The New Commute...

I started taking a new route to work this week.

I've known about this route for years - a snaking backroad through farm country that leads straight from my home to my office - but I've always been told it takes about 90 minutes to traverse, so I've never bothered with it.  Taking the more direct route down the clogged and congested 6-lane commuter highway, I-270, takes me 90 minutes on the absolute worst days.  Usually only takes me about 45 minutes to an hour, on average.  And my top priority was always to minimize the amount of time my commute took above all else.  As far as I was concerned, an hour and a half to two hours a day in shitty traffic on a big highway was much preferable to three hours a day in shitty traffic on a country two-lane.

I realize now, as I so often have, what a fucking idiot I am.

I don't know why I decided to take the back way on Monday morning.  The pull of the Tao in my gut urged me in that direction just then, and so I followed the flow.  It took me 45 minutes.  And I know for a fact that was a heavy traffic day.  So far this week, it has taken me an average of one hour to make the trip either way.

And it is a beautiful drive.  Farms and orchards and tiny, old towns the whole way.  Great views in every direction the entire route.  Forest trails and nature preserves and river walks one after another.  Blooming dogwood trees and cherry trees and pear trees every-fucking-where I look.  It even smells wonderful!

And it's fun to drive!  All twisty and curvy and up and down and around.  Definitely a driving enthusiast's road.  (And, of course, I love driving.  A good driving road is one of my favorite pleasures in life.)  Yeah, it's only a two-lane, so every once in a while you get stuck behind a slow truck or something, but there's plenty of places to pass.  And getting to overtake someone every once in a while just makes it that much more exciting and fun to drive!  And when you can't pass, well, it just forces you to slow down and relax and enjoy the ride (not to mention the view).

Aaand... because all of that wasn't good enough - turns out I get a lot better gas mileage on this road.  So it's actually saving me money, too!

I mean, it's like a dream-come-true!  It's more fun, less expensive, takes about the same amount of time, and rather than being an exercise in frustration and aggravation and aggression and terror and psycho-drivers and gridlock and exhaust fumes and assholes talking on cell phones and not paying attention to what they're doing and why don't you hang the fuck up and drive you stupid motherfucking piece of shit!!...  Instead I get what amounts to a driving meditation to begin and end my day.

I am trying not to grieve too hard for the decade I wasted on that asphalt Styx we call I-270.  I am instead trying to concentrate on how grateful I am to have found this oasis of a commute at all, ever.  How lucky I am, to never have to feel that stress and pain again.

The sight of rolling green hills, the purr of my engine as I round another bend, and the smell of cherry blossoms are making that pretty easy for me right now, I must say.