My Morning Commute

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There have been a number of times in my life when a commute was necessary. Sometimes the commute was soul sucking, at other times it was life enhancing. Rarely was it anything in between.

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Growing up in Fredericton was a joke in terms of commuting. You could get anywhere in the city in a few minutes. My father used to walk to work, or cross country ski in the winter. He even borrowed my moped once in a while and commuted to work in the late 1970s. The beauty of the moped was that I never had to worry about my dad breaking anything, least of all the sound barrier. With a top speed of 50 km/h going downhill with a tail wind, my West German built Hercules moped wasn't dangerous. It was comical in many ways, but it got a million miles per gallon so it was clearly ahead of its time.

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I moved to Toronto in 1987 and that's when I discovered the real meaning of the word commute. Living in the Beaches area of T.O., I had to take a street car, bus, and subway to get to my classes at the University of Toronto. It took forty-five minutes and it was hell.

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When I finally washed my hands of UofT and got a job, I used to bike to work. It also took forty-five minutes but it was glorious. Toronto has a number of well developed paved bike paths which meander through the burbs. I would frequently see Asian men practicing Tai Chi in the early morning. Often there was mist or fog along the trail, which made the Tai Chi statues look that much more mystical. When I finally got to work at Tilley Endurables (the Tilley Hat people), I was wide awake and my soul felt full, as did my stomach. There's nothing like biking through a cloud of flies to get your morning protein. Someday I will write about my time at Tilleys...it was incredible, often unbelievable (working with a brilliantly mad entrepreneur who inherited a business partner who had 'honesty' issues...pure gold).

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After I shut the door on Tilleys I took a job with North South Yacht Charters as their marketing manager. I also bought a car, if you'd be kind enough to call a Mercury Topaz a car. It was,, faster than my moped...barely. It would do 50 km/h on the flats without a tail wind. It seemed that no matter where I lived in Toronto, North South's office was located in the diagonally opposed corner of the city. I've survived the DVP, 427, QEW and the 401. I consider myself to be invincible after those commutes. They were awful. I can't tell you the number of times I felt road rage.

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Actually, I can...it was about six times per day (three for the morning commute, three for the afternoon). It's a wonder I didn't implode. Most of my rage was directed toward young Asian adolescents, the sons of more refined Tai Chi fathers and grandfathers. They drove their pimped out Honda CRX cars like visually impaired jet pilots with a hatred for the safety of others. I'm sure they were quite pleasant when they weren't red-lining it.

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Eventually I escaped Toronto and moved to a land where the pace was more gentle; rural New Brunswick. I took a twelve year hiatus from commuting until it was decided that my son would be better served by going to school in Oromocto. One problem: there was no school bus to Oromocto. For four years I drove him to school in the morning and picked him up after school. Two hundred kilometres per day, five days a week. I had no regrets during this time, except that quite often I would see breathtaking landscapes that I didn't have time to photograph.

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The St.John River valley, particularly during the mist covered mornings of September when cold air met warm water, was often spectacular. Those days are forever etched into my mind. It was also a time to enjoy the company of my son, who was fortunate enough to be enrolled in French immersion in Oromocto. We often tried to speak French to each other. Julian, quite fluent, spoke about whatever he wanted. I spoke about the things that my vocabulary allowed.

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J'aime les chevaux. I actually can't stand horses, but I knew how to say that I liked them, so I did. I would also say things like 'quelle heures est-il?', even though there was a clock in the car and I knew exactly what time it was (time for me to stop talking like a bébé and start learning French).

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Yesterday morning I drove to Saint John at 6 a.m., along with a surprising number of other cars. I can assume that we were all commuting to the office, my office being the Bay of Fundy. I had a 'board' meeting to attend. I was lucky enough to have the luxury, and it truly is a luxury, of stopping along the way to photograph the scenery without worrying about punching a time clock. For that I am grateful. Mornings are such a beautiful time, especially when you have time to stop and enjoy the traffic.