DC Commuting

I should have known. Or at least suspected it. I hit the off-button of the alarm clock instead of the Snooze and woke up 20 minutes later than planned. I had to hurry up and get ready for the commute.

I dashed to the car and to the train station only to find that the train was going to be about 30 minutes late. It was. At least I got the extra sleep. The platform was already hot with the morning humidity and there were dozens of extra people there because the next train is usually only 20 minutes later than the one I take. So we had two trains worth of commuters to stand in the aisles and block up the path.

By the time we arrived at Union Station, I was half-way between two local bus arrivals and waited along with a dozen people who would be wanting to board the bus also. It arrived and we all piled in.

By the time we reached 9th Street, the Police had the block over to 10th cordoned off for some unspecified reason. The bus deviated with a left turn in what was supposed to be a "uni-block detour" that turned out to be much more. By the time we moved one block south we were met by another police vehicle making us turn left again. While two wrongs don't make a right, three lefts do.

We were headed back toward Union Station until we made the third left and were headed North. By then there were a series of No Left Turns including the useless left on at E Street from where we originally diverted. K Street provided the first opportunity for a left turn, the fourth one that put us back on a Westward path.

It was about then that I thought about the possibility of the driver's name being Moses. He did an admirable job of navigating the city streets during morning DC rush hour, but we did seem lost in the desert there for a time.

Employing 20-20 hindsight this day would have been a good one to telework. Then the realization hit me. When you get to work, your commute is only half over. The day was only cranking up to its maximum temperature at that early hour. AMTRAK and MARC still had to contend with warped rails, switch and signal malfunctions, and overheated locomotives. Sometime over the past 21 years of commuting into DC the commute has become an adventure. THAT was never supposed to be.

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