Three Months Aboard the Metro
For three months of the fall of 2018, I joined the class of ultra-long-commuters known as supercommuters - crossing not just one but two separate metro areas in order to go from home in Anaheim to work in Woodland Hills with a mix of driving, walking, metrolink, and metro bus to get to and from my destination. On paper, the journey was supposed to take 2 hours and 45 minutes, but the reality was often different, since I was crossing so many modalities of travel. Although the days were extra long and fraught with a lot of time based anxiety, there was sometimes a serenity in the experience (when it worked.) I mitigated the experience by bringing food with me on board and making each journey a culinary treat.
Over time, I developed a kit of grab and go parts that I relied on every day that changed depending on what I knew I was going to need for the day, that also needed to be able to be portable enough for unexpected emergencies. My baggage was my constant companion. Derailments along my route were common and I never knew if I would end up having an expanded journey of 5 hours instead of 3 hours. Amongst the lesser delays, I experienced within the three months one catastrophic instance getting to work (where I had to switch out and rely on a taxi, with a delay to work of 3 hours) and one catastrophic instance going home from work (where we had to de-train and board an extremely cramped Metro LA bus).
Ultimately, I stopped my experiment when I was involved in an extremely low-speed fender bender driving to the train station 2 1/2 months in to my daily 6 hour commute - I chalked it up to a pile up of exhaustion.
