But this post will be about my daily commute. Because really, sometimes it is the most interesting part of my day.
For most of the summer I lived in Georgetown, which is right in the middle of The District. My commute to work was pretty simple: leave the house by 6:33, walk 6.5 minutes to the Foggy Bottom metro stop, run down the escalator stairs, catch either the blue or orange line to L'Enfant plaza (about an 11 minute ride), take my work shuttle to the Coast Guard building (7-9 minutes), and then walk to my building. 4 legs of the journey, 27 minutes of travel, and I'm at work.
It was great.
Unfortunately commute-wise (but fortunately living-situation wise) I couldn't stay in Georgetown forever. There came a time when I had to move on. I found a beautiful house (for a beautiful price) up in Maryland, just two miles away from a Metro stop. It was a beautiful house, a beautiful neighborhood, and a beautiful life, but naturally it changed my commute from 27 minutes to 1-1.5 hours (depending on the wait time between transfers).
My new commute went something like this: Run out of my house and down the hill to the bus stop, catch the 6:48 bus to the Wheaton metro station, run down the escalator stairs of the longest single-span escalator in the Western Hemisphere (and which was broken most days), jump on the red line metro to Ft. Totten, transfer to the green line and ride it to L'Enfant plaza, get on my work shuttle, get off at the Coast Guard building, and walk into work.
If the bus came right at 6:48, didn't have more than 2 stops for people, and only had to wait for one red light, I would get to the metro stop with enough time to run down the escalator and make the 6:59 metro--that is, if the escalator was working. Unfortunately a working escalator is quite a rare find in the Washington, DC metro, so I had to run down this thing every day.
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| Looking up |
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| Looking down |
Intimidating, no? Friends, this is what I faced every day. I think I lost 5 pounds running up and down those steps. It was such a great free exercise program.
Anyway, if I made the 6:59 metro, I could make it to Ft. Totten, run down the stairs, catch the green line train to L'Enfant, get on the shuttle, and make it to work by 7:48. However, if I missed the 6:59 train, I had to wait 6 minutes for the next train, and then just miss a green line train at Ft. Totten and wait another 6 minutes for the next train and then have to wait another 5 minutes for the shuttle to fill up at L'Enfant, getting me to work a little after 8.
Yep, commuting in DC requires enormous amounts of strategic planning (and a fair bit of running!).
The commute home was the same, except sometimes I walked the two miles from the metro stop to my house. The bus only comes every 30 minutes, and if I just missed it it was faster to walk.
Unfortunately, it only comes every 30 minutes in the morning, too, so if I missed the 6:48 bus I either had to wait until 7:18 or walk in the heat and humidity. It's not a bad walk, but the damage done to my straight hair just wasn't worth it to me. Because really, the choice between dealing with hair ruined by humidity all day or being late to work and having to work late to make up for it is a simple choice. I hate dealing with hair ruined by humidity.
I used to try and make the 6:18 bus, thus getting me to work 30 minutes earlier and giving me more time to study Hebrew after work before going home, but after I missed it four days in a row (and finally realized that it came at 6:16, not 6:18, which is why I missed it every day), I decided it wasn't worth it.
My commute might sound a little dreadful, but it is actually quite productive. As I am about to take off for graduate school in Jerusalem, my one focus in life right now besides work is Hebrew. I'm hoping to test into a higher level of Hebrew than I tested into at the beginning of the summer, so I bought two Hebrew textbooks and take them with me everywhere. I study it on the bus, on the metro, on the shuttle, and for an hour and a half after work before I commute home. When my building was evacuated after the hurricane last week, my Hebrew textbook was the only thing I took outside with me. :)
Commuting is also fun because of the people you meet--especially if you see them every day as you run down the escalator steps to catch the train! There are two especially quirky things about me that are memorable: my noisy shoes and my Hebrew textbook. As usual, my shoes broke a little while ago. The heel covering broke off of both of my shoes on both pairs that I wear to work, making the plastic/metal exposed bottom of my already loud shoes clank loudly against tile floors, cement sidewalks, and escalator stairs.
Especially escalator stairs.
When I run down the Wheaton escalator in the mornings, I never have to ask people to move aside so I can catch my train because they can hear me coming from the second I walk into the station! My purposeful stride is a very measured "clank clank clank," but running down the escalator sounds like "clankclunkclankclunkclankclunkclank."
At the L'Enfant plaza metro there is a shuttle coordinator that stands outside the shuttle I take to work. One morning as I passed her and said "good morning," she said, "I can always tell when you're coming because I can hear your shoes!"
Yeah. They're pretty noisy.
Anyway. In addition to my shoes, my Hebrew textbook is also somewhat of an anomaly. For some reason it is a huge conversation starter, even though me sitting on the metro with my headphones in, my concentration face on, and my face buried in a huge 500 page Hebrew textbook is not exactly the image of the most approachable person on the train, right?
Wrong. I will share three stories to illustrate my point.
One day I was coming home from work and I sat down by a woman wearing a hijab. I pulled out my Hebrew book and started memorizing vocabulary, when all of a sudden the woman looked at what I was reading, pulled out her headphones, and asked, "Are you studying Hebrew?"
I pulled my own headphones out, answered in the affirmative, and was shocked to hear her say, "I've always wanted to learn Hebrew!"
Turns out she was from Qatar, had studied at a university in Virginia, and had just graduated in international relations. Random that she wanted to study Hebrew, but very cool. We exchanged numbers and now we're friends on facebook--which means that this is the start to a very meaningful friendship. :)
One day I was standing against the wall next to the escalator stairs, trying to finish a muffin as quickly as possible before going into the metro station. I had my back to the doors to outside and I was holding my Hebrew book with one hand and my muffin with the other. I was clearly not the picture of approachability. This guy walked past me, did a double take, and stopped and asked, "Are you studying Hebrew?" When I answered in the affirmative, he somewhat too-enthusiastically said, "Me too! I study at the such-and-such place downtown! Where are you studying?"
I think he almost fell over with excitement when I told him I was going to study in Jerusalem!
And the third experience. I had just left a Nationals game that I had gone to with my coworkers. It was late at night and I was, naturally, studying Hebrew with my headphones in. The guy sitting in the seat behind me tapped me on the shoulder and asked, "Did you go to Brandeis?" (The textbook was a Brandeis Hebrew textbook). Unfortunately, this time I had to answer no, but it turns out that he had gone to Brandeis, and randomly, the guy sitting next to him had lived near Brandeis and his parents had taught there. It was like a metro reunion of me reading a Brandeis textbook, a guy who studied Biology at Brandeis, and a guy whose parents had taught there.
Crazy.
Anyway, my commute this summer has been filled with crazy stories that will hopefully one day be told. Until then, though, you can all be jealous that you don't have random strangers talking to you about Hebrew on your daily commute!
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