back and forth

My commute yesterday was two and a half hours. By the time I got into the office, I was in an unhappy enough mood that it was best not to have a lot of contact with coworkers initially. That, and a colleague who is losing the campaign to charm me started in on yet another judgmental rant to tell me that that's why he's never lived so far... when he was interrupted (blessedly) to go off to a meeting. Why does that guy get under my skin so much?

Anyways, I thought I'd write about my commute, because things have changed after years and years (15? 16?) of predictable 25-35 minute travels back and forth to work.

For the first time since the late 70s, I'm no longer driving all the way from home to work. The distance to my new job isn't that bad, but the traffic, narrow streets, and many traffic lights are. I'm now either driving to the subway, riding for five stops, and walking for 10-15 minutes, OR driving to the train station, transferring to the subway, and walking 10-15 minutes to the office.

In the morning, the minimum travel time, door-to-door, has been an hour and twenty minutes, regardless of mode of transport. I imagine that driving in would take the same amount of time but leave me in a much fouler mood. In the evening, if I leave work late enough, and if I've parked at the subway, I can sometimes get home in an hour.

Truth to tell, riding the train usually takes the longest, but it almost always involves a predictable amount of time and requires less than three miles of driving each way. Driving to the subway is the biggest gamble in that the time required is totally unpredictable and seems more dependent on weather than on the time of day that I leave the house.

But yesterday... we were in the midst of a nor'easter, with lots of wind and lots of rain. Because of the weather and the anticipated crowds for the Boston Marathon, I decided to take the train. When I arrived at the station, the scrolling message board said that my train would be 20+ minutes late. I thought I could live with that and decided to wait. I found an eave to hide under and talked to fellow wannabe passengers to pass the time.

After about 20 minutes, a guy came along who had called a special number and learned that the train would be 40+ minutes late. So what do you do at that point -- cut your losses? Or trust that just another 20 minutes more would reward us with a train? I decided to wait it out. The train ended up being an hour late.

It turns out that the train I was waiting for broke down. The next train was supposedly pushing the first train to get it out of the way. Neither ever came by. Finally, a train coming from Boston stopped, went up to the next station, turned around, and started the ride back to Boston. That third train was on time but was picking up passengers for three trains worth of people. Fortunately, because of the state holiday, there weren't all that many people waiting and the train wasn't that crowded.

I later heard that a colleague had attempted to drive to the subway and had turned around. I'm not sure if the traffic, the parking (or lack thereof), or the puddles made him decide to turn back, but I do know that my other option wasn't even an option yesterday.

Now that I'm getting used to a longer absence from home on days that I work, I will admit that I'm enjoying the commute time. Especially on the train (where there's always a seat and I've never had to stand up), I'm able to catch up on reading. I'm not yet finding a lot to take home from work, so I'm reading magazines and the occasional book. Sometimes on the commute home, Robert catches the same train and sits with me, so that we can decompress from the day together.

The subways are a different story. They're often crowded and I often stand up for at least part of the ride. Sometimes, if I'm lucky enough to find a seat, it's challenging to get off at my stop because of the crowds.

I imagine I'll continue to experiment with the commute in perhaps feeble efforts to shave a few more minutes here and there. For now, it's good to have options. And I can always hope that eventually, maybe someday, work will move closer to home again.