Adventures in Commuting (in which I restart my blog)

Ladies and gentlemen, please don't panic. This is just a routine test. ...Actually, that's a great big lie. This blog's been dormant for more than a year, and only sporadically updated before then. Now that I'm all graduated and shit, there's much less excuse for a failure at regular posting (although I'm sure that I will persist in doing that, and in making excuses for it). That said, I am back online--I trailed off in a vague depression at 3L unemployment, and had intentions of restarting when I got a job. I never quite got the job that I'd imagined (I've got a this-is-a-pretend-legal-job starting next week and am presently temping with great hilarity at a synagogue in Hyde Park), but I am employed and therefore possessed of positive cash-flow, so I suppose it counts. That I'm working in Hyde Park is important context for this post--I'll talk about the gig here at some future point, I'm sure. Also about events of the last year, maybe. As I see fit. In any event, disclaimer aside, reintroductory verbiage accomplished, on to the post proper.

I am a temp. I work at a synagogue five days a week (three next week, and two thereafter until the High Holy Days and the system change are over, at which point... likely none). The synagogue is in Hyde Park, and I am expected to be here at or around (but no earlier than, as I won't be able to get in, and will invite Secret Service suspicion) 8:30AM.

I lived in Streetervillehell, as it was 6 minutes on foot away from classes. Classes, though, are no more, and I have moved up to Ravenswood where life is cheap and roommates are awesome. Well, to say that I've moved is not quite accurate: I (with the help of four heroic friends) have moved some of my shit, but not nearly all of it, as my old apartment will attest. The rest will come up within the next week, as I'm to be out of the old place by Wednesday.

Now, the reason for posting all of this, at perhaps too great a length, is that I have not had the same commute from Point A (wherever it be) to the synagogue and back twice in the week and a half I've worked here. I do not drive, and am therefore using only public transportation and my own two feet. So.

There are a variety of ways to get around this city, as most of you are doubtless aware. There are buses--lots of them, of varying speed, reliability, and quality. There are trains--my preference if they can get me even remotely near my target. There's the metra, if you're doing a serious commute and want to feel like you're a 1950s businessman.

The first day's commute was an adventure in three parts. I discount walking in all of this--at least in distances under a mile. Home to the Red Line (Grand) to the Green Line (Roosevelt) to the 15. The Red Line is... one of the better kept throughfares of the El, as it's where most of the tourists and a certain set of locals restrict themselves to, and encompasses Streetervillehell, Boystown, both ball parks, and various other places of moderate interest. The Green Line, by contrast, is... not that. It is less used by populations the city actively cares about, and white people seem to be at least marginally afraid of it (as an aside, the Green Line in any city whose public transit I've used with any frequency--with the partial exception of Boston--is usually one of the underused/underfunded/undercared-for lines). And the 15 is a local bus that runs slowly and infrequently along 51st/Hyde Park Boulevard. Total commute time approximately 1hr 10m. Stew drove me home that evening.

Last Tuesday's commute was less of an adventure, as it was a repeat of the first one. Still not enough time to settle in comfortably and read much of Kissing the Witch (a collection of brief, vaguely feminist retellings of fairy-tales. Quite good. Courtesy of Adam), but I did make progress. I found myself invited over to Stew's post-work, which turned into an invite to a dinner party, and thus was driven home thereafter--still no return commute.

Wednesday morning: same. Finished Kissing the Witch. Return commute involved waiting for the 15--for 40 minutes. Total commute time: nearly 2 hours.

Thursday! Same morning. Another stupid-long wait, but this time I took the 15 all the way to the Red Line rather than stop at the Green. Only 1.5 hrs this time.

Friday: skipped the Green on the way down--Red to the 15, which waited 15m to leave from the 47th Red Line station. 1hr inbound. Was advised that the 6 was, in fact, the way to get to and from Hyde Park in a reasonable fashion, so I tried that on the way home. 45 minutes of one leg of transit--heaven (and reading Chocolat).

Monday was the 6 both ways--a nice 12ish minute walk from my old apartment down across the river on Columbus, a similar walk on the other end, and about half an hour of bus in between. Confirmed my love of coffee for surviving mornings.

Tuesday had the 6 going down, but Stew drove me up to my old place. There was then packing and moving a fair amount of my furniture and suchwhat to the new place, followed by late-night IHOP and an air mattress in Hyde Park.

Yesterday I walked to work from Stew's, having woken up to an adorable flailing muppet of a dog named Charlie, as well as french toast. The 6 took me home, by way of my old apartment and a date involving two-plus hours of walking about the city, and involved the 6, the Red Line, and the Brown Line.

This morning was the Brown Line to the 2 (I hit Van Buren between departures of the 6), the latter of which featured a non-sensical stop for the driver to eat a snack of some sort while another passenger and I waited for him to keep things moving. Tonight, Bergy will probably sweep me out of Hyde Park the newly re-christened Mr. Bergy, for hanging out and moving of more of my shit.

Yes, this devolved into a variations-on-a-theme list, but there are two main points here: first, that there are a bunch of ways of getting around in Chicago, even if they're not all efficient or fast or reliable; second, that going halfway (or entirely) across the city for work is silly and, in the right light, rather entertaining. I'll let you know when I have a stable commute. Next time's topic (unless I feel like something else needs be addressed): mornings.