Long Commute 5

[pavlik]

Dear friends,

Sometimes I feel stupid spending the time I spend every day commuting to and from work. I am talking 2 hours each way!
You see I live in NY City and work in southern Connecticut (Fairfield County).
I do not want to move to CT, simply because I'd be depressed there- we all know how depressing suburbs could be.
It'll be somewhat of a relief for me to know that I'm not the only one who commutes so much. Or am I?

cheers

 

[lewtam]

I'm on an equal time shift - 15 days work, 13 days home. Site camp is 1km from plant.

The drive back home at end of shift is 200km of dirt road through national parks and state forests. I can stop at a river crossing and have a swim or throw in a yabby (Australian freshwater crayfish) pot. Roasted on coals, they are the best bush tucker you can get. Drive home should take me 4hrs but I could take all day and consider it well spent.

Wouldn't have it any other way.

To get me back to an office based job in a capital city, they would have to promise me things that aren't quite legal in Australia.

LewTam Inc.
Petrophysicist, Leading Hand, Natural Horseman, Prickle Farmer, Crack Shot, Venerable Yogi.

 

[epoisses]

Interesting observation: a very long commute is not necessarily a waste of time!

I made a similar observation yesterday. My wife had ordered a truckload of wood for the fireplace (10 m3, yes she thinks big), that had been delivered and dumped on the driveway yesterday. I spent the whole evening picking up the wood and stacking it in the shed in the garden. During the first half hour the work started to annoy me, I calculated how much time=money I spending as an engineer doing this kind of job that any monkey could do. Then after 1 or 2 hours the monotonous picking up of two pieces of wood and arranging them nicely in a stable stack of wood 2.5 m high started to work as a therapy. My head went empty, gone the stress of the day, and I suddenly saw a homo sapiens (didn't know anymore whether it was 2005 A.C. or B.C. and it didn't matter) collecting wood to keep himself and his family warm. Time and money didn't matter anymore, there was only the wood that smelled nice and the promise of the fireplace heating up the living room...

Anyway, I hope you see the link between the two. There is no such thing as a "long" commute, there are only high quality commutes and low quality commutes. Only the latter are a waste of time.

 

[wes616]

My wife now walks out of our apartment (about 50 feet) and boards a train.... she knits for 40 minutes, ( I've gotten a scarf, and a hat & for christmas will have a sweater... hopefully she'll get better at it by then :-D ), gets off the train and walks about 25 feet to her office.

My Dad walks through 3 blocks of city, and across a beautiful campus (all told about 15 minutes)

My commute (starting monday)...

sunday, i take the train from my apartment to D/FW airport and boared an airplane. 2 hrs later arrive in Atlanta, take the train to miserable little room, sleep... get up... work for 5 days... Friday night, get on airplane in Atlanta, fly for 2 hours, take train home, kiss wife, fall asleep... door to door: Approximately 6 Days...

Makes me feel like my 1 hour each way commute in Los Angeles was pretty easy...

Wes C.
------------------------------
When they broke open molecules, they found they were only stuffed with atoms. But when they broke open atoms, they found them stuffed with explosions...

 

[Jabberwocky]

I think a commute spent driving all alone is not the best way to spend ones time. However, public transit changes things immensely.

I went to high school across the county, we had a 90min. bus ride one-way. I was on the bus before 6am for four years. In the mornings I slept, and in the afternoons I talked, or read, or did homework, or listened to music, or slept more. Now I live 5min. from work and wouldn't have it any other way.

For me at least, dragging yourself through traffic is a waste of time, talk radio and books-on-tape nonwithstanding.

Aren't they working on cars that drive themselves? Once the bugs are worked out what a grand thing it will be. All time spent getting from A to B becomes Free Time!

 

[Jabberwocky]

Addendum:

By "they" I of course mean "we" as engineers. Represent!

 

[ziggi]

jabberwocky,
your schoolyard commute sounds similar to mine, except that the school was across town, our bus ride took 1 and a half hours, that doesn't include the 1 hour wait after school b/c the bus was dropping off the junior grades first. To be honest the 1 hour wait and the bus ride were always enjoyable. The wait allowed us to involve ourselves in such intelligent pursuits as rugby or british bulldogs on a narrow field comprising of a brick wall on one side, rocks and dirt on the other side and a tree in the middle....I'm surprised that no one was seriously hurt actually, although the tree did take its fair share of victims.
The bus ride allowed us to laugh, joke and participate in fights which were left over from the field.

Ahh the good old days

 

[ddelaiarro]

pavlik - I feel your pain. My wife and I lived in SW CT (Milford) in 2002. I worked just south of Hartford (40 minutes on a good day) and she worked in the city - the exact opposite commute you had. We lasted all of 8 months. The commutes drove us both nuts. She has sinced convinced me to move completely out of New England (Love that dirty water, Boston you're my home) and we now reside on Long Island. Her commute to the city is roughly 45 minutes and I have a 25 minute drive opposite traffic (away from the city in the AM, towards it in the PM).

We just came to the decision that our non-work time shouldn't be filled with work-related activities (i.e. commuting). We've never looked back. I'd give my right arm to move back to MA, though I won't do it if it means my commute is largely increased. To me, that lost time just isn't worth it.