Rick Bell does extreme commuting as a daily exercise.
Among the several blogs I have now written for SDNN, I’ve often mentioned “we.”
Maybe you figured it was a reference to the collective we, like “we commuters.” Or with Memorial Day just passed, Flag Day around the corner and July 4th a couple weeks after that, it was a patriotic reference to “We, the People.”
It could even have been a “We Are the World” pop-music flashback thanks to a random punch of the car stereo button that landed on Jack-FM at just the wrong time during an incredibly boring commute.
While those examples indeed could have been the case, my “we” references have nothing to do with our nation’s founding fathers or an ‘80s arm-waving anthem (how did Cyndi Lauper manage to score that gig anyway?).
And for the record, I haven’t named my car either. My Camry and I are not a “we.” It’s still just one big hunk of metal, plastic and glass.
Although I will say, in its presence, I always refer to it as a finely tuned Japanese vehicle that looks damn fine on the road. No sense pissing her off, you know. Except, there’s this crack in her windshield … .
More than a carpool ride
Anyway, “we” boils down to a couple guys who live across the I-15 from each other, get up before the sun rises, plop into the other’s rig, and deal with the Poway-Irvine commute together. Bob Scally is my car-pool buddy, and in two weeks we will have been car-pooling together for three years.
Car-pooling sounds easy at first. Like, yeah, we’ll car-pool and save gas and wear and tear on our cars and it’ll be so cool to have someone else to ride with.
Except, it’s not that easy. I mean, think about what goes into developing a relationship with a new co-worker. Then compound that by adding a daily commute together. And not just a quick 30 minutes down I-8 from El Cajon to Clairemont Mesa. I’m talking three hours round trip.
Think about all the stuff that can go sideways in a daily commute. The night before something happened, or someone has a bad day at work, or one spills a drink, or insists on eating in the car, and before you know it there’s this huge knot of tension that makes a work day even more stressful.
Fortunately, I am extremely lucky to have someone as cool and as friendly as Bob. We share a similar sense of humor (scary, but journalists tend to think alike in that way).
Bob and I are both music geeks, and just as important, we’re both cool with listening to National Public Radio, although a lot of times we’re too busy to listen because we’re rambling on about a band, or family, sports, freeway trash or why the damn San Onofre border checkpoint is open today when it hasn’t been for the past two weeks.
CHP spotting
We try to spot the Highway Patrol for each other, and believe me, it’s not uncommon to see seven or eight CHPy cruisers and motorcycles either going up or coming back.
As much as we dislike the lane-jumpers who cross the double yellow lines to access the car-pool lanes, they’re about as common along the freeway as dead rabbits and torn-off car bumpers. It wouldn’t be a commute without one-or two or three.
We’re like kids when we see the Navy’s Assault Craft Unit Five LCACs ripping through the ocean off the beach at Las Pulgas on Camp Pendleton. Then there’s the helicopters that often fly so low over the freeway that we can almost see their faces. There’s something that would cut our commute time in half.
Marvels
We still marvel when we see that first big dusting of snow on the San Bernardino Mountains, but we’ve yet to see the elusive green flash at sunset over the Pacific (although we have drank a few beers made by the Green Flash Brewery in Vista).
Speaking of breweries, we occasionally end our commute with a well-deserved stop at the Stone Brewery in Escondido. Pizza Port in Solana Beach has also served as a quick pit stop as well.
Our fastest one-way commute-it was northbound-was an hour and eight minutes. But we’ve also slogged for three hours coming home on I-5 during the summertime commute when it’s fair and racing season.
Fire and rain
We’ve literally seen fire, and we’ve seen plenty of rain. There have been accidents that choked the freeway for hours-fortunately, a rarity.
We’ve dodged all manner of drifting cars, bouncing buckets and the odd flying surfboard. The passenger is generally on 5-1-1 duty, calling for traffic updates. But the passenger is always allowed to doze off.
Why does it work for us? I’d like to think it’s as simple as we genuinely enjoy each others’ company.
We have a lot of time to kill on the road. And I’m glad I get to kill it with my car-pool buddy Bob.
Rick Bell is senior editor for Workforce Management and previously was managing editor of the San Diego Business Journal. He can be reached by Twitter or e-mail: rickbell(a)cox.net.
Tags: SDNN
Comment by: Extreme Commuter: Summertime blues on the road Posted: June 15, 2009, 9:02 am
[...] an otherwise uneventful southbound commute across Camp Pendleton, it dawned on my car-pool buddy Bob and I that summer was fast approaching. Not exactly stumbling upon a map to the Seven Cities of Gold, I [...]
Comment by: Extreme commuter: Crankiness on the summer roads Posted: June 29, 2009, 10:28 am
[...] = ‘SDNewsNetwork’; So my car-pool buddy Bob is back this week, and not a moment too [...]
Comment by: Extreme commuter: Radio, CDs and other music pleasures Posted: August 11, 2009, 12:20 pm
[...] radio programmer’s dream — generally three hours-plus in a car. And, for the most part, my carpool buddy Bob and I listen to the radio, although most San Diego signals fade just past San Juan Capistrano. And [...]