A Basis For Comparison (or, Why I Never Complain Too Much About Commuting)
My mother is 62 years old. Every weekday, excepting one Friday a month that she gets to take off, she commutes from the suburbs north of Baltimore to the heart of Washington, D.C. To do this, she wakes up at 4:30 am, and leaves the house sometime around 5:15. She catches the light rail from the suburbs north of the city to Penn Station in Baltimore. She then transfers to the Marc train, which travels between Baltimore and Washington. Finally, she transfers to the DC Metro, completing her commute a short walk from the Library of Congress, where she is employed (I know, pretty cool, huh? My mom is a librarian at the Library of Congress.) In all, she commutes approximately 4.5 hours round trip every day. She’s been doing this since about 1997. I think it is really cool to have a mom who is a librarian at the Library of Congress. But I wish she would retire soon. And quit with the ridiculous commute.
Washington, DC. ( Or: The Beltway)
When I was in college, I worked as an engineering co-op one summer. I worked at an engineering firm in Bethesda, MD, on the northwest side of DC, and I lived in College Park, MD, on the northeast side of DC. You could call it 10:00 and 2:00, I think, if you picture Washington DC as a clock. Which, I don't. Usually. And if I did, it would probably be a digital clock. Operating in military time. Anyway, my commute took me 15 minutes via the beltway if there was no traffic, and 45 minutes if there was. Google Maps says this is a 22 minute, 14.6 mile drive. It would take me a day to hike 15 miles. I am not sure I could run 15 miles. I would like to try one day. If I biked 15 miles, it would probably take me an hour, maybe and hour and a half? I'm not sure. This commute was my first lesson in the daily repetitive stress of traffic jams. At the time, no one had cell phones. Some people had car phones. And I am sure they talked on them, in their cars, while driving. Driving fast, or slow. But I don't think that the small number of people who had car phones seriously affected the accident rate or traffic speed during my commute. I know the speed of traffic affected my mental well being. It stressed me out. Even if I was doing this commute in a yellow and white 1980 VW Vanagon. With a good stereo and a gigantic sunroof. I can't remember if I waved to a lot of people while driving this hippy van. I hope people waved to me, but somehow I don't think they did. I mean, this was DC. I am not saying that people in DC are mean. Just, maybe, too busy to wave. I did have a CB radio in this van. Boy, the van merits it's own blog entry. Remind me to tell you the short but eventful life story of this van as I know it, and how it managed a way too early retirement in my parent's garage.
Commuting, to me, has never been an extremely painful experience. Although I don’t like sitting in traffic, stuck, in my car, I don’t always mind it either. I don't like it, but I don't mind it. There are no other times in an adult American’s life, I think, in which we are forced to just sit still. If only the rules, regulations, guidelines or maybe even customs of our society dictated that we just stop everything we are doing for 15 minutes of every day, and sit, still, wherever we are at the time, maybe the world would be a much better place. Forced non-action. Required inertia. Mandatory meditation. Even recommended rest and relaxation. Unfortunately, traffic is none of these. It is in no way a relaxing time. As soon as we start to think we are sitting still, we have to move again. Slowly. Hopefully, gaining pace. Picking up speed. Maybe this is the end of it. Maybe I can finally shift into second gear. Maybe the accident that caused all this has finally been completely cleared. Maybe…bam. Slam on the brakes again. Stop. Brake lights. Wait a second. Did I just waste the past 10 minute of my life stuck in traffic listening to an article on NPR about the controversy of skin lightening cream use among adult men in India? Really? Maybe there will be a traffic report soon. Maybe I should call someone on the phone. No. Bad. It's illegal in California. Well, so is smoking pot. Are these bad things because of their illegality? Not necessarily, but yeah, I guess you could get pulled over for doing either one. Which automatically would cause more traffic, and force you to take even more time to get where you are going.
The Glory Days of Vehicles and Carpools
During the entire 2.5 or so years that I lived in San Francisco, I commuted from the farthest south neighborhood of that fair city to different points in Marin county. You have never heard of the neighborhood I lived in in San Francisco. Unless your name is Brian, Nathan, Link, Jasin, Lorena, Natalie, Marilyn, Paolo, Kali (the dog, not the ancient goddess of chaos and destruction, though, you know, there is a comparison there that deserves mention), Lynn, or maybe someone one the above mentioned dated or were friends with. But, lucky for us, this neighborhood had a bus stop or two, and was a quick bike ride (downhill in the morning) to the Caltrain station. So, in remembering my commutes, I have to give this one points for including a bike and a train. And it doesn't end there. In the morning, I could, and often did, ride downhill to the train, get on the train with my bike, and ride north to the end of the line. I then got off of the train, got onto my bike, and road 10 minutes of flat streets to the ferry landing building, where I paid $3 to board the ferry and ride it, with my bike, to Larkspur, in Marin. During this ferry ride I could partake of a bagel, or coffee, or even both. I could sleep. I could stare out the window or off of the deck at Angel's Island, or Alcatraz, or San Quentin or the Golden Gate Bridge. Or, if I was feeling like my scenery intake level was currently too low, I would take one in after the other, perhaps thinking to myself "Ooh." or "Aaah." Or "Hey, this is a great view of Death Row! It's neat how we are in a no-wake zone, and we have to go slow as we cruise by this famous prison. I wonder if Johnny Cash still plays there ever? I wonder what modern San Quentin prisoners would think of Johnny Cash." Or, on passing Angel Island, "Wow, I wonder how immigrants felt arriving at such a pretty island, with such a nice name, only to then be processed like cattle, and quarantined for way too long of a time?" Huh. The Bay Area, with it's thought provoking scenery.
The commute from San Francisco to Marin ended with a 3 minute bike ride across an overpass over Hwy 101 to the office where I worked. So, of an hour of commuting, I rode my bike about 20 minutes on mostly flat and downhill routes, got to enjoy a train, coffee, a bagel, and scenery, and didn't pay too much more than the toll on the golden gate bridge. This commute probably takes the cake in my diary of commute memories. Besides all the benefits I listed, there was the sleeping I could do if I I wanted, or needed to. Then, on the way home, I could choose to reverse the bike to train to bike to ferry to bike to office route, or I could bike the entire 20 or so miles, including a large scenic portion through Marin on bike trails and across the Golden Gate Bridge, or I could split it up. Ride the ferry back to SF, then bike home through the city. Enjoy a beer after work on the ferry. Give a random tourist a talking tour of the scenery. Take a nap on the boat. This was always fun, especially on the catamaran ferry. This boat was fast, and when it hit the waves it tended to rise and fall a bit, especially in the bow. So I discovered one choppy day when I was napping in the bow and we hit some good waves, and I dreamed that I was falling. And rising. And falling.
Besides my time in the bike to train to bike etc commute to Marin, I also spent a significant amount of time in San Francisco commuting via my roommate's Nissan Sentra, my old 1978 Honda CB400 motorcycle, and a large brown Dodge conversion van, affectionately nicknamed "The Big Turd". There were many wonderful days of carpooling across the Golden Gate bridge. After being stuck working in 100 degree summer heat all day in Marin, my coworkers and I would take the Turd to 7-11 to get slurpees. As we cruised south on Hwy 101 towards the GG Bridge, we would sip our slurpees and reminisce about the funny things that the ex-cons and tweakers that we worked with had said that day while we worked beside them, standing in creeks wearing waders and mowing down ridiculously tall and persistent cat tails and pampas grass. At a set point before the bridge, we entered the gay tunnel (that's kind of how I think of it, based on the rainbow, you might also know it as "that tunnel with the rainbow on it", or, perhaps, as the "Waldo Tunnel", that last being what it is actually called. By the time we had gotten to the tunnel, we had rolled up the windows and put down our slurpees. The temperature in the summer in the Golden Gate strait can easily be as much as 30 degrees lower than that in most of Marin. We often hit traffic jams that backed us up into the tunnel. But that's the beauty of carpooling, especially in the turd. At least, during traffic jams, you have folks to keep you company. And somewhere to sleep. If you're not driving. Which, since it was my van, I always was.
I am still waiting for someone to create a fuel efficient conversion van. I mean, really fuel efficient. If a van is invented that gets better mileage than my Honda Civic, and I suddenly win the lottery, I will buy one. Cause I miss those days of the Turd carpool commutes. But, life moves on.
And so did I. Commuting, really, whether it's a good commute, or a long commute, is a necessary part of our lives. Unless we don't work. Or, maybe, we work from home. Or, better yet, we don't work. But for many years of my life I was lucky enough to work from home. Well, reverse that. Not as luck as those of you who rent or own a place and live there and work out a home office or something. I have worked at a variety of places over the years that provide me with a paycheck and housing at the site of the job. Meaning my commutes have often been short walks from home to work site. Whatever that work site may be. In the early 00's it was the Marin Headlands Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The commute there was a short bike ride or hike through a coastal national park. In New Hampshire, I spent a few years working seasonal education jobs for the Appalachian Mountain Club, and there I walked a short distance through sunshine, rain, sleet and many feet of snow. But always in a forested area with nice mountains around. In other places where i lived and worked in the same location, the commute really didn't exist.
Right. Climate Change. It's My Problem Too.
Being somewhat of a self-described environmentalist, I think the car commute is something, ideally, that I should avoid. I think that the closer that we live to the places that we live and work, the better our environmental conscience is. It's better for the planet if we reduce our carbon footprint. As I write this the leaders of the world are gathering in Copenhagen to talk about climate change reduction. Of course, they are, many of them, flying there in jets that use massive quantities of fossil fuels. I don't know though, maybe some of the Europeans are riding their bikes instead. Or at least traveling by BMW motorcycle. Well, okay, probably not. But maybe some of their security staff are traveling by motorcycle. If even one leader was riding his or her bike to get there, well, I would vote for that person as Ruler or the Universe. Ideally, if I ever attend a conference, I will bike there. Ideally, soon, I will be biking to work. At least a few times a week.
This past summer, though, I experienced a change of heart about some of the ideals that I had carved out for myself over the years. Well, not a change of heart, but a reorganization of my priorities. I needed to save money, so I stayed with my parents north of Baltimore. I really wanted to work on water quality issues in the Chesapeake Bay, so I commuted daily back and forth to Annapolis, the state capitol of Maryland, so I could work for the MD Department of Natural Resources. This commute, according to Google Maps, consisted of 47.6 miles, or 57 minutes, of driving. Also, according to Google Maps, it could take "up to 1 hour and 20 minutes in traffic." Which is true. But another statement that is also true is that this commute could take up to 2 hours and 30 minutes in traffic. Or, it could take 2 hours and 27 minutes. Or there could be an idiot whose car broke down in the tunnel that cause a ridiculous, and seemingly spontaneous, backup. Or, that, if it was raining, some people would drive this route very slowly and cautiously. In the left lane. Next to another person driving slowly and cautiously in the right lane. Of a two lane highway. One thing I will say for the drive I did this summer - there was an endless variety of surprises when it came to time frames and events that caused those varied time frames. And I got a lot of thinking done about human nature. And life. And whether or not I enjoyed commuting. Despite the audiobooks. And the phone conversations I sometimes caught up on. (I know. But in Maryland it's not illegal. So it's okay, right?)
When my work season ended in Maryland, I decided I needed a different commute, so I moved back to the north coast of California. Living in Mendocino for a few years has presented me with a variety of commutes. I have walked from my house to the office, or driven a work truck from my house 100 feet downhill to the office. I have driven 10 minutes, about 10 miles, north from one small town to a slightly larger town along the Pacific Coast Highway, checking the status of the Pacific Ocean and its associated scenery at a variety of bridges and beach overlooks. And most recently, I have moved from a 57 minute commute in Maryland to an approximately 45 minute commute here in Mendocino. The gate to the off-the-grid farm where I lived until recently is about 11 miles from were I work. It took me about 10 minutes to drive over rutted dirt road to reach the gate, then another minute to open the gate, drive my car through it, and close it behind me. I then drove another 3 miles, or 15-20 minutes, depending on road conditions, bears, weather, mountain lions, gnomes, mushroom pickers and strange old men with toyota pickups parked by the side of the road and looking like the ghost of Edward Abbey dressed in black vietcong pajamas (actually, this guy was probably just another mushroom picker, but he waved to me every morning during my commute) to reach pavement. 15-20 minutes, or 10 miles later, I arrived at work. Traffic consisted of the above mentioned oddities (okay, I never really saw any bears or mountain lions, or gnomes, but I could have if I had kept driving this route) and the occasional logging truck, CHP SUV, or tourist. I didn't bother with audiobooks but instead switched back and forth between the two different dial locations for the local NPR affiliate. I couldn't talk on the phone whether or not it was legal, my phone didn't work for most of this commute. I often oohed and aahed at the sunset and sunrise over the cloudy redwood covered hills of the watershed next to and below the road. Exposed for great scenery in some spots by old logging clear cuts. I marveled at how many years I had spent driving my poor Civic up and down these roads and others like them. I recalled how short the days during winter are. And despite the idyllic farm location of the cabin where I was staying, I looked forward to the shortened commute that I would soon experience when I moved a bit closer to town.
Which is where I am at now. This past summer was a great eye opener for me. It showed me that I miss riding a bike to work. I don't mind spending time in my car, but I'd rather spend it outside with my bike, or my dog. I do think it's a good idea to use less fuel. I value the time I free up when my commute is shorter. I strongly believe in designing a society where we all live near where we work. I have reignited my healthy dislike for suburban sprawl. I don't want to sound preachy here, but, well, I probably do. Do you have a long, hellish commute? Can you shorten it? Can you work from home sometimes? Can you possibly take a train or a subway to work? How about a bus? Can you bike to work? If so, you are lucky. If you can, and you don't, why not try it sometime? At the least, can I recommend an audiobook or two to take the edge off?
I'll try to remember to let you folks know, one of these days soon, how the next stage of commuting is going. I face a 7 am bike ride in December up a reasonable hill, then down a steep one facing a view of the Pacific and a vast stretch of dunes and beach. From there, a mile of PCH 1, then 3 miles of old logging haul road - paved and closed to motorized vehicle traffic, alongside that same ocean. It should be wet, cold and beautiful. Now I just have to get the bike tuned up. And buy some lights.
