Driving Me Crazy

Throughout my entire career at various jobs in Boston, I have always traveled to work by train, foot, or one particularly trying time, by bus to a town outside Boston. I occasionally drove in for a special reason, like a 7 am meeting in the dead of winter when I preferred not to walk alone in the dark. Whenever I was job hunting, if I couldn’t get to the place by walking, train, or bus (and the job would have to be amazing for princess here to agree to taking a bus) I didn’t apply. I didn’t even own a car until about 6 years into my work life, so the pattern was set.

In my new job, I have a Boston office I go to one day a week by train and foot, and a suburban office I go to once a week. By car.

It’s one stinking day a week, and all I have to say is, how do people live like this?

I’m going through that thing where you listened to people complain about something for years, and you empathized and agreed, and you could even kind of imagine how much it sucks, but then you actually experience it for yourself. Holy car commuting, Batman!

I now know why Americans are so angry and divided and pissed off all the time. Humans were not made to sit in a tin can, gold can, or even a platinum can on a highway crawling at 5 miles an hour. I realize I am not the first person to understand this, so I will add my voice to the chorus:

That shit ain’t right.

Highways, clogged or open, are for going on vacation and getting far away from your house and your life. Or getting to the airport to get far away from your house and your life, or visiting distant friends and family you actually like. We’ll leave forced holiday visits out of this argument for the moment. Day trips to interesting places. Doing a favor for said likable family and friends. These are highway uses.

I don’t even have a leg to stand on because I have a reverse commute. I live in Boston, so I head out when everyone comes in and head in when everyone heads out. 1/3 of my commute is in Boston just getting to the highway, but local Boston traffic I get; I’m used to crawling 5 miles an hour on Storrow Drive on the regular because that’s just how we roll here.

I have put on my big girl pants and am trying to make the best of it. There is a really good nursery near my office that I would never bother to drive to, and one week I stopped on the way home to buy my favorite flower, a dragon wing begonia plant to add to my deck. How cute is princess?

But this little urban Jedi mind trick does not address the issue of lunch. Princess is used to the hospital cafeteria, which was big, excellent, inexpensive, and 2 floors down. I just ran down and got a salad. I long ago got out of the habit of packing lunch. So my first time arriving at the office park, I was foodless. I will give the office props for having great snacks, but there isn’t any food food. There is a cafeteria in my building, but when I consulted my coworkers, they described it as “sad.” And when I peeked in, it looked small and empty, which is never a good sign for an eating establishment.

They did say they went out for lunch, so I thought, OK, let’s try that. They told me a good place to get a salad and silly me, I put it in my GPS. It said 15 minutes away. I didn’t look at the route, why would I? I don’t even really know where the hell I am except north of Boston, so who am I to scrutinize the route?

I drove the half mile from my building to the road. Why are these office parks so weirdly big and spread out? With useless bright green lawns, an artificial pond, and a utilitarian fountain? If you went through all the trouble of plumbing for a fountain, just put a sculpture or even a few big rocks around the damn thing. Water spraying from a pipe is not going to make me forget that a 13-mile drive took 45 minutes.

But I digress.

At the end of the loooooong office park road, I took a right, and then the next thing I know, I was driving up the highway ramp. I started to panic, but it was 1:30, surely there wasn’t traffic now?

Cue maniacal laugh.

The red brake lights faded into the distance to emphasize that I was officially in car hell. Soon after GPS said to take the next exit, phew! Until I realized it was merely taking me to another highway, also with red lights fading into the horizon. What fresh hell was this, and how could I get out?

I did breathing exercises, I cursed the universe, I eyed my fellow drivers wondering how they survive this. Their grim looks told me they don’t. 7 minutes later my exit came up. Alleluia!

Not so fast, sweet cheeks. After waiting through 3 traffic light cycles on the off ramp, I turned on to the main street and had the restaurant in my sights. But it was nestled in one of those little artificial downtowns in the suburbs that have sprung up in recent years. Little streets with sidewalks no one uses, and there’s 20 restaurants laid out in a neat and tidy grid. Apartment buildings guard the perimeter, most likely overpriced “luxury” units. Poof, you have a town center! But the “streets” are just glorified driveways to a series of postage stamp parking areas, making it seem like there is parking, but there isn’t. Every space was taken. I spent another 4 minutes stopping every 15 feet at an imitation stop sign just to see that there were no open spots in this little postage stamp either, meanwhile dodging all the huge pick up trucks and oversized SUVs barreling through the “streets”. Why do suburban people have huge gleaming pickup trucks that don’t look like they’ve worked a day in their life?

I gave up on the salad place and decided to eat whatever was nearest any open spot. It turned out to be a Panera, so that was OK. I didn’t have to wait very long, which was a mixed blessing because it gave me less time to face going back. Also, I had a meeting that I was most likely going to be late for.

I texted my coworkers apologizing for the city girl rookie mistake of getting caught in the highway traffic. Although it wasn’t their fault at all, they apologized for not giving me the heads up about the highway. We all had a good laugh about it when I got back. And my boss later showed me the back roads to food, so princess won’t starve.

Wish me luck once a week. Or laugh in my face, and in a gin soaked voice tell me your car commuting war stories, 5 days a week, uphill both ways, in a snow storm. I really understand it now, and my hat is off to all of you.