A Journey of 1000 Commutes

I've been commuting now for 20 years.  And when I say commuting, I'm talking 2-3 hours per day almost every day for 20 years.  I recently had my 18 year anniversary at my current employer and decided to quickly calculate how much time I've spent in the car going to and from work over that 18 year period.  Turns out it's about 1.5  years.  Yes, you read that correctly, 1.5 years just driving to work every day.  It's not all bad, the time in the car allows me to unwind, get educated, think, catch up with friends, listen to music, etc.  The commute has also allowed my family to thrive, have a parent home with my once young kids, and generally allowed us to have a great quality of life because we aren't a slave to a mortgage.  But let's not kid ourselves...commuting sucks.  Now over those 20 years of commuting I've learned a few things that I will now share as my 6 truths of commuting.

1) The 2 Worst Commute Days: I have no empirical evidence to prove this, but at this point I'm going to call myself a commute expert and you'll just have to trust me.  Contrary to popular belief, the worst commute days are not those surrounding holidays.  If commuting was torture (which in many ways it is), holiday travel would be dripping water torture.  I'm going to tell you the drives that are the water boarding of commutes.  For the drive in, I've found the first Monday of the Fall Daylight Savings Time adjustment to be simply awful.  My theory is it's the one day of the year people actually got enough sleep.  You generally go to bed an hour earlier than normal and when you wake up at your normal time, you've actually slept an hour later.  In other words, when that alarm goes off in the morning I suspect not nearly as many people are hitting the snooze over and over again.  Therefore, instead of the commute being spread out over several hours, I believe it's condensed into a 1-2 hour window.  For the drive home, you don't get any worse than Halloween Night.  My theory here is this is the one day of the year when virtually everyone is trying to get home at about the same time.  Parents get home to take their kids trick or treating.  Other people are getting home to go to a party.  Still others are getting home just to be in their house to hand out candy.  Regardless of the reason, loads of people are all trying to be home around dark which makes for a brutal commute.  Net/Net, avoid the morning commute on the Monday of Fall Daylight Savings and avoid the evening commute on Halloween.

2) Slow Drivers in the Fast Lane:  This is one of my huge pet peeves.  A few years ago I began to realize a pattern when it came to who was holding up traffic in the fast lane.  More often than not, it's a driver of a pick-up truck.  I'm guessing it's well over 50% of the time.  I don't know why it is or what the rationale may be, but check it out the next time you are driving 60 mph in the left lane and wonder who the lovely person is that's making everyone go so slow.  For you pick-up drivers, yes we all know you have a nice big vehicle that commands a presence and loads of room to drive.  But here's a little secret for you...the right hand lane is just as wide and was specifically designated for people who do not wish to drive the speed limit.  Try it out, we'd all appreciate the gesture.

3) Prius Drivers:  Prius drivers drive incredibly slow.  I'm a hybrid owner so I understand the concept of slower starts and even acceleration in order to keep things in electric mode.  However, I don't see non-Prius Hybrid/Electric owners drive as slow as the Prius Hybrid/Electric owners.  Tesla owners drive fast; I suppose I would too if I had one.  Most other hybrid/electric owners drive basically normal other than a bit slower starts from being at a stop.  But Prius owners just tend to drive slowly and poorly most of the time.  Is there a poor driver test you need to take before acquiring a Prius?  Do you void the warranty if you actually drive the speed limit or take a turn faster than 5 mph?  Does Prius actually stand for "I know you may be in a hurry but I'm not so please continue to waste your time behind me while I go out for my Sunday stroll"?

4) Commuters Will Try Anything to Get Through the Commute:  If idle hands are the devil's workshop, then idle driving is the devil's commute.  I've tried just about everything to pass the time and entertain myself along my drives, including some very stupid and unsafe things.  I've listened to music, listened to books (The Imperfectionists is my favorite), taken work conference calls, had many phone conversations with friends, listened to the entire bible from start to finish (Numbers is brutal), listened to PodCasts (Anything from Gimlet Media is awesome), tried about every genre of station on Sirius XM, spent a couple of weeks pretending to be an in-field traffic reporter (shout out to Leyla Gulen for entertaining this one), done loads of thinking, counted stop-lights, listened to business books, experimented with how long it would take me to drive past cars with license plates from every state (I never finished this one), and once even redlined a supplier contract (this falls into the incredibly unsafe category).  The bottom-line, you do whatever you have to do to get by.  Many thanks to all the people, writers, singers, and companies that have made my commute bearable over the  years.

5) Small Changes Make a Big Difference: This probably falls into the "duh" category but it's still worth mentioning.  Really small changes in the commute can make an enormous difference.  On the negative side, one large pot hole, a tire in the road, a broken down car, or a fender bender can wreck a commute for hours.  There aren't many on the positive side, but Government Holidays pretty dramatically reduce commute time.  If you ever wondered the size of our government, just look at the positive way your commute changes when they have the day off and you don't.  So this is where I implore CalTrans to be smart about their changes, because they do have a profound effect on us drivers.  Metering lights to enter a freeway do not work.  I don't care what your science says, as a driver it has added time to my commute and not made the freeways any less busy.  Get rid of them.  Having toll lanes closed for seemingly no reason is always a bad idea.  And whomever is in charge of the decision not to widen the Richmond Bridge is costing Bay Area commuters hours of their lives on a yearly basis...you've failed us all.  For commuters, for the love of God, please stop rubbernecking.  You really do not need to see what's going on in the other direction just because their are blinking lights.  You do not need to slow down to a crawl because one of the electric freeway signs reads, "Buckle Up, It's the Law".  And you certainly do not need to drive 40 mph below the speed limit just because there's a little drizzle.  Please be safe, but please also be smart.

6) Dear Fellow Drivers, Please Stop:  We share the road together and therefore are reliant on each other for a successful and stress-free commute.  In order to accomplish this very important mission, please do not stay stopped when the light turns green because you are talking on your phone.  Do not drive too slow because you are putting on your makeup or shaving while driving.  Do not have your left turn blinker on when you are in the far left lane.  Do not drive with one foot on the brake and one foot on the accelerator...those following you have no clue whether you are stopping or going.  If you find yourself in the front of the turn lane but really need to go straight, suck it up, make the turn and figure out another way to get back to where you need to go.  If you are looking to turn into oncoming traffic, do not wait until the last second before I arrive to suddenly make the turn...if you weren't bold enough in the 10 seconds before I arrived don't start being bold in the 1 second before I get there.  And finally, do not sit in a parking space for more than 10 seconds while in reverse, stop in the road to talk to friend or neighbor, have a license plate with any format of XX ❤YY, tell me how many people are in your family with stickers of people and pets, or forget to wave thanks when I've let you in front of me when you are desperately trying to get into my lane.

Who Gets My Vote and Why It Won't Matter

Let me start with a little background on me.  I've voted in every General Election since I was eligible to cast a ballot.  In every election of any kind, I've never cast a single vote for anyone other than a Democrat.  I suspect that may surprise a few of you, but it's true.  I think Democrats tend to appeal to younger and more idealistic voters and for much of my life that's exactly who I have been.  I'm also a Political Science Major and while I get fed up with election season like everyone else, I'm also fascinated by the entire process and take it very seriously.  On multiple occasions we've taken a ballot and gone over every candidate and every measure and debate their pro's and con's as we prepare for election day.  

Quick Mid-Post Rant:  Most of us have spent the entirety of the last 6 months fighting over who will become our President.  During that same time most of us have ignored every single other race and measure.  You will walk into the voting booth completely unprepared to vote for everything else, so you'll do 1 of 2 things.  You'll go down the ballot and vote for the names you recognize (or the parties they represent) and cast your measures vote on some 30 second commercial you saw on TV.  Or you'll simply decide not to vote for most of the other candidates and ballot measures because you aren't educated enough on the topics.  This is how we get lifetime Congressional Members.  This is how our taxes creep up year after year and we end up paying $5 to cross a bridge.  In reality, whomever gets elected President will likely have zero impact on your own personal life.  However, your local races and measures will have profound effects on you.  It's not too late to spend a little time getting educated on the other votes you need to cast so I urge you all to do that before Tuesday.  

Ok, back to me. I've never struggled with a decision about where my vote would go more than this year.  I had said long ago that I would vote for a Republican this election no matter who the Republican candidate turned out to be.  That seemed like a fairly low risk statement given 17 Republicans were running for President and several of them seemed like decent choices to me.  I came out of the gate liking Rubio and even donated to his campaign, but Christie exposed him for the lifetime politician he is and my support (and everyone else's) quickly disappeared.  I think liked Christie for about 30 seconds until it became clear I was the only one and there was no chance he'd be elected.  So I turned my support to Ted Cruz.  Many of his positions were similar to mine and he didn't seem to come with all of the venomous rhetoric you heard from Trump.  I also liked the fact both Democrats and Republicans seemed to dislike Cruz.  That told me he was not a typical politician and raised my hopes of what he could do in D.C.  Meanwhile, Kasich kept hanging around like the crazy guy he was talking nothing but common sense and practicality.  With every debate and every primary I continued to hear nothing but good ideas and sound approaches on everything I seemed to care about.  I found myself hoping against hope that somehow Kasich would emerge as our Republican candidate.  But he didn't and so I was left with Trump.  

I guess you could say I was like a man wandering through the desert desperately looking for a glass of water.  Rubio was salt water and ended up making me sick.  Christie was a mirage.  Cruz was ice water that would never melt.  And Kasich was just a dream that would never become reality.  So as I continued to wander and my thirst grew and grew my only option became Trump.  By no means was he a cold glass of water or an ice cold beer.  Sure he was a warm, stagnant, fly infested pond in the rain forest where I'd likely get dysentery, but I was thirsty and in dire need of drink.  So I took a sip and at first found it wasn't all that bad.  Yes, the taste was unpleasant, but it did the job.  I didn't like how he said things but I did find I liked the core of a lot of what he said.  (For example, I don't think Mexicans are all rapists and drug dealers, but I do think our borders are far too porous to illegal aliens from all countries.)  So I found myself drinking more and more of the water until I ultimately became sick.  I didn't like all of the reports that began to leak about the way he's treated women in the past (or present for that matter).  I didn't like the way he behaved in debates and the fact any person could provoke him into an early morning Twitter tirade.  So I began to purge myself of my Trump support feeling worse than I did when wandering through the Republican Primary Desert. 

But who would I vote for?  I cannot and will not vote for Clinton (hereto referred to as HRC).  I definitely don't believe everything that's come out about her, but enough of it is probably true to make me believe she's the exact embodiment of everything I loathe about Washington D.C.  I believe at best she's an unethical politician and at worst she's a criminal who belongs in jail.  She's every bit as negative and vitriolic as Trump and her hypocrisy has no limits.  For example, how can she possibly demand the FBI be transparent about their evidence when the only reason they are investigating her is her lack of transparency on tens of thousands of emails??  HRC is the devil in sheep's clothing (or pant suit if you like) and it's unfortunate so many people believe she's okay because she's "not as bad as Trump."

I won't vote for a 3rd Party candidate.  It's not that I'm opposed to 3rd parties and in fact think a viable 3rd party would be very healthy in America.  But Gary Johnson is just a mediocre politician turned drug pusher who wasn't good enough to be elected as a Republican so has decided to stay in the spotlight every 4 years as a Libertarian.  And with that, I won't waste any more words on him.

So I still have no one to vote for.  But wait, I live in California and no matter who I vote for my electoral votes are going for HRC.  So that frees me up to do whatever I want to do.  So I decided to do a write in and cast my vote for the Republican I thought would have been best.  That's right, that tall drink of water John Kasich.  I had found the loop hole.  I didn't have to vote for Trump or HRC.  I was proud to be able to take the moral high road and not have to put my "support" behind either candidate.  Oh I talked a good talk about how if I lived in a battleground state then I would have made the tough choice on voting for one of them, but in reality it was a cop out.  Since our nation was formed, millions of men and women have died for my right to vote and I wasn't going to be a chicken because the choice was hard.  

So this morning I woke up with a decision.  I will vote for Donald Trump.  I will not vote for him because I think he's a good man who represents America well, because he doesn't.  I will not vote for him just because I think HRC is evil and a vote for him is a vote against her.  I will not vote for him because what he supports is exactly equal to everything I believe, because it isn't.  I will vote for Trump because I think Washington D.C. and the entire electoral process needs a complete and total overhaul and he's more likely to bring it than anyone else.  I'm tired of politics as usual.  I think it's funny all of the hyperbolic statements people make about the world we'll get if we elect Trump or HRC.  The reality is for the past 30 years no President has been able to do anything at all so why on earth do you think one of these two people will get anything done?  But if Trump gets elected, it will send the strongest message ever to American politicians.  It tells them the status quo of ineptitude and idleness is over.  If a guy like Trump, with all his flaws and problems can beat a career politician in HRC, then they all have to change now.  

So now I'm faced with the backlash of casting my vote for Trump.  I've heard some say only toothless uneducated men from the south are his supporters.  Well I have all my teeth, went to college, and I don't say yes sir and ma'am.  I've heard HRC say Trump supporters are deplorable (or at least half of them).  Well I'm not.  I'm a high integrity Christian who has been forced to make a difficult choice.  I've heard people say if you vote for Trump you aren't representing your wives, daughters or mothers.  Well that's just like saying if you vote for HRC then you aren't representing our soldiers or the people who invented email (and no, that wasn't Al Gore).  

But none of it really matters because in America and in California my vote does not count.  We still have this crazy system of an electoral college where somehow we believe that's the best way to elect the most powerful person in the world.  I actually think this is where Trump is right.  The election is rigged.  But not against him.  It's rigged against the American Voters.  How is it possible that Al Gore can win the popular vote in 2000 but not be elected President.  Why is it that okay?  Why is it okay that I live in California and unless my vote goes to HRC then my vote doesn't count?  Or on the other side, why is it okay that a Democrat in Texas never gets their vote heard?  How is it possible that the Republican Party started this election with an incredibly narrow path to the White House simply based on electoral votes and the states that never change.  This was all long before Trump was the candidate.  It's time for that process to change which I believe we get more people out there to vote because each vote matters much more.  I want my vote to count and so should you.  

The Lessor of Evils: We've Made This Mistake Before

US History is littered with examples of our government working with the lessor of the evils to get rid of the greater of the evils.  The thought being that in order to dismantle the perceived largest threat, you may need to create allies with those you normally wouldn't.  A 22 year old Saddam Hussein was a paid by the CIA to kill the then President of Iraq.  Osama Bin Laden was part of the Mujahideen where he and other militant leaders were trained by US funded through Pakistani armed forces, all in an attempt to help Afghanistan defeat the Soviet Union in their long-standing war.  The US supported the Batista Dictatorship which ultimately led to the Cuban Revolution and the rise of Fidel Castro.  And so on and so on.  Whether it was the Contras in Nicaragua, Pinochet in Chile, or Chiang Kai-Shek in China, the US has routinely used the "lessor of two evils" tactic.

I realize all of the examples above show the bad thing that can happen when the lessor of the evils turns out to be a greater evil.  I'm sure there are many examples where the lessor evil did what we needed and then faded into the background.  However, our success record should be suspect enough to at least give you pause.

So what you ask?  Why does this matter at all?  Now enter the 2016 Presidential Election.  It's not hard to see how wrong Trump is as a candidate, world leader, or even human being.  Even those who will vote for him will tell you they don't support him as a person (I used to be one of them).  On a daily basis the media is showing new examples of his wrong-doings and providing ample examples of why "Anyone But Trump" is a logical conclusion.  And a great deal of the American public has accepted that argument and turned it's cheek to what could be the greater evil thinly disguised.  In an effort to completely destroy Trump, the media and much of America, has chosen to give Clinton a complete pass.  They have essentially wiped clean her suspect judgment around Benghazi.  They have taken at face value a sham of a process by the FBI around her potentially illegal use of a private email server (a use that would have landed virtually anyone else in the US in jail).  They have chosen to completely ignore a daily barrage of email releases from Wikileaks where it's been proven she manipulates the media and makes bigoted and elitist comments about virtually every social class and race.  HRC supporters turn a blind eye to how the DNC essentially undermined Bernie Sanders in an effort to ensure Clinton was the Democratic Nominee.  Clinton's comments about the women involved with her husband are totally ignored.  And believe it or not, something like 46 Clinton associates have been found dead under suspicious circumstances in their 3 decades of political power, yet that never seems to make the nightly news.

So many are so completely infatuated with the immorality of Trump that they've stopped noticing the potential evil in Clinton.  Now lest anyone think I'm encouraging you to vote for  Trump because I am not.  What I'm asking you to do is open your eyes.  Trump supporters have been forced to do so; they have no choice but to see him for who he is and make their decision accordingly.  In my case, I went from voting for Trump to deciding not to based on what I've seen recently.  But I fear Clinton supporters are so wrapped up in the Never Trump movement that they long ago stopped paying attention to who they have thrown their support behind.  Now maybe everything I mention above is just smoke and mirrors.  Maybe Clinton is no different than any other politician (by the way that alone should give you pause).  But what if she isn't?  If this were any other election where she was running against any other candidate, would any of what I mention above be relevant to you?

We tend to deal with the things directly in front of us because those are the things we perceive can do us the most harm.  Donald Trump is right in front of us and it's not hard to see the risk in him as the leader of the free world.  And the typical logic would state Hillary Clinton is not Donald Trump, therefore she must be the right choice in opposition.  But if the US had to do it all over again, would they have backed Saddam Hussein?  Would they have funded and trained Bin Laden and the Contras?  Would they have supported Batista and Pinochet?  In those cases the true evil was also right in front of them but were ignored because the known evil was more evident.  I would argue the very same risk is upon us in 2016.  In an effort not to elect the bad candidate we might just elect the evil one.