The simple definition of commuting is the drive from home to work, and back again. This simple definition, however, does not fully convey the ass pain that is my (our) daily commute. After a week of making the trip from Oak Harbor to Seattle, I describe the commute as follows:
4:00am – Wake up. Well, kinda. At 4:00am, I’m not capable of waking up. Mankind was not designed to wake up before the planet has orbited the sun enough to cast light upon our timezone. I’d like to meet the motherfucker that invented alarm clocks. So, while the rest of the world sleeps, I’m up with the Dunkin Donuts guy. Time to make the donuts.
4:15am – Close Firefox after glancing over the headlines at news.google.com, as I wipe the sleep from my half-closed eyes. Everything is blurry, but it’s the only time I get to make sure North Korea hasn’t launched their half-ton “nucular” weapon at the West Coast. I don’t have time to actually read the news, because it’s time to take the ritual morning dump. Don’t laugh. You know you do it, too. After that chore is complete, I lift my heft into the shower and do the morning scrub routine. I can’t have the co-workers in my carpool know how funky my ass crack can get.
4:40am – Slip on the shoes, grab the cell phone and keys, and put on my jacket and hat. Don’t forget to kiss the woman goodbye and whisper to the cockatoo on the way out the door… or one of them shall surely screech.
4:55am – Hop in the truck for the 5 minute ride to the carpool driver’s house. It’s November, and it’s cold, so there’s plenty of shivering. Just a short 55 minutes ago, I was sleeping in a warm bed, dreaming of titties, or something. Now my testicles are chattering because it’s so goddamned cold. If there was no cloud cover overnight, there’s the irritating task of defrosting the windshield of the truck. This isn’t too difficult since my washer fluid has anti-freeze attributes, however, the shit still freezes as I drive.
4:56am – Leave the comfort of my driveway and check the mailbox on the way out. I’m too tired and lazy to check it on the way home the night before. As I drive in the dark, oncoming high-beam headlights cause my pupils to dilate and make my eyes hurt. You know what I mean? It’s like waking up in the middle of the night to take a piss and flipping on the 400 watts of bathroom lights. That shit hurts. And it’s apparently the road department’s duty to make sure I hit every fucking traffic light red. Fuck, man, it’s 4:56am. Does there have to be another driver in the intersection to trigger the traffic light sensors 15 seconds before I get there? Dammit!
5:02am – Swap parking spaces at the driver’s house. He pulls the car out of his driveway and I pull my truck into the driveway. He says it’s so the ditzy women on his block don’t hit my truck, but I know it’s because he wants his house to be seen with an awesome F-150 in his driveway. I’m either onto his scheme, or having delusions caused by sleep deprivation.
5:10am – On to the next pickup point(s), where we add to the body count and exchange half-assed grunts of good mornings again.
5:20am – Finally we’re on the road and driving through Deception Pass, unless someone in our carpool is late and gives us some lame excuse about their dog running around, and not going into their cage, or whatever… at which point it’s…
5:25am – And, finally we’re on the road and driving through Deception Pass. And since Highway 20 is only two lanes, one in each direction, we get stuck behind some truck with a 60-foot trailer that can’t do much more than 25 miles an hour up the hills. Excellent.
6:00am – We enter the I-5 freeway and enjoy the trip south while it lasts, for I know soon our morning will be a fucked up version hell on concrete (or polymer-based test asphalt). I know this trivial asphalt tidbit because I have all the time in the world to read every goddamned sign on the Interstate parking lot.
6:25am – Now the fun begins. Entering Everett, we automatically start seeing brake lights start to glow in the distance. It’s the Everett slowdown. It’s a fact of life. Like gravity, or women who smoke cigarettes liking to give blowjobs (god bless their oral fixations). In Everett you go slow. There’s simply no escaping physics. And just when we (read: I) start to bitch about the traffic, it clears up for 10 minutes. The feeling of moving faster than 7 miles an hour is the same feeling I get when I take a wicked piss after holding it for far too long. But, my good feeling is ruined at…
6:45am – Another slowdown, this time around Alderwood Mall. This one caused by who knows what. I alluded to it in my last blog update. It could be the sunshine, the fog, or the rain. Maybe it’s the date, the temperature, or the clear sky that allows Mount Rainier to be seen from anywhere in the State. Fuck, it could even be a growing concern about the quantity of ass hairs in Governor Gregoire’s mudcutter! Who the hell knows? But, it’s the beginning of a long and frustrating battle against stop and go traffic. It makes me wish I drank alcoholic beverages, even though it’s only 7:00am and I’m in a moving vehicle. I’m not even driving, and the anxiety makes me want to run my hands through my hair… if I had hair.
6:55am – Dial 5-1-1 for traffic info to find out how much longer we have to endure this torture. Holy fucking garlic-sautéed hell! It’s heavy or stop and go all the way to the Convention Center!
7:00am – Made it to Lynnwood, at a blistering 12 miles an hour. An electronic sign states 52 minutes to Seattle. Fuck. We turn on the radio, tune 1050 AM, and listen to traffic updates every ten minutes, first on the fours.
7:25am – We’re in Mountlake Terrace now, making great time, if you’re Grandpa pushing his aluminum walker to Walgreen’s to refill his boner pill prescription. Time to call Mike and find out where he’s at in his individual battle to the office. He’s five miles ahead of us. At lease he knows we’re going to be late again. Call 5-1-1 again, only to find out the system is broke! Probably too many people stuck in traffic calling. The taxpayer’s nickel hard at work. Cars all around us are changing lanes fast and furiously trying to find the lane that’s moving faster. Artards, each and every one of them! We’re all going the same speed, and that speed is fucking slow!
7:50am – Finally made it to the express lanes at Northgate, but the express lanes are anything but express. Come the hell on, people! “Express” literally means traveling with few or no stops along the way (as in express train). It can also mean adapted or suitable for travel at high speed (as in express highway). Stop talking on your phones or gulping down your Starbucks and fucking drive already!
8:10am – Crossing over Lake Union / Portage Bay, and the traffic is actually moving at a decent clip for a change. We’re actually breaking 50! However, I spoke too soon, five minutes later, we’re slowing down again, but we’re almost at our Stewart Street exit.
8:20am – Sitting on the exit ramp now, waiting to cross Eastlake Avenue to Stewart. This isn’t quite as irritating as the freeway, but when you’re already 15 minutes late, you’re just looking to get to work as soon as possible. I’ve got one good thing on my side: my boss is driving, so the excuse for being late is built into the commute.
8:30am – Heading east on Stewart, working our way across three or four lanes of traffic to the far right lane. The traffic on Stewart isn’t too bad, especially if you just follow the buses and go around them when they stop to drop off or pick up riders.
8:33am – We make a right onto 6th, circle the block around the Westin Building, and enter the parking. Thank the patron saint Christopher that we made it without incident. We find a parking space, which is usually for a compact car and as narrow as Hank Hill’s urethra, and pile out of the car.
8:37am – We get to the parking garage elevator and ride it to the skybridge. We’re just a keycard away from entering the building. Damn that House of Goodies. I’ve been up since 4:30am, and jonesing for breakfast.
8:40am – Finally the elevator doors open and we take the short ride from floor 3 to 5. Time to take that wicked piss I mentioned at 6:55am. That’s all I need is a fucking urinary tract infection.
8:45am – I’m finally at my desk. I log into my workstation and realize I got only nine hours, no… 8 hours and 15 minutes, until I get to do this again going the other direction. This goddamned commute has to get easier.
For anyone not familiar with the Seattle metro area, the distance between Everett and our building in downtown Seattle is right at 28 miles. An hour and fifty minutes to travel 28 miles in stop and go traffic is about 15 miles an hour average. Fucking hell, that’s damned close to cruel and unusual punishment, if you ask me.
Home
Here’s a nice picture of my truck under a blank of our first snowfall this year. Don’t mind that obstruction in the upper left-hand corner; it’s my satellite dish. I used the six-by-six wooden post my dish is mounted to as a tripod. Here’s another from the front yard, and one taken from the back yard. Frequent readers of my shitty little waste of time will notice that the LTD is still in front of the house. Good to know my redneck gene hasn’t faded with age, eh?
