L.A. Bikers Block the Entire Freeway for the World’s Most Inconvenient Marriage Proposal (W/Video)

Young_Chitlin · January 2013

By: Lindy West

I am a huge fan of true love and grand gestures and stifling pink smoke and staring endlessly at that storage facility (or outlet mall?) that looks like a weird castle east of L.A., but my visceral reaction to this "Ultimate Biker Proposal" is still UUUUUUUGH.

Biker Hector Martinez wanted to make sure his proposal to girlfriend Paige Hernandez was memorable, so he had hundreds of his biker friends shut down the freeway (the 10 near West Covina, specifically) while he popped the question. In the video (above), filmed from an overpass, you can see the bikers slow and then halt the freeway traffic, and then Martinez makes his bike ? a huge cloud of romantic pink exhaust fumes into the air while, behind him, hundreds of drivers idle and plot his death. (She said yes, by the way, so that's good, I guess.)

"We planned everything to assure the safety of everyone," he continued. "Obviously it was illegal, but if you see the video, you can see that it was coordinated pretty well."

The California Highway Patrol, however, does not have such a rosy view of the proposal.

"It was just so unsafe what they did," said CHP Lt. Dennis Woodbury to HuffPost in a phone interview." I can't stress enough how dangerous that was. I'm very thankful that no one was involved in a collision."

Lt. Woodbury also described the pink smoke bomb as "a potential for disaster."

Um, yeah. Congratulations on the nuptials and also on miraculously not dying/killing anyone. But as a person who has actually lived in Los Angeles, I can't help but notice that in the video—before the proposal—the traffic is moving at a glorious, speedy clip. AND THEN THEY STOPPED IT. Ugh, the paaaaaain.

Sorry to indulge in a hacky L.A.-traffic-is-bad bit, but it's just that it's really really bad. I remember the profound joy that I used to feel when the freeway was actually moving in L.A.—those rare moments when you realized that you were going to be on time to your ? —and I'm sorry, but there's no way that these people's love is more powerful than that joy. I want that joy to be my wife. (Traffic joy, will you accept this rose?) So THANKS FOR KILLING MY METAPHORICAL WIFE, SELFISH BIKERS.