Every morning I play Beat the Clock with the traffic on my way to work. The middle school where I work is connected to the high school, and there is only one access road. One. Uno. Une. The object every morning is to reach the access road before the high school traffic and middle school parents jam up the whole commute.
This means every morning I have to leave the house a full forty-five minutes before I used to when the schools weren't connected and didn't share a road.
This entire operation seems simple except for the fact that I hate traffic. HATE IT. Also complicating my commute is the fact that I finally don't have children to drop off in the morning. I used to have to hit three different schools before going to my own school in a neighboring town. I think back on it now and wonder how in the hell I ever managed to pull that off every morning without losing my goddamn mind.
I should be loving my commute now that it's just me and a straight shot eight miles, no major highways and no speed limit over 50 mph. But, no, I HATE MY COMMUTE.
Do you want to know why? --- School buses. Two school buses, to be exact.
If I don't time my departure exactly right, which often happens because I still have one (grown) child at home whose work wardrobe requires daily ironing duty, then I am forced to play chicken with two school buses. One bus races me to the first crossroad, desperate to beat me to Main Street and route 28 then route 125 beyond. The bus goes the same way I do, and, if it gets in front of me, I am stuck behind it as it stops every two houses to pick up (lazy) children.
It's important to beat the bus so I can go to work the back way, which is my favorite way, through the state forest. If the bus beats me to Salem Street, I continue straight on and turn later, driving along the forest perimeter and past my favorite pond, which is a pretty great commute, as well. If all else fails, I drive up the main road, turn once (if I remember) to connect with the final leg of the back road commute and get the beneficial right-turn light at the school access road entrance. Sometimes I forget that last turn and end up sitting at the light waiting ... waiting ... waiting through traffic to make the left, feeling like an idiot.
Some mornings I can see the bus stopping at the train tracks by my house, giving me just enough time to beat the bus in the morning, but today I miss the train track delay. The bus cuts in front of me up School Street. Knowing I will never beat the bus through the light by going up to the next street, I get behind the bus, strategically maneuver across a one-way to the left, and boogie onto Main Street about a hundred yards north of the bus, which is now at a long light that I usually avoid.
I make it through the light just as it turns yellow and notice the bus pulls out behind me. SUCCESS! But it is short-lived. I notice that the bus has taken a side street behind me. The bastard! He's cutting across Prospect Street to beat me to the next light, allowing him to block my turn to the back road without ending up behind his every slow and painful student pick-up. Damn him!
This game goes on every single morning, sometimes with me winning and sometimes with the bus winning. Mostly with me winning, though. Until today.
Today, after missing my classic train-track-mandatory-bus-stop tactic, I notice that the bus has turned another way. Aha! I've lost him! Or, so I believe. I get to my usual spot of waiting for the light so I can cross Salem Street and avoid the rest of 125 and its dangerous traffic of cars racing at each other at speeds in excess of fifty to sixty miles per hour. There, blocking my turn, is a yellow school bus.
Holy shit. I have been making this same commute every single morning this year, three and a half months of playing chicken with the school bus, and now ... now ... frigging NOW I realize that it's NOT the same damn bus. All this time, all these well-developed secret routes to stay ahead of the blinking red bus lights, and I suddenly discover that I have not been racing ONE bus every morning; I have been racing TWO buses every morning.
Part of me feels dumb for being so .... dumb. I mean, I don't know why I didn't notice that the buses weren't the same. Then though, I feel a little triumphant. After all, I can still go by the state forest, but it won't be as quiet and scenic a commute.
Best of all, though -- All this time I have been beating (or almost beating) not one but a duo of very competitive bus drivers. Sometimes that's all it takes to make my (commuting) world right.
