time travel

I was thinking this morning, as I was walking to work, how my perceptions of a "long time" for a commute is.

Growing up in Tallahassee, everything was basically 10 minutes away. If it took 15-20+ minutes to get somewhere that meant that it was either all the way across town or out of town (Thomasville, GA is not very far from us, and I had friends that lived between Tallahassee and there who went to school in town because their parents lived in town.) I was fortunate enough to live within about a mile of my elementary and middle school, and 2.5 miles of my high school, about 2 miles from my Theatre and my Dad's store (aka work) and about a mile from my best friend's house. When I went to college there, I only moved about 4 miles down the road (at the furthest -- I moved several times during college,) which was about equidistant from work and school -- it took me about 5 minutes to get to both.

A: Furthest Off-Campus Housing for College

B: On-Campus Housing for College

C: Work (Dad's Store)

D: Family Home (4yrs to 11yrs)

E: High School

F: Family Home (11yrs to college)

G: Theatre

H: Best Friend's House

I: Elementary School

J: Middle School

(distance from A to H is 4.5mi)

I never really realized how awesome this is until I moved to Boston, where it became the norm to have at least a 20 minute commute on public transit from outside the city into the city. My first apartment there was a 10 minute walk (or a 2 minute bus-ride, if you could catch the bus, which never ran when it was supposed to) to the T station (blue line - what up!) and then, at the fastest, a 20 minute ride from there to the closer location of my work, which was on the Mass Ave. end of Newbury St. -- the end not near the commons. You had to switch blue to green in the middle, which was part of the reason it took 20 minutes. It was a fairly fast ride.

(yup, that was the closer location. We had to go in a tunnel under the water. It's about 7 miles by car.)

Here's the further one (30 miles away by car - GAH!)

This ride took about an hour. Super fun when you have to be there at 8AM on a SATURDAY and your roommate has decided to have a party the night before and people are DOING IT on YOUR air mattress (that you so kindly lent them) at 6:30AM when you are trying to get ready for work and your bathroom isn't connected to your room. I'm not bitter.

When I moved in with Nate -- who had a car and drove it to work, so he was not worried about being close to a T stop -- my commute became about an hour to the closer location (I wasn't splitting shifts between the closer and further location anymore. For this, I am grateful.) 

If I could catch the bus at the right time, it was about a 10 minute ride to the T station and a 45 minute ride on the T. If I didn't catch the bus (which I often didn't because they were timed very strangely -- and by strangely I mean not when I needed them; they either got me to work very early or too late,) it was a 30 minute walk to the T. This is NO FUN in the snow and/or rain and/or when it's below 30 degrees outside. Which it often is in the winter in Boston. 

(the 8 miles by car that took me an hour by public transit. Super lame.)

So that became the norm. It took at least 20 minutes to get anywhere in Boston, even by car, even if it was only 5 miles away. It was usually more like 30 to 45 minutes, and that was if it was close. So you get used to it. And you only complained when the T stopped (usually underground) for more than about 10 minutes. Then you were allowed to complain. Bostonians complain loudly and often, so feel free.

Now that I live in Seattle, it's kind of a combination of the two. Seattle hasn't really got the goings-on for the public transportation. They're working on it, but it's hard to get anywhere outside the city. Thankfully, I live less than a mile from work. So I walk.

And it's about a 15-20 minute walk (or a 5 minutes bus ride) to downtown, which includes Pike Place Market, shopping and restaurants. It's then another 15-20 minutes (or another short bus ride) to the Seattle Center, where the Space Needle, EMP and Museum of Science are.

However, trying to get anywhere outside of the Seattle downtown area takes FOR-EV-ER. It was a 45 minute bus ride to where my sister was staying in Greenlake, which is about 8 miles away from my house. It's a 20 minute drive. And that now seems like a long time!

But really, in the grand scheme of things, it's not that long. It's nothing compared to Boston.

Though, the fact that the gym is a 10-minute walk from the house sometimes seems entirely too far away to bother going ;)

How far do you go for work or play?