My time: 4:58, under average but still pretty poor for a Monday at this point.
Theme: CHANGE LANES is meant to give a hint to the way the first word of the three Across answers are pronounced. So RODE is road, ALY is alley, and WHEY is way (depending on how you talk). This isn't a great theme; there's no aha moment, and it doesn't much help you solve the puzzle, since you wouldn't know how, say, ALY was spelled even if you knew the sound.
I wanted "something computers cannot write to or erase" to be *PAPER, but it's the much more pedestrian CD-ROM.
My time was hurt by the fact that I impulsively put *PET SITTER in as soon as I read "one tending a house during the owner's absence," even though that definition doesn't point toward that answer. It's CARETAKER.
I also didn't know the name of the ancient fortification overlooking the Dead Sea. The MASADA was built around the first century. It is the site of a mass suicide of the Jewish defenders when the Romans breached its walls in the year 73.
Apparently UCLA used to put a live bear out on the field during home games? Those wacky Bruins! It was just a little Himalayan bear.
Lye's chemical formula NAOH (NaOH) was in the puzzle way, way back in October 2017.
ALY RAISMAN, or at least her first name, appeared in the puzzle a little more recently: July 2018. I had a hard time spelling out her name anyway.
And the Belgian river the YSER appeared just this August 2, but I still dithered over whether it was *YPER (confusing it with Ypres, the Belgian town).
I guess the lesson here is DUAL: don't be in a rush to enter long answers, and try to remember old material. Just trying to keep my brain from passing its SELL-BY DATE.
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