My commute is about 22 miles, and it wouldn’t be that bad if all the other commuters would just stay home.
So, everybody, go home!
I hate drivers who are so busy drinking their starbucks nonfat latte whatever that they can’t be bothered with looking before cutting into another lane…as a motorcyclist i get cut off more than i care to count. i feel like people are getting worse and worse at paying attention to their surroundings when driving.
put down the cellphone,newspaper,sandwich,etc…and DRIVE!!!
oh…and that accident on the OTHER side of highway has nothing to do with what’s going on with THIS side of highway so stop rubbernecking and freaking drive!
and hey,douchebag…see that little wand shaped stick on the left of your steering wheel? that’s your turn signal stick so people know what the hell you’re doing since we can’t all be blessed with mindreading skills.
Eh, a lot of the worst misbehavior I’ve experienced – including close contact and shoving – is entirely unrelated to the train actually being crowded.
Hey, that triggered a memory. Speaking of “self-unaware backpackers,” check out item 3 in this old post (and the rest of that thread seems relevant as well).
Can I rant about my husband’s commute? He drives about 17 miles each way. The amount of time it takes ranges from 40 minutes to three hours, completely unpredictably. Because he never knows when he’ll be home, it means that we can never plan for him to pick the kids up from anything. That puts a lot of pressure on my own schedule. If I stay even five minutes late, everything goes south.
My commute is 33 miles each way, but i don’t do it every day. This semester, it’s generally 3 days a week. My wife also does the same commute three days a week. We commute together two days out of three, and i carpool with a friend on the other day.
The drive is almost all freeway, and for about half the distance there is a carpool lane. There is another 6 miles of carpool lane under construction, and it should be done early next year. The slowest part of the drive is often getting from campus to the freeway, especially if we leave just after a class gets out in the afternoon.
On a really good day, with no traffic, we can be door-to-door in 30 minutes. A typical day is more like 40 minutes. The longest it’s ever taken was 1:20. That was last Thursday, when the whole of San Diego County lost power, and everyone tried to get home at the same time.
It helps that our drive is something of a reverse commute, going from the city to the 'burbs in the mornings, and coming back into the city in the evenings.
I know I’ve chosen to ride a bike when I could easily get a ride from my wife, or even take the bus, and I know I’ve benefited by losing 20 lbs in a year and a half. Nonetheless, please indulge my gripes:
>The recent rash of no doubt drought-related armadillo roadkills on my route has really added an unwanted bouquet to certain stretches of the ride that I could really do without.
>There’s a tiny little road which may or may not be an actual public thoroughfare (the signage is a little hazy on the subject), which has been closed for construction at a business on one side of it for almost a month now. Can y’all please hurry up a bit? I feel like one of those devil-may-care, traffic-law-flouting cyclists the Roads-Are-For-Cars types are always complaining about when I cut through the adjoining parking lot to avoid a long, awkward and uphill detour on the way to work.
>The railroad crossing at the base of the big giant* hill I’ve nicknamed Mt Crumpet really needs smoothing out. It’s jarring to take the uneven pavement in a car, and it kills my momentum on the bike, not to mention that I’ve already lost both a car key and a rear light from the three-part jolt.
*Not actually big or giant, but very intimidating when I first started to ride.
Wow, that’s really weird. That’s pretty much unheard of here.
Your backpack story reminds me of some of the rudest behavior I’ve seen. A young woman got on the train during rush hour, and was carrying a really big suitcase. She laid it down flat right in the middle of the floor, and then sat on the middle of the steps and had a loud cell phone conversation. She took up enough real estate that 3 or 4 people could have comfortably stood. And people getting on or off had to step over both her and her giant freak suitcase. And this was during rush hour when commuting is hard enough.
The evil part of me wished that she’d get stepped on a few times.
I love the phrase ‘giant freak suitcase’. 
I’m in the same city as tdn, different train line. I take a commuter train rather than a subway, which means I pay more per ride to be inconvenienced. My biggest commuter irritant is the person who feels that their laptop or purse or giant freak breakfast deserves its own seat and acts all put out if you ask them to please move their stuff to let you sit. Also, the people who pretend to be sleeping so that they can avoid eye contact and feign innocence of other commuters who might want a seat.
I used to commute just over 50 miles each way, from Denver to the north side of Colorado Springs. I hated that commute. Now I’m a 15 minute scooter ride or a 40 minute bike ride door to door.
Awesome!
The L smells of urine and breaks down during my commute at least once weekly.
I’m allowed to call it that because I own one. My nickname for it is Big Red.
Does the commuter rail often fill up so much that every seat is filled? I rarely find that to be the case, but I don’t always ride at peak hours. The weekend before last I got on one that was pretty full. I used to take the Plymouth/Kingston line on Fridays at rush hour, and rarely had to share a seat. When I took the Framingham line a few months ago, it was jam packed. And the guy sitting next to me was having a Very Important Phone Conversation that absolutely couldn’t wait until he got off the train.
Now that I’m retired, I have no commute, but if I was still working, thisfalls along my former route, thanks to all the rain we had last week. I think the detour would have added 10 miles.
Sounds like my first car.
rimshot
I swear to gods, if one week passes where we’re not sitting still in a dark tunnel for a few minutes, I’m going to treat myself to a lobster dinner and as many martinis as the waitress is legally allowed to serve me.
My commute is 11 steps down, then 15 feet to the left.
<ducks brickbats>
My current commute is 1 hour door-to-door by commuter train. Can’t complain about it.
If I have to drive (like this morning) it took me 1-1/2 hours of nasty stop-and-go freeway traffic.
We are contemplating a move to a new house. It would change us from 30 miles to 65 miles from work. I can still commute by train but it’ll increase from ~$200/month to ~$700/month. I dread any time that I would have to drive.
I live about 10 miles from work. Today, was blessedly traffic free, I made it door to door in 13 minutes. It’s taken as long as 40 minutes.
Oh yeah, Scarlett? Mine is 11 steps down, then a U-turn, talk about hardships.
Sometimes a cat will yack on one of the steps, and it’s hard to see because they’re not all that well lit, makes commuting barefoot a risky venture.
I know a guy who owns a seashell shop. He recently moved it across the street to downstairs from his apartment. I gave him a hard time about his old commute taking too long. Seriously, he cut it down from 20 seconds to 5.
Well, that’s good because I thought you were going to tell us that he kept it scattered all over the beaches of the world.
Yes, it’s an old Steven Wright routine.