One of the mundane things I do every day is commute to work. I never really did the work from home thing, even during the pandemic, although my commute was different then due to the lack of available public transportation and of course the lack of wanting to be in public (or being allowed to be). I am lucky to have a car and I had to use it during the pandemic.
However, now we are back to "normal" again and I am back to my old shenanigans. Here is what that looks like. First, I have to get to the BART (train) station. I do this in two different ways, depending on what I have going on after work that day. If I drive, it takes about eight minutes, and I park on the streets in West Oakland and take the BART from there. For those of you who don't know this, West Oakland is the last stop in the East Bay before the BART goes under the bay and into the city. Because of this, this station is the best because on the way home, you can take any train going east and you will have to go through this station no matter what. Also, from here it is only about eight minutes into the city once the train comes.
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| West Oakland BART |
If I ride my bike, I go to a different station, which is closer to my house. This is about a seven minute ride and is mostly downhill. I lock up my bike and take the train into the city, which is about 17 minutes from this station.
Either way, I usually listen to an audiobook while driving or riding and then read my book while on the train. I have been struggling lately to pick up books in print, so this is my way of trying to keep the habit of reading daily, not just listening to books, which I find myself doing more and more often. I get off in the city either at Embarcadero or Montgomery station.
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| Financial District (FiDi) |
As an aside, I have been trying to make sure to get 10,000 steps a day. Although this is an arbitrary number made up by someone, it is good for me to have a target; otherwise, it is easy to cut corners or just go home and sit on the couch. I say this because the Embarcadero station is about 0.10 mile further to my office than the Montgomery station, so I try to get off at this one to get those few extra steps. Every step counts right? The other thing I do is take the stairs instead of the escalator and luckily the trains are either up on rails or underground so I get to take plenty of stairs. By the time I get to work, I usually have about 2,000 steps.
My walk to work goes through the financial district in San Francisco. At the time of the morning that I go in there are not too many other people on the streets. It generally consists mostly of construction workers sitting in their cars (I assume they go early so they can get parking) a handful of homeless people, usually on the same corner by the 7-11, and one or two finance people (I am guessing from the way they are dressed).
I actually really like this portion of the commute; the city is quiet but still beautiful. I walk amidst tall buildings and I can jaywalk all I want because there is not much traffic. I sometimes walk past the Equinox, a gym that costs about $200 per month, but is housed in a beautiful building that looks like it belongs in Greece or something.
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| Equinox gym |
I get to my building, where I say good morning to the security guard as I swipe my pass. I then go up to my floor, where we have a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz (not from our office, only from the conference room). From our side of the building you can also see Union Square and the Salesforce Tower. I get a cup of tea from the kitchen and I get to work! All together, this commute normally takes about a half an hour, but is a bit longer in the afternoon when there is more traffic.
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| View of Transamerica Tower (was the tallest until 2018) |
Are you bored yet!? What is your morning commute like? Tell me about something "mundane" that you do regularly.
Lisa here again. Waiting to board my flight so have time to comment from my phone. Our commute has drastically changed since the pandemic. Before the pandemic, Phil would drop me at a bus stop on the way to daycare and I would take the bus to work. He would drop Paul off, then park on a city street and take a bus to work. Then we’d do the reverse on the way home. He’d bus home, I’d bus to the car, drive to school, get Paul, drive home. We had NO MARGIN with this schedule. We absolutely had to leave by 6:52 (yes very precise time) in order for us to both get our buses in time to be at work around 7:20 for me and 7:40 for Phil. Post Covid, no express buses serve our neighborhood due to low demand. So we drive together to work. Phil drives in M-H of most weeks, I go in T-H. So he is basically my chauffeur and I get to play spelling bee while he drives :) If buses came back to our neighborhood, we still couldn’t go back to that schedule. Having 2 kids and one of which has STRONG opinions and is prone to meltdowns, as you’ve witnessed, makes it impossible to leave the house at a precise time!
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of a daily commute, to be honest. I think it helps set the stage for the day and it provides a built-in wind-down ritual as well. And I really enjoyed learning about your process of getting to/from work (and that evening sky picture is gorgeous).
ReplyDeleteI WFH, so my commute it going to the dining-room table or down to our basement office. I can be productive in either location, but there is something helpful about going to the office, spreading out all my stuff and systematically working through my list. I tend to be able to avoid most at-home distractions (an overflowing laundry basket, for example). There are DEFINITELY times I wish I had a commute and an off-site office. That said, since the kids are only in school about 6 hours each day and I don't have much additional childcare, not losing any of those hours to a commute is helpful!
I agree that the lines get blurred when you are WFH all of the time, and do like the black and white of being in the office vs not being in the office. That way it is clear what your duties and expectations are. Your commute sounds great though; I would not mind having an extra hour in my day, that way I could spend more time commenting on blogs! :) I guess the perfect commute would be a five minute walk to a different location where you could still have separation but could go home for lunch if you wanted to.
DeleteWhat a lovely commute you have. Because of flooding/road construction around here, my husband's commute is much longer than it normally is and I think he actually is enjoying the longer time in the car to prepare for work/decompress on the way home from work. It would be interesting to know what people think is the perfect amount of time for a commute.
ReplyDeleteMy parents have the same issue as your husband; they live in a place with only one highway and right now due to the incessant rain, there are a lot of landslides that have not been cleared and the road is closed. Luckily they are retired and have a second home that they are living in now, but their "commute" got about two hours longer because they have to go the long way around to get back home.
DeleteI think the perfect commute, as stated in my comment above, would be about five minutes. Long enough that you are not drawn into hanging out at home too much but short enough that you could go home if needed, and you don't spend all day in the car!
Wow, those are some really lovely photos - and that gym! Fancy!
ReplyDeleteI don't really have a commute, unless you count dropping my son off at school, which takes about five minutes. I think it's such a smart idea to listen to audiobooks - what a good way to pass the time!
Yes, that gym is definitely out of my league! I think that your commute is perfect! I would prefer a five minute commute, although I would definitely have to purposefully fit in workouts if that was the case, whereas now I make the excuse that I already got half of my steps in for the day!
DeleteI loved reading about your commute! There's a lot more that goes into it than mine does. Well, right now, my commute entails walking the few steps from my bedroom to my desk in the corner of my living room, haha. When I was working in an office, my commute was about 30 minutes (a little less on the drive home) and most of it was highway so it was pretty easy. I usually listened to audiobooks during my commute and I could usually get through a book a week that way!
ReplyDeleteYour commute sounds great! I also probably get through a book a week during my commute, although I have never broken it down exactly to say what I was doing while reading. That would be a good experiment, as I have many different times when I am reading + doing something else, especially with audiobooks!
DeleteYour commute sounds like a dream! So nice to have multiple options of driivng/cycling.
ReplyDeleteI work from home 90% of the time. When I go into the office I have a 15 minute walk to the local train, then a 15 minute train, 20 minute wait, then a 1hr 15 minute train, and a 5 minute walk to the office. I leave at 6:30am and get into the office at 8:45am.
When the weather is nicer I will cycle instead of the first train - then it's a 30 minute cycle and I can leave at 6:45am instead of 6:30am. I love my 1 hour train but the local trains/cycle/transport is tricky.
Wow, your commute is really long! Good thing you don't have to go in too often. I used to work with people in my last job who lived about 60 miles from the city, but their commute was about two hours in the morning and sometimes three or four in the afternoon due to traffic! I can't imagine spending 4 - 6 hours a day on the road!
DeleteI love this post!!! what a genius idea to share your commute. My "commute" is 10 min walk from my apartment, I almost always take the same route, which is surrounded by high rises. usually it's a nice pleasant walk, especially when it's not too hot, but sometimes it's too noisy given the traffic. I appreciate these 10 min to transition from work to home.
ReplyDeleteWow, your commute is everyone's dream! I do think having a commute as a sort of on/off switch is a great idea. When I used to go to NYC for work, I would always get a hotel right near the office so my commute was only 2-5 minutes of walking, and it was so great! I wish I could do that now. Well, I guess I could but I would have to have an expensive apartment in San Francisco!
DeleteThis sounds very glamorous to me!! I have worked from home since 2016, so I do not have a commute. Overall, I am thrilled about this. I really do love working from home, especially as a working parent. I think if I did not have kids though, I could see the appeal in having a commute like yours- sounds like something out of the movies! haha. When I worked in the hospital, I had to drive about 20-25 minutes, and then park in a lot that was almost a 10 minute walk into the hospital and then through the hospital and up to the 6th floor I worked on. I kind of dreaded it, especially in the winter. It just added a lot of time to my day... and at the end of a 12-13 hour shifts (sometimes 16 hour shift, if I had to work a double!), well, I just wanted to be HOME. It wasn't really that long in comparison to what many people have to commute, but I think having to park in the kind of far away hospital lot (and then walk in in rain/snow/ etc.) always kind of put me over the edge. lol!
ReplyDeleteI worked with a guy at my prior job who commuted about 2 hours each way (!!) to get to work! Luckily around here there are vanpools, which is what he did, so he did not have to drive every day but man, I think I would have to very carefully weigh my options (ie higher rent vs FOUR hours in a car every day) very closely in that case. When I had my first real job at Nordstroms, the employee parking lot was all the way out at the perimeter of the mall parking and we had to wear three pieces (ie a jacket) AND NYLONS and it was HOT (like 110+)! I remember some days in the summer when I was a sweaty mess by the time I had walked from the car to the employee entrance. Luckily where I am now it rarely gets as hot.
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