful hell feel when he sidles up to a Volkswagen at the stoplight! Low gas mileage is a downside. But youre on the front line of motor trends when you drive the Brad Fighter.

A new face.

If you saw the movie Face Off with John Travolta and Nicholas Cage, you get the idea. Why should anyone bother with nips, tucks and Botox when its a lot simpler to start from scratch. The Chinese say its bad to lose face. But think what youll gain when you can order up a whole new mug and look like any combination of your favorite movies stars. The skys the limit, and most cosmetic surgeons will be offering gift certificates next holiday season.

Remember you heard it here first. If none of this floats your boat, just get your brother a box of golf balls and be done with it. But for now, have yourself a very merry Christmas!