So what makes a good commute? Well, for starters—and this should come as no surprise—distance.
For a long time, in what I believe was a very strange coincidence—or was it?—my commute to the agencies I was working at was exactly 26 miles each way. It seemed to be my travel threshold.
Even though 26 miles doesn’t sound like a lot, you can do the math - and if you can't then I believe it's a damning indictment of our public education system. Don't get me started. Where was I? Oh, right. It's 52 miles round trip. But at 8:30 a.m. or 6 p.m. going against traffic on the 405, they feel like dog miles. It may as well be a 1000.
All this to say my commute now is spectacular. The agency I’m currently at is right at the beach (or as I called it the last time I wrote about it, tsunami adjacent). I don’t have to get on a freeway to get there, I just cruise down Pacific Coast Highway from my house. There’s never any traffic on that stretch of PCH at that time of day, and it takes me about 20 to 25 minutes to arrive unstressed and un-pissed off at work.
Which brings me to the second component in a good commute: the destination.
I’ve worked for a few agencies in San Francisco over the years. They all have the same politics, personalities and British-accented, insight spouting, knit-cap wearing planners every other agency has. Here’s the difference: at the end of the day, I’d open the door to leave, and I’d be in San Francisco. It made up for a lot of ills. Flight and all, my commute to the San Francisco shops from my house was often faster than my commute to Orange County.
Since my commute du jour runs down PCH, I get to see the ocean, surfers, joggers and beach rats while I drive there and back. If I’m working a little later (stops to laugh at the thought of working later), I can even manage to catch a summer sunset. Like the old saying goes, getting there is half the fun.
Of course, depending which agency you're commuting to, it just may be all the fun.
