Thursday, May 18, 2006
Commuter hell
Yesterday on my commute home from work (which was made all the more hellacious by a detour to Wal-Mart to buy an air mattress), I thought to myself that I'd really like a sticker that says, "It could be worse. You could be in L.A." A few minutes later, I also decided I'd like to have a T-shirt that says, "I'd rather be riding the Metro." I'm not sure why one has to be a sticker and one a T-shirt, other than that if I was wearing two T-shirts at the same time, it would kind of defeat the purpose of having something written on them.
The point is, my commute sucks. I knew it was going to suck before I moved here, and yet somehow I don't think I was prepared for the magnitude of its suckage. I keep telling myself that the reason it's so horrible now is because I've only been doing it a week and haven't had time to figure out all the little tricks and shortcuts. It's early enough that I can still hold out some hope that that's actually possible.
The thing is, I had my commute in Birmingham down to a science. In fact, it was approaching an art form, it was so beautiful. Through careful observation and analysis, I had every detail worked out, including which lanes to be in at which lights to ensure my lane would always be the fastest. I'm getting a little misty now just thinking about it. I knew where to take the shortcuts, which subdivisions to breeze through. It was rare that I was ever stuck in traffic.
Over the past couple of days, I've been experimenting with some alternate routes to and from work. I've managed to plan a route that avoids almost all of the congestion on my way to work, and with one minor tweak tomorrow morning, hopefully I will have eliminated the last of it. The drive home is a bit trickier. It seems there's no way to get from my office to the highway that doesn't involve rage-inducing amounts of traffic. And I haven't quite managed to figure out how to sidestep the major bottleneck heading into Arlington, either.
But just give me time. Soon I'll be making art out of the D.C. traffic. Then I suppose it will be time to conquer L.A.
Yesterday on my commute home from work (which was made all the more hellacious by a detour to Wal-Mart to buy an air mattress), I thought to myself that I'd really like a sticker that says, "It could be worse. You could be in L.A." A few minutes later, I also decided I'd like to have a T-shirt that says, "I'd rather be riding the Metro." I'm not sure why one has to be a sticker and one a T-shirt, other than that if I was wearing two T-shirts at the same time, it would kind of defeat the purpose of having something written on them.
The point is, my commute sucks. I knew it was going to suck before I moved here, and yet somehow I don't think I was prepared for the magnitude of its suckage. I keep telling myself that the reason it's so horrible now is because I've only been doing it a week and haven't had time to figure out all the little tricks and shortcuts. It's early enough that I can still hold out some hope that that's actually possible.
The thing is, I had my commute in Birmingham down to a science. In fact, it was approaching an art form, it was so beautiful. Through careful observation and analysis, I had every detail worked out, including which lanes to be in at which lights to ensure my lane would always be the fastest. I'm getting a little misty now just thinking about it. I knew where to take the shortcuts, which subdivisions to breeze through. It was rare that I was ever stuck in traffic.
Over the past couple of days, I've been experimenting with some alternate routes to and from work. I've managed to plan a route that avoids almost all of the congestion on my way to work, and with one minor tweak tomorrow morning, hopefully I will have eliminated the last of it. The drive home is a bit trickier. It seems there's no way to get from my office to the highway that doesn't involve rage-inducing amounts of traffic. And I haven't quite managed to figure out how to sidestep the major bottleneck heading into Arlington, either.
But just give me time. Soon I'll be making art out of the D.C. traffic. Then I suppose it will be time to conquer L.A.
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