Life on the Edge

This morning, I drove to work. Now, my commute is usually about 45 minutes, especially given the congestion at the Fell/Octavia intersection and the bridge traffic. However, probably due to my above-normal aggressive driving today, I was flying by all the cars and was already on the East Bay side of the Bay Bridge within 20 minutes. Crazy, eh? Well, not as crazy as driving over the newly reconstructed I-580 connector.

In case you didn't hear, a portion of the highway collapsed a few weeks ago during a truck accident. The contractors cleaned out the section and replaced the collapsed section not days, but WEEKS in advance. Not to knock on them, but isn't that a bit too fast? Did someone test the highway? When it reopened, I thought about how I'll let a few thousand cars test the connector before I went ahead and drove on it.

Of course, my vision of trying it a few weeks from now went out the window as I suddenly realized that I was heading up the I-580 ramp. My pulse accelerated. I thought about whether i should accelerate just in case the portion collapsed again.... I mean, if they did it in "Speed" with a bus, I'm sure my Corolla can handle a little jump. I saw the 165-foot stretch of new concrete. It seemed to stretch into eternity.

But before I knew it, I was already past it and on the 580. I saw the familiar sights from the highway, namely the Best Buy in Emeryville. I shrugged and continued on my journey. I knew it was going to be a good day.

The Commute from Hell

For the last two years, I've been taking the commute to and from Oakland via MUNI and BART for work. Although it was an added about 30-35 minutes to my commute than the one I had from Berkeley to Oakland, it wasn't too bad. Over the months, I've found myself passing the 45-50 minute commute with books I've been putting off reading, music that I haven't listened to in years (despite popular belief, I do listen to stuff other than Hilary Duff, though she IS on my iPod), and other random activities like writing and GRE studying. I've never really had a bad experience... that is until yesterday, courtesy of MUNI.

I should've figured out that the commute was going to be awful when I read this article over at Metroblogging SF. I figured if I avoided the N-Judah, I should be fine. This was how my commute went.
5:01 pm: Left work
5:08 pm: Arrived at BART station
5:11 pm: Took SF BART line
5:25 pm: Arrived at Embarcadero Station. Walked over to MUNI station. Took the L-Taraval.
5:40-5:45 pm: MUNI stopped and stayed in place at Church station. Conductor announced that a train ahead broke down and there was no ETA when it will go back online. I decided to chance it and walked over to the Church/Duboce intersection.
5:55 pm: N-Judah arrived. The train was PACKED. I decided to wait for the next train. The crowd of people waiting for the next train grew.
6:05 pm: A Duboce/Church shuttle arrived at the stop and EMPTIED out everyone. The crowd of people waiting now doubled in size. The shuttle moved forward a little bit before turning around and heading back inbound.
6:15 pm: ANOTHER Duboce/Church shuttle arrived and it emptied out everyone. There were so many people around that we are literally blocking the street now. The shuttle moved ahead and parked.
6:20 pm: Yay! A N-Judah finally arrived. Unfortunately, it was PACKED and got even more packed when the waiting crowd got a bit aggressive with people pushing to get in the train.
However, a backup of trains resulted in a horrible domino effect. The inbound N train was not given the go-ahead to enter the underground tunnel. The parked shuttle, which couldn't go forward because of the inbound N Judah, was blocking the path for the N-Judah outbound to move forward. Coming out of the tunnel was another N-Judah train waiting to reach Duboce/Church to pick me up. I looked at another person waiting for the MUNI in astonishment and called it a Charlie Foxtrot.
6:27 pm: Things started to move and finally, the traffic cleared away. The second N-Judah train arrived and I push my way into the car to get on.
6:37 pm: Reach my normal stop. Walk home.

97 minute commute. Ugh. Rohit suggested that I run as Mayor on a single issue platform. He might be right. Who's in?