Yesterday was one of those days. I don’t have very many of them anymore. Up at 5:00, out the door at 7:45, home at 8:20 in the evening. Thirty years ago, this would have been like every Tuesday. Now, it’s a rarity.
I met with some clients in Burke, Va. late in the afternoon. I make the trip every year, usually in October. Since it’s in northern Virginia, there’s no good time to make that drive. But, yesterday was especially awful. I backed out of their driveway at 6:15. It’s exactly 9 miles from their house to the Occoquan exit onto 95. It took me 52 minutes.
In the midst of this interminable slog, it occurred to me that there are thousands of people for whom this is totally normal. The vast majority of the commuters around me on that 9 mile, bumper to bumper, 10 mph soul-crushing journey have to endure it every single day. To ponder this reality is to confront the disturbing truth that contemporary Americans who choose to live in such places...ie., most every large city in the country...have simply lost their minds. When, in the course of human development, did it become acceptable to live in a place where it takes 52 minutes to drive 9 miles? Can you imagine a real estate agent back in 1955 telling an upwardly mobile young couple with two toddlers that the rancher they have their eyes on is a steal at $18,000, and what’s more...It only takes 52 minutes to get to the interstate!!
I suppose it’s possible that eventually you would get used to it. Maybe after a couple of years you would learn to adjust. You would discover books on tape, and other Jedi mind tricks designed to distract you from the fact that you have become a hampster on a treadmill. But Doug, but Doug, you say...eventually self driving cars will mitigate these sorts of commutes. Well...I am here to inform you that the only thing more terrifying and dehumanizing than sitting in a 9 mile long parking lot with 10,000 total strangers is the thought that I might one day do so, surrounded by 10,000 people... fast asleep in their reclining drivers seats.
No thank you.
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