I really, and I mean REALLY like light traffic days.
Today marked the re-beginning of the school year, so it’s time to get the kids up early and, when possible, take Caitlin to school. Jaden rides the bus to and from, and Caitlin can also, but she highly prefers to get to school 1 to 1.5 hours early to do her middle school stuff - who knows. Friends, Band, some extra credit with the teachers - it’s her time, and I’m glad she has it.
But man oh man the drive actually, the drive isn’t so bad but it’s the traffic.
The blue line indicates my normal commute. If I’m feeling especially frisky, I might take the toll road because although it’s longer, it’s always empty and I can go super freaky fast.
The red line indicates the drive to work when taking Caitlin to school. It’s about 26 miles for the full trip.
Now to the point - on normal traffic days, I leave the house around 7:10 after Jaden gets on the bus. If I take Caitlin to school I don’t get to work until 8:30 or 8:45.
Today, I got to work before 8.
And when I got to work and looked at my blackberry and saw the time, I could only think - “man, that’s 30-45 minutes of my day gone, every time I do this, due to traffic.”
While I do maximize and enjoy the drive time for the most part - be it listening to talk radio, or an audiobook, or making phone calls and getting started on the day, checking voicemail, etc - it’s still half an hour. Nonetheless, Caitlin says she really enjoys the time at school, plus we get that 20-25 mins together in the car on the way, and while we don’t solve world hunger or discover the cure for cancer, we get our alone time and that’s always important for a dad of a teenage daughter.
One really nice recent change is the location of the crosswalk in front of their school. Take a look at this anatomically correct diagram:
The blue line is me driving to the school, as indicated by the yellow arrows. The line that we used to have on the first yellow arrow (under the letters “ff” in traffic) was easily 20-30 cars deep every day for turning right. Then I drop off Caitlin and have to come back and then turn left, and again waiting in about 20-30 cars worth of traffic.
The crossing guard USED to be where the #1 red line is shown. Yes, that meant that all this traffic had to stop every other minute for all the kiddos crossing the street. And then we had to stop AGAIN when we turned left out of the area.
Somebody was smart and moved the crosswalk to where the #2 red line is shown. There is probably 5% as much traffic on this part of the intersection, but all the people can still walk where they need to go. This seemed to cut down on 10 minutes of waiting just by itself.
I want to do a Miller commercial. “Thank you, Mr Crosswalk Location Planning Guy. You save a ton of people a few minutes a day, and someday you’ll get it back and be able to spend it retiring in Jamaica.”
My head hurts. Could you please put this in a powerpoint presentation?
sue, Sure, but wouldn’t it be better in a flash movie instead? That sounds like fun!
Oh, and did you notice that the little “normal” and “school” drive arrows on the first map kind of look like a turtle swimming to the left? Or am I the only one who sees terrapins on terraforms?
I was going to mention that, but figured you’d think I was hallucinating.
Sorry it took me so long to respond.
Are you actually complaining about a whole 30 minute commute just to drop your daughter off and get to work???
Jeez. I used to leave for work at 5:45 a.m. just so my commute didn’t take an hour and a half to get to Irving. And it is about the same number of miles!
Shame on you!
No, I’m not complaining about a whole 30min commute. If you do the math, the commute is 1.5 to 1.75 hrs total. It’s 30-45mins that _traffic_ adds. On light traffic days, the commute is 30-45mins _less_.
Why is it that you can respond to this blog entry, but you can’t respond to my email and text message about my availability for my astrology conference call???
Abs, Assuming your question isn’t hypothetical, the reasons are A) I had my ringer off due to being at a dr appt, so didn’t get the typical alert that a new SMS msg was in, and B) I usually read my bb msgs in reverse order, meaning I see most recent first, so I saw the comment entry and responded to it first.
Oh, and my 3rd house Mars was afflicted so my mutual receptive planetary rulers conspired to create unharmonious aspects in my technologally-based communication. Yeah, that’s it!
OMG!! I TOTALLY love what you have done with you site!! LOL! I am talking about the way cool clickable TFJ DVD petition button! You’re awesome!!! I had no idea it was a permanent stable of your blog, not just at your excellent Fantastic Journey post. Thanks so much!!! Drop my TFJ blog and let me know what you think. (Um, again, I put in a phoney email here, not sure how this works. But If you need to contact me, do so at my blog).
Long Live The Varian!!! :o)
I meant staPle, not stable!! =P
Varian: You think his blog is cool? Good lord. He has the most boring template possible!!!
Still love ya baby! But not in that way.
Varian4Ever, You’re the first to notice the petition button and actually say something about it. And it’s both stable AND a staple, so you’re not actually incorrect :).
btw, most blogs require an email in order to post, and that’s how we help block spam. Also on most blogs, the email address is kept private.
Abs, he didn’t say the blog or template is cool; he liked that I made my own The Fantastic Journey DVD Petition button, which he commented on earlier today. Speaking of Fantastic Journeys, when you coming to Austin again?
I am fully aware of your petitions. I have noticed, but have not commented, because you are a dork.
Now go upgrade my wordpress.
Oh, fantastic journeys:
I am too poor to come to Austin. It takes me a whole tank of gas to get down there and back, which is about $45. Then I have to fill up again when I get back to Dallas. So unless you want to contribute to the poor, I won’t be down for a long, long while.
Abs, dork or not, I’ll upgrade your wordpress anyway. And it sounds like you need a magical waterless trans-dimensional boat to travel…. might I suggest signing the petition so that you might get one on DVD?
Um, yeah.
If you really wanted me to come down so we can go to lunch and talk shop, you would pay for my trip down.
Jerk.
hi Whall! OMG! You guys are so funny, with the absurdist that doesn’t like your blog yet out of 100,000,000.000 websites chooses to hang out here? He lives up to his name. Btw, I’m a gal! Austin, as in TX? I thought it was a map of Chicago, LOL! (I just glanced at it, read your other post only, I confess! LOL!) Texans are way cool! You gotta love that accent! Well I just dedicated you my latest blog post, Whall. :o)
Well, actually, I am a girl, but many people confuse me for a man. Well, a well-endowed boy, maybe.
Wayne is my best friend, so it’s important for me to continually bring his ego down a notch.
I am so glad you like Texans! I am a native Austinite, though, which is the only city that does not really belong in Texas. We are proud, though, and would secede on a dime.
And Wahhh is still a dork.
LOL! So you a girl too, huh? And his best friend! I was wondering why he didn’t ban you! LOL!
Hey whall, this is an interesting blog program, what system does it use? (like I’m on blogspot, what are you on?) *bracing myself for Abs.reply here..*
Abs, tell you what. If I get good news from my initial dabblings at my tax return, I’ll pay for your way to come down, get a personal astrological consultation, eat lunch and talk shop. The Fair Tax is looking better and better every day, though… Let’s hope we get Congress and the next President to pay attention to it.
Varian4Ever, yes, it’s Austin, TX and I should point out that while I may be her best friend, she’s hardly *my* best friend. MY best friend is whoever’s buying beer any given day.
If you look at the “about” section up at the top, I describe that I run my blog on Wordpress (free open source software) and I also give credit to the author of the theme I use to customize the blog. Like Absurdist, I run my blog at my own hosting provider instead of a blogging place like blogspot, blogger, etc. Wordpress does both - you can go to wordpress.com and have a blog hosted there, or you can go to wordpress.org, download the software, find a place to run it and do most everything yourself. I’m a geek in that I prefer to have more control over the blog and I’m very Unix-savvy and script-ready.
If you want to see what a blog looks like when it’s been doused with a pink paintbrush, then dropped in a vat of pink Crayola wax, then taken out and blown with a bunch of flamingo feathers before the wax dries, you can click on Absurdist’s name to get to her blog. Supposedly she wants my geekiness to get off of it’s geeky butt and go upgrade her wordpress blog, but she masks the request in insults sometimes so my brain doesn’t parse them correctly
Maybe I need two smileys for that one
:)