Relax And Ride

Extreme commuting is delusional

2007-12-08T06:38:00.001-08:00

A delusion? Is that a bad thing?

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Relax And Read

2007-12-01T07:28:00.000-08:00

The title of this post should be the new name for this blog. After all my extreme commute is really just a big read. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is quoted as saying: "In reality the duty of a writer - the revolutionary duty, if you like - is that of writing well.'' Such is the duty of the reader also. To read material that is written well.

Today I think schools are doing us an injustice by encouraging us to just read anything, anything is better than nothing. I disagree. Reading alot of anything = nothing.

What then, Mister Smarty Pants me, what do I propose people read? Well start with all those books in high school that you got the Cliff Notes for. It's difficult to read books like Love In The Time Of Cholera first time out, just like it is difficult to jog when you first start exercising. But with practice you will eventually not only enjoy the classics but end up reading Proust and have it make sense to you. OK, maybe not Chaucer, but with some good footnotes why even Shakespeare is understandable and will make you laugh, hardy har har.

Reading recommendations for the long ride?

A daily newspaper but one of the national ones like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. And read those stories from Asia, South America, Europe and The Middle East. That is our new global community. The local news you can pick up at home off the computer to see who shot who and who got busted for drugs and who got smashed in a car.

Periodicals like The New Yorker or The New York Review Of Books or The Economist.

Non-fiction - Jacques Barzun's From Dawn To Decadence
Fiction - Love In The Time Of Cholera By Gabriel Garcia Marquez (also a current movie)

Listening?

I like stuff like Wyclef Jean's Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill) but that's just me and I have unusual musical tastes for a middle age white man. Also any symphonies by Beethoven, Dvorak, etc. And some Norah Jones for measure.

Podcast? Selected Shorts from NPR

NPR and R&R Are Hardy Har

2007-11-30T18:08:00.000-08:00

Listen to some extreme reporting.

A Three Hour Tour

2007-11-24T08:11:00.000-08:00

Watch this from CBS News.

The Bus Buddies

2007-11-24T08:03:00.000-08:00

From Business Week:

"The Bus Buddies are part of the fastest-growing group of work travelers in the country, people who rarely see their houses in daylight, leave home when their kids are still asleep, and mainline Red Bull just to stay awake. They're known as extreme commuters. They spend at least a month of their lives each year traveling a minimum of an hour-and-a-half to work and back, vs. the U.S. average of 50 minutes. Their ranks have jumped an astounding 95% since 1990, according to the Census Bureau, accounting for 3.4 million workers."

Extreme Commute = Bad Poetry

2007-11-23T08:19:00.000-08:00

Twiced Keats And None The Better

I have lived two of Keats lives
And have yet to write anything but cheese
Like this my trivial Ode To A Sneeze

Stompin through a forest
Coatless I almost froze
I saw two creatures in the leaves
Wearing no clothes
One me. The other my nose.

Cut from my body
This hawk beak I loathed
I knew sadness no longer
Bye bye middle face toad

A Gogolian severance
I hoped not a dream
So long to the explosions
The never ending phlegm stream.

Drunk I awoke in W.C. Fields
Felt my huge schnoz
And the suffering it yields

Oh go away bulbous ruin
Karl Malden is dead
Haven’t you heard
My face is cottage cheese
And you a large curd.

Ooops. I feel a little tickle
Up there inside
Where an evil tiny man with a feather
Doth hide.

Like the cuckoo clock bird
He’s getting ready to strike
“Three points off the lee bow, Sir
She’s About To Blow!”
Too late to prepare for the
Inevitable heave
A glob of goo now inhabites my sleeve.

Extreme Commuting

2007-11-18T05:08:00.000-08:00

I spend three hours each day on a bus going to and from work. My butt is calloused. My flu shot is current. And I read about a thousand pages a week.

Extreme commuting involves purchasing a good backpack, a sturdy digital player with several pairs of earbuds, a library card and the ability to tolerate all forms of humans being whatever it is they are being that day. Some are being naughty. Some are being smelly. Some are being rude. Some are being nude. The sum of it all is that some days you shut your eyes and summon up some southern sun splashed seaport.

I swipe and ride, a commuter program for state employees in Tennessee. It saves expensive Gore global guzzling gas, enables my reading addiction and forces me into being a social animal and not the isolated road rager I was when I was a lone driver.

Now I plunk myself into my cushioned seat aboard the RTA's 96X relax and ride.