On the one hand, fascinating. On the other, brings back too much of my commute-related stress.

Adventures in Commuting, That Happened Edition:

I've had the theory since I switched to my (shorter) commute that the marginally later time I'm able to leave is somewhere after the tipping point at which traffic becomes really bad. After a few successive 1:40 40-mile commutes, I decided to do some empirical testing. Turns out I'm correct: if I leave 20 minutes earlier, I get to the office 60 minutes earlier.

...and don't really have enough class prep to do to fill up the extra time. So it's probably back to sleeping an extra 20 minutes.

Adventures in Commuting, Other People Writing About It Edition:

It turns out that I qualify as a megacommuter, since my average commute now is around an hour (a bit more going in, occasionally a bit less going out), and my previous commute was a solid 90 minutes. While it has its downsides, that I take to be obvious, I have found it to be pretty conducive to my way of life, for some of the reasons John Lanchester discusses in the Guardian.

Namely, a long commute is ideal for introverts. I have a guaranteed hour and the beginning and end of my day in which to prepare for/recover from all the stress of teaching, office hours, meetings and the rest. In the mornings I can devote some mental energy to planning out class sessions; in the evenings I can reflect on how the day went. Music, which I otherwise don't get very much time to listen to anymore, features prominently in both. And... that's it. Driving is a low-intensity but requires constant attention, so higher mental processes are forbidden as a rule (no 'worrying about things'). My phone, which would otherwise be a source of distraction, is positively forbidden. The route itself takes on a comforting monotony: it takes so long to get to the Circle, so long to get to the Junction, so long to get to Harlem, so long to the toll; on the drive in, traffic backs up right below where planes come into O'Hare at regular intervals; sometimes I will see how many I can watch before I have to move on. All in all, a quite peaceful and beneficial part to my day...

...as long as the commute doesn't extend beyond 90 minutes.

Adventures in Commuting, Winter Edition:

I like to make fun of North Carolina for freaking out every time it snows. (Last week it snowed in Durham--approximately half an inch--and Facebook was filled with people who thought this was just the best, weirdest thing ever.) As it turns out, Chicago has a way of freaking out when it snows, too: if the plows and salt trucks haven't been out, everything--and I do mean everything--grinds to a halt. Unfortunately for me, this is exactly what happened on Monday morning, where the Illinois Department of Transportation somehow missed that it was going to snow during rush hour and consequently did not bother to salt or plow. Result: morning commute takes 2.5 hours to go approximately 40 miles. That's an even 16 mph average.

This is all a roundabout way of saying I find this to be quite plausible.

Adventures in Commuting:

* There is never a good reason to spend seven-plus hours of your life at an airport, though getting to go home just barely qualifies. Bonus travel protip: alcohol (in moderation) works as an effective separator of emotions from intellect in those instances where THEY JUST TOLD YOU AGAIN THAT THEY WILL MAKE A DECISION ABOUT WHEN TO BOARD IN AN HOUR, AGAIN. You will be aware that you're upset about it, but you won't care.

* The new commute, after a few goes: shorter, which allows me to wake up at the civilized hour of 6:00am and arrive in time to prepare for class. Always takes less time, even if barely less in some (many) instances. The real sacrifice, as it turns out, is view: the drive from 94 in to Lake Shore Drive was: the wilderness of northern Illinois, a brief slice of north-side Chicago, and then the world's most beautiful drive (in surprisingly low-traffic conditions) heading south on Lake Shore Drive. Repeated for effect: the world's most beautiful drive. (Ironically, driving north is significantly worse.) The drive on 90: mostly on a submerged highway with trains running by periodically, and then an uninspiring 'skyline' view and terrible traffic.

* Also: I am oddly fascinated with the super-bright electronic billboard that serves as a memorial for (all caps) KYLE DEATHRAGE, which is apparently actually his last night, and no, he's not an action hero.

Adventures in Commuting, This Had Never Occurred to Me edition:

My commute begins at 5:50am, and, on the average post-daylight savings time day, begins right before or shortly after the sun goes down. This means that yesterday, as I pulled onto the road to head to the office at the more-reasonable time of 10:30am, I briefly had the following thought:

"why is it so bright out right now?"

"Oh, right. It's that whole 'middle of the day' thing."

Adventures in Commuting:

* Further evidence for the thesis that planning has nothing to do with anything: left at the usual time, and the first leg of the trip went significantly faster than usual: fewer other cars, hit fewer lights, etc. Total time savings: seven minutes, maximum. Which were promptly lost on the next leg of the trip.

* My super-secret return trip strategy: take the expressway. Even in the middle of rush hour, it's faster, since most of the traffic is getting off on 290 or 90. Why this is not true on my commute in is a subject for further theorizing.

* Signs I have begun to integrate: I periodically switch over to the radio for a traffic report, which is a blistering 90-seconds or so of road names (rather than numbers) and times it takes to get from one exit to another, also expressed as names. I can now follow approximately 80% of it, and know from the times given whether it constitutes jammed traffic or not.

* Monetary matters: the coffee-at-home oatmeal-at-the-office routine has held strong, in part because leaving prior to 6:00 leaves me uninterested in anything more elaborate. Lunch remains a problem: I can't convince myself it's worth it to bring something from home, so I go out. At least there are no shortage of food trucks on Ellis who will sell me a(n unhealthy) lunch for not-very-much. Alas.

Adventures in Commuting III:



Hit the north end of Lake Shore Drive as the sun was rising over Lake Michigan, and this comes on the stereo. I get it: beauty of nature and all that. I'd rather sleep in more.

Adventures in Commuting, Part II:

* I have fundamentally come to accept that there is no secret, fast way to get from the house I'm staying at to campus. Nor is it really worth worrying over the ten minute difference than constitutes an 'easy' commute versus a 'difficult' one. The factors are largely out of my control, and given the at-least-90-minutes involved, what appears to be a good strategy when I set out can become a bad one. Sometimes it takes two hours to get from one place to the other: there's nothing to be done about it.

* I believe I have worked out a way to shave some time off my morning prep, ever so vital for those 9:00am classes: invest modestly in an electric kettle and instant oatmeal, which means I can fill up with coffee before I head out, and postpone breakfast until I arrive. This also marginally reduces the desire to cheat and go out for food. Marginally.

* The commute puts a tremendous stress on my sanity, and therefore on my music collection. I have decided it is a reasonable expenditure to buy one new album a week, the better to keep what I'm listening to fresh.

* It is still ever-so-slightly surprising that one cannot get directly from the north or west suburbs to Hyde Park on mass transit without having to walk at least part of the way. If I were trying to spread gentrification, that'd be the first thing I fixed...

Adventures in Commuting, Part One of a Series That Will Have Too Many Parts:

All this time, I was worried about navigating the highways of Chicagoland, and it turns out that's not a problem at all: it's not that far of a distance, and even when the highway goes slow (and I caught the end of rush hour), it still goes. No, the problem will be navigating the six miles between the house I'm staying at and the highway. It took me 30 minutes to make it through an intersection this morning, because the intersection also had train tracks, and there were (long) freight trains running every 15 minutes. The return trip was the same.

General resolves/commuting lessons: must wake up earlier. Leaving five minutes after you wanted to get out the door and not having anything for breakfast is a recipe for spending more money 90 minutes or so later, after you've had the coffee you have to have because you're operating a large piece of machinery, and are hungry and cranky from the drive and amped up on caffeine. This will require some tweaking.

Related: what's the best place to get coffee in Hyde Park? Potential answer: the cafe that is in the basement of the building connected to mine, which would be approximately 3 minutes to walk. But ISO better answers.

As someone who is planning a way-too-long commute from Chicagoland to Hyde Park, I find Phoebe's periodic dispatches from someone attempting Princeton-to-Manhattan oddly comforting: I may have long days and find myself dead tired at the end of them, but it's survivable.