Everyday traffic in SF

Not everything in moving to San Francisco has been hunky-dory. One thing that has not been so great is the commute down to Mountain View. If you’re unfamiliar with the Bay Area, or just bad at geography like me, that means it’s 39 miles away. One way. I probably should have done more research on that before moving out.

I started out thinking I could just drive every day. If I left at 6:30 am it would take me about 45-50 minutes to get to the office. If I left at 3:00 pm I could be home in 60-80 minutes. If I left any later than either of those time, add at least a half an hour. Or if it rained. Or was foggy. Or a Wednesday. Or Thursday. Or Friday. Or if there was an accident.

Another option is taking the CalTrain. The train is 45 minutes if you take the Baby Bullet. Plus the time to get to the train station. And the time to get from the train station to the office. Oh, and then back again.

Public transportation to and from the train was an option. But, to get to the train station, it would take about 30 minutes. The light rail from the train station to the office is about 15 minutes.

My knight’s trusty steed. Mine’s in the shop…more on that later.

Another option would be to ride my trusty steed (aka my 10+ year old 10 speed bike with no brakes) to the train station, take it on the train with me, and then ride from the train station to the office. It’s only about 2 miles for each part of the trek and takes about 15 minutes. It’s about 2.5 hours round trip. (However, biking 2 miles in San Francisco really feels like at least 10 since we like to have hills everywhere. And, if we don’t have a hill, we just create an overpass so that you can work on climbing hills.)

But, that’s 2.5 hours of NO STRESS. Seriously. If you had an extra 2.5 hours a day how would you like to spend your time? I get an hour of working out a day. Then, for the 1.5 hours a day I’m on the train I journal or read or blog or talk to friends or Skype my precious family.

The only unfortunate part to biking every day is that my coworkers will never again see me wearing make-up or having my hair done. Although helmet hair is kind of flattering on me. Good thing I’m engaged to be engaged so I don’t have to worry about attracting other suitors.