1753: Shifter

It’s quite surprising what a relatively minor shift in your routine can do for you.

I said yesterday that I was going to try doing my commute a bit earlier than usual and see if that made a difference to my daily journey. Specifically, I woke up at 5:30am, snoozed the alarm for half an hour and got up at 6. Previously, I’ve been waking up at 6:30am, snoozing the alarm for as close to half an hour as I think I can get away with, getting dressed, having a quick breakfast and shooting out of the door as close to 7am as I can manage. Today, I managed to be out of the house well before 6:30am, which meant that it was still dark and cold — although at this time of year it’s still dark and cold at 7am, too — and well on my way to work considerably ahead of my normal schedule.

Surprisingly, I felt pretty alert. Sure, the espresso I had necked before leaving the house probably helped, but I often have one of those on “normal” days, too; this felt somewhat different, like I had somehow hit on the correct biorhythm and synced up my body with what the universe felt I should be doing and when.

I grit my teeth and clenched my buttocks as I approached the accursed M27 and prepared for the worst — and longest — part of my daily journey. I merged onto the main carriageway, accelerated, accelerated, accelerated… and before long, I was cruising at what I’d consider to be a normal motorway speed without being dragged to a grinding halt by overhead flashing lights declaring the recommended speed to be “40” and a sea of tail-lights indicating that no, I’m not going anywhere for a good while yet.

In other words, my journey was smooth, quick, uneventful and, most importantly, completely stress-free. I arrived at my destination in ample time to find a convenient parking space that didn’t involve a mile-long walk to the office; I walked the route to work still feeling fairly chipper and positive, and it put me in a good frame of mind for most of the day: compared to a lot of other days I’ve been working at that place, today was extremely busy and could well have been quite stressful had I arrived in a negative frame of mind. However, due to that good start to the day — all because I went through my morning routine an hour earlier than usual — it didn’t; rather than stressful, it was productive, and I managed to get a whole lot done on a big project that I’ve been working on, which was good.

Shame I had to go and ruin all that with my journey home, then; I noticed rather too late — i.e. once I was on the motorway and approaching a buildup of traffic — that I was low on fuel, and sure enough, a moment later the warning light came on. I pulled off the motorway to go in search of a petrol station, but made the mistake of driving into the black hole of despair that is Fareham, traffic capital of the South Coast, and ended up turning what should have been a 45-minute journey into one that took two hours. In stark contrast to how the smooth run this morning put me in a positive frame of mind, this appalling journey home was stressful, unpleasant and put me in a bad mood — albeit a fleeting one which has dissipated after some food and funny TV.

Just goes to show how little changes can make a big impact on the way your day goes and how you feel. I’m going to see if I can continue the routine of getting up at that earlier time and enjoying a smooth run in to the office of a morning; starting the day right is very important, and I experienced firsthand today what a big difference ensuring that start was a positive one made. So hopefully I will be able to keep it up.

I give it a week before I’m back to rolling out of bed five minutes before I absolutely, positively have to leave the house otherwise I’ll be late. But it’s nice to be (vaguely) ambitious.

1752: Death to Shitty Roads

I may comically exaggerate my dislike of certain things at times, but for the most part these are nothing but exaggerations for (possible) comedic effect. There are very few things in this life that I genuinely hate.

But the motorway that runs along the south coast, connecting, among other places, the town where I live (Southampton) and the town where I work (Havant, just beyond Portsmouth), is one of those things I do hate. Oh, M27, how I loathe and detest you so. How I wish you weren’t so awful. How I wish I wasn’t obliged to drive on you every day since, despite your shittiness, you are the most efficient means for me to get from my home to my work.

The M27 isn’t an especially poorly maintained road or anything — although the patch around Southampton has a somewhat bumpy surface that serves as a convenient “you’re nearly home!” landmark for my return journey — but it clearly isn’t suitable for its purpose. It’s heavily used by commuters every morning and evening rush hour, and it clogs up pretty much every day for well over an hour in either direction. You can set your watch by the traffic reports on local radio saying day after day that the M27 is busy between Fareham and Southampton Airport, since it is literally every single (working) day.

It’s one of those roads that clogs up for seemingly no reason. “QUEUE AHEAD,” the overhead signs will warn, offering a somewhat optimistic recommended speed of first 60mph and then 40mph (which can be translated to 40 and 15-20 in real terms respectively) as the sea of brake lights illuminates ahead and the flow of traffic slows to a crawl. Everyone will proceed like this for a while, and then just as suddenly as it started, it will clear up and start moving again.

There is one part of this dreadful road where it’s possible to see how jams form; I think I mentioned it a few days ago, but while I’m complaining it bears mentioning again. For the most part, the M27 is a typical three-lane motorway in either direction, but for one single solitary mile just beyond Portsmouth, there’s a fourth lane added on the “fast” side, dubbed a “climbing lane”. This is inevitably used by BMW drivers to pull out aggressively, charge past everyone else and then get stuck when, just under a mile later, the lane disappears again, merging back into what was before (and immediately afterwards is again) the “fast” lane. Jams form as those screaming up the climbing lane shove back in to the main flow of traffic, with other cars moving aside in an attempt to get out of the way of these aggressive drivers. Everyone ends up squished against one another and a jam forms; it’s no coincidence that immediately after the end of the climbing lane, the flow of traffic gets back to normal.

The reason I’m whingeing about the M27 this evening is because it decided to be particularly annoying for my journey home. I was tired, I was hungry and I just wanted to get home and relax. But the M27 had other ideas, first throwing a broken-down lorry in the middle lane in the path of everyone, followed by not one, not two, not three but four separate accidents in the space of about five miles. The weather wasn’t even particularly bad; there were just four separate but nearby incidents of disastrous driving; one car with all its windows smashed in the central reservation; another that had obviously skidded off where the motorway and a slip road parted ways at a junction; another where one car had seemingly hit the back of another so hard that the front of the former was practically fused with the latter; and another that I didn’t see just ahead of where I pulled off to actually get home, gnashing my teeth by this point.

I haven’t yet figured out the optimum time to do the commute to and from work. I’m beginning to think it might actually be in the interests of my own sanity to get up ridiculously early and drive in before the rest of the horde hits the roads; that way, I’ll get to come home before the rest of the horde hits the roads on the way back. I’m tempted to try that tomorrow, but it does involve getting up horrendously early, something which I struggle with at the best of times; perhaps it will be worth it, though. We’ll see!

1720: Jam

I’ve had a decent-length commute to work on several occasions throughout my life to date, and every time, I’ve found myself wondering how on Earth some of the road layouts I have to drive through got approved.

Take my daily journey to my current place of employment. The majority of this involves driving along a motorway that is a major route along the south coast. For starters, the road itself is in appalling condition — it’s something of a bumpy ride as I leave Southampton, then smooths out a bit later, though is still a bit of a pothole-ridden mess in a few places.

It’s some strange things it does with its layout that are the most baffling, though. My “favourite” — and I use this term loosely — is a short section of less than half a mile in length where the previously three-lane motorway turns into four lanes — the rightmost lane splits in two, with the new fourth lane becoming what it calls a “climbing lane”. I am unsure of the exact purpose of this fourth lane, because 1) the road there isn’t particularly hilly (either upwards in one direction or downwards in the other) and thus I question the need for a “climbing lane” if indeed it is for “climbing” a hill and 2) all it seems to get used for anyway is for BMW, Mercedes and Audi drivers to aggressively pull out into and then overtake the people they think are going too slowly. (Which, as I’m sure you know, can be summed up as “everyone”.)

Splitting into four lanes isn’t a terrible idea as it spreads the traffic out somewhat, and that particular stretch of the road tends to get very busy around rush hour. Which is why it’s utterly bewildering that said four-lane stretch lasts for, as I mentioned above, less than half a mile, at which point the new fourth lane then merges back into the third, almost inevitably causing a traffic jam every single day.

Predictable traffic jams are a pain in the arse, but you can at least plan your journey around them if you know that it’s 95% likely you will get stuck for at least 10 minutes in one particular spot. On my commute for another job much further back, the traffic jams around Winchester were so predictable — and so stationary — that I had the time to create a Gowalla (Foursquare precursor) check-in spot called Winchester Traffic Jam and write a description on my phone before anything moved again… then check into it every single day, because it was always in the exact same spot.

I guess the explanation for these dodgy stretches of road is simply that the amount of traffic has increased over the years, while the road capacity hasn’t. But there are places where it’s a clear and obvious problem; all you have to do is listen to the local radio’s traffic report each day to hear exactly the same places coming up time and time again. (And the traffic report lady demonstrating her slightly annoying habit of saying “Your queue…” instead of “There is a queue…”, as if queues are something desirable being handed out to everyone.)

Since you can’t just shut a major road off completely — particularly while people are commuting on it — it’s difficult to know how these situations could be resolved. I guess we just have to resign ourselves to the fact that yes, we are going to waste a considerable portion of our life creeping forwards at 10mph wondering if we should phone ahead to work and tell them that the traffic is, once again, quite bad.

At least it’s quality time to listen to some music or podcasts — something which I missed while I was working at home.

1143: Kilo-Commuter

My brother posted a link on Facebook earlier about “mega-commuters” — a relatively small number of Americans (about 600,000) who travel more than 50 miles each way to get to work each day. He’s one of them.

Sounds hellish, doesn’t it? But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that bad.

I can’t make a claim to be a “mega-commuter” as the longest commute I’ve done on a daily basis was about 35 miles each way — I guess that makes me a kilo-commuter? — but that was plenty to potentially drive me insane. As it happened, it was the job itself I was doing at the time that did a much better job of driving me insane, but I digress; my distaste for the teaching profession and reluctance to return to it ever again is well-documented elsewhere on this blog. (In fact, it was my growing sense of discomfort at an ill-advised return to the profession that spurred me on to start writing on this ‘ere site every day in the first place, so I guess I can’t complain too much.)

No, believe it or not that’s actually sort of relevant, because my daily 70 mile round trip to get to and from work actually became something of a haven of calm amid the chaos of my professional existence. While I was in my car, no-one could “get” me. (Well, technically, I suppose they could; someone could have crashed into me and injured or killed me. But… oh, shush.) It was some time I had to myself to spend as I pleased… sort of, anyway — I mean, obviously I still had to do the driving bit.

Consequently, I found myself spending my commute doing things that I don’t really do any more as a “work from home” person. I listened to the radio. I listened to podcasts. I listened to a lot of music. I sometimes phoned people. (Hands-free, obviously.) I phoned people. Jesus Christ, I never do that now, largely because the telephone tends to fill me with an uncommonly-large amount of dread, but nope, the sheer tedium of driving down the M3 (or sometimes, for variety, the A31) every day was occasionally mitigated by actually talking to someone other than myself. But more often than not it was mitigated by listening to the radio or podcasts. I attribute the fact that I can tolerate (and even enjoy) Chris Moyles’ brand of comedy — something that it appears to be fashionable to hate — to the fact he accompanied me to work and made me laugh every morning through what turned out to be a very difficult period of my life. I’m not sure I would have stuck out a job that eventually pretty much gave me a nervous breakdown had I not had something like that to help me mentally prepare myself each morning. (Obviously ultimately it didn’t really work, but still.)

While it was nice to spend that zombified period of time driving in a straight line for about 50 minutes, the prospect of doing so every day isn’t really the sort of thing that makes you want to get out of bed each morning. You have to really like your job to be able to stick it out for longer than a few months. I somehow managed to convince myself to do it for a total of two and a bit years altogether — eventually I moved closer to the job that eventually saw me escaping the teaching profession, which is probably something I should have done sooner — but that commute was probably one of the contributing factors that made me come over all queer, as a grandmother might say.

Despite that, though, I do sort of miss it. I don’t have my own car at all any more — Andie and I share one, as I have no real need for my own now — and so long drives accompanied by the radio or podcasts are now an increasingly-distant, wistful memory for the most part.

Then I remember that I don’t have to get up before 6am any more and I don’t miss it nearly as much.