Freeway Guide Makes Exiting a Nice Detour

The idiot light on the dashboard is throbbing red. The young son in the back seat is whining about starving to death. The daughter demands a restroom, and the hot, unfamiliar freeway stretches ahead.

An exit looms, but there is no clue whether it leads to an oasis or to more miles of desolation. Do you take a chance or keep going?

Such anxiety is unnecessary, according to a former Navy fighter pilot and a stewardess who have put everything a freeway sojourner needs to know into a survival guide.

Bill and Saundra Cima’s idea caught on with Sunset Books, who turned the couple’s largely self-financed project into the California Freeway Exit Guide.

Eventual Series

Bill Cima, 40, said from the couple’s home in Carlsbad that they are updating the California book while cranking out a similar guide for Arizona, New Mexico and Texas as part of an eventual 10-book national series for Sunset.

“We tried to get into a niche where nobody else (in the book business) was,” Cima said. He pointed out that map books show people how to get where they’re going, and travel guides describe what travelers will find when they get where they’re going.

“We wanted to show what you can find along the way so you can get off the freeway, get what you want and get back on your way,” he said.

Since the book came out last year, plenty of readers have written the Cimas, not only to praise the book but often to assert: “I had that idea myself, but I never did anything about it.”

Actually, others had done something with it. Cima said publishers told him several other guides to California freeway exits were tried and failed because they lacked diagrams.

The Cimas’ book has plenty of diagrams, detailing what can be found around more than 2,800 exits from the state’s freeways and restricted-access highways.

There are diagrams numbering all the exits along a particular stretch of road, plus symbols next to the exit names listing gas, food, lodging or whatever. Another chart maps out the streets around an exit. Services are numbered below the map and the numbers reflect the locations on the map.

For discriminating drivers the Cimas have added a “facilities index” giving exit coordinates for all the Pioneer Chicken outlets, for instance, so loyal patrons won’t waste their time getting off the freeway when the only restaurant around offers pizza.

The idea for the book evolved as Bill Cima was being reassigned to bases from Point Mugu to Las Vegas to San Diego to Lancaster, and his wife kept driving into Los Angeles to catch flights.

Scared of Being Stranded

“There were plenty of nights when she was low on gas and was scared she would get stranded,” he said.

Bill Cima ended his Navy career to pursue his entrepreneurial dream. “I did the (research and development) myself to keep the cost down,” he said. That meant driving much of California’s 4,000 miles of freeways himself to double-check the work of his team of researchers.

Given his first-hand expertise in tabulating the offerings of the state’s exits, Cima offered some conclusions in certain categories that won’t be found in his book:

Most common gas station: Chevron clearly first, followed roughly by Shell and Unocal 76.

Most common fast-food outlet: “It’s definitely McDonald’s.”

Most common motel: “Probably Best Western or Motel 6.”