Human beings in Southern California have been battling Los Angeles traffic -- and losing -- for decades.
It took Philip Rivers just one offseason to come up with a patch.
Refusing to leave his digs in San Diego, the 35-year-old Chargers quarterback has cooked up an ingenious solution to tackle the 70-mile commute between home and the team's new Costa Mesa facility.
Enter the Riversmobile, a gutted-SUV now dolled-up to become, as Rivers calls it, the "best QB room I've ever been in."
Kevin Acee of The San Diego Union-Tribune penned a behind-the-scenes look at the signal-caller's ride, which will take Rivers and Chargers backup Kellen Clemens to work three times a week during the regular season.
Per Acee, Rivers' "mobile man cave" comes packed with "seats like those in a first class airplane set side-by-side in the back facing forward, plenty of room for a 6-foot-5 quarterback to fully recline while watching film on the 40-inch television screen separating the front seat and rear cabin," while noting: "There is satellite TV, WiFi and a small refrigerator Rivers would rather you call a cooler."
"An hour and 18 minutes," Rivers said when asked how long the voyage eats up. "Which is nothing. There may be some days where we're hoping to get in a little traffic because we have more work to do."
In the comfort of their $200,000-plus ride, Rivers and Clemens are able to spend their commute talking football, preparing for Sunday's opponent and breaking down game film.
"My two biggest things were my family time and my preparation and what I owe this football team," Rivers told Acee. "I was not going to sacrifice either of them in any big proportion. I can look at all the pluses and minuses and say, 'OK. This does it.' This allows me to get home in the 6 to 7 hour, which is when I got home the last 11 years, and it allows me to watch all or more of the film I watched before."
With no less than eight children to tend to at home, Rivers wasn't about to uproot the entire family or waste precious hours behind the wheel.
"After about a day or two of seeing what that looks like it was, 'No way,'" Rivers told Acee. "No way I'd be behind the wheel for three hours a day and feel like I'm preparing. I'm wasting three hours. It's just different. It takes a different toll on you."
Rivers even explored the idea of renting a helicopter to practice, but that quickly loomed as a flagrant boondoggle.
"That was about 15 minutes of me doing an Internet search and five more minutes with me wondering, 'What in the world am I thinking about this for?' I've never been in one in my life. ... Plus, unless it could pick me up in my neighborhood and land on the practice field, it wasn't going to be that much faster."
Rivers repeatedly made it clear in days past -- when the whole L.A. move was whispered about -- that he had no desire to move his family to Hollywood. In the end, he won't need to, coming up with a solution that plenty of other drive-yourself-to-work signal-callers would happily adopt.
"If this was year five for me, we'd move," Rivers said. "We'd want to stay in the same city, but I'd have a long way to go. You don't know. ... This is the home stretch. I could have five years. I'm only signed up for three."
