While I would have preferred not to join this crazy club I’m in, it helps to know I’m not the only one in it. According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data, there are roughly 600,000 of us so-called mega-commuters across this asphalt-covered country of ours. Classified as people who travel 90 or more minutes and 50 or more miles to work one way, mega-commuters go the distance and then some. Interestingly, however, we make up less than one percent of the total commuter population. What’s more, women in this club are a tiny fraction of that one percent. Rear View is a collection of the stories my fellow mega-commuters have shared with me. I thank and admire every one of you.
Thom, 46, 
Massachusetts
Q: So Thom, what kind of car do you drive?
A: Now I have a 2012 Audi Q5, but I’ve been through 8 other vehicles in my driving career. The one I put the most mileage on was a Honda Civic coupe that got 32mpg and lasted for 315k miles. I’ve never owned a new car. Two cars I miss the most: a ‘73 Chevy K5 Blazer and ’63 Triumph Herald – neither of those were suitable commuting cars though!
Q: How long was your longest commute and where was it?
A: Longest one-way commute was 48 miles each way, but the toughest was driving into Boston every day – 35 miles each way, but usually 90 minutes. Three hours per day behind the wheel was exhausting and now I realize an absolute waste of my life. I now have an 18-minute ride into Providence for work.
Q: How long did you do it?
A: I commuted into Boston for 10 years, and before that spent 10 years driving about 75 minutes each way to Fairhaven, MA. My commute into Boston was 35 miles, which took about 90 minutes. Painful.
Q: What led to it? Was there a job change or other big shift in your life?
A: Boston had the jobs and the career building opportunities. It was also a fun period during my 20s and 30s to experience life in a great city. It is what many people do in Southern New England if they’re looking to build a successful career. Telecommuting holds so much promise, but there is a lot to be said for working in teams and the dynamic of the workplace.
Q: What kind of car(s) were you driving at the time (make, model, year, mileage)?
A: During the Boston days, I was driving a Toyota Tacoma pickup and an Audi A4 convertible. Both great vehicles, but the Audi did much better on gas. It was great on beautiful days when I would detour out of Boston through the Blue Hills park with the top down.
Q: What lessons did you learn during that period? About the road? About yourself? About life in general?
A: I like to think I’m an observant person and capable of introspection, so I believe I learned a lot about myself. There were plenty of times that I was on the phone for work, but most of the time I thought about my life, raising my 3 young girls, planning an upcoming adventure outdoors to get away from technology, and educating myself about the rest of the world. I learned that no one carpools, which I did for almost a year and laughed at the other cars from the HOV lane; and that 85% of the people in traffic are pissed off. I pride myself on being able to remain calm amidst chaos, which is an essential quality for dealing with the Boston commute, widely accepted to be one of the worst in the U.S.
I also discovered classical music again, which I enjoyed during college but hadn’t really listened to in quite some time. It’s amazing to listen to the complexity of a concerto and remind yourself that this was written when the harpsichord ruled the stage!
Unfortunately I used to have to talk to my kids from the car often, to make sure I caught up on the day’s events. At least when I would get home after they finished dinner they would hang out at the table with me doing their homework while I ate.
Q: How did you keep going and going and going? Did you have any special coping strategies to survive the long drives?
A: I can’t imagine how people suffered through commutes like that with no cell phones or podcasts. I used to laugh a lot at the other drivers doing their hair and makeup, reading the paper, and eating. Strangely, in the morning you do not see a lot of people singing. I do like to sing in the car a lot.
Q: What was the worst aspect of your commute? The best?
A: By far the worst was the exhaust from the big rigs and the noise pollution. On particularly rough mornings I would arrive to work exhausted and feeling sick. It would take me about an hour or so to feel a little better. The other tough by-product of spending so much time commuting in your car is that you don’t get enough exercise. I gained too many pounds during those years which I am working hard to take off.
Q: Any favorite pitstops? podcasts? audiobooks?
A: Not really any favorite pit stops, because I was just fighting through to make it home. The one thing I miss most about not having a long commute is all of the podcasts that I used to listen to: RadioLab, This American Life, Dinner Party Download, Freakonomics, Ted Talks, Here’s The Thing. I get to work so quickly now that I don’t have an opportunity to listen. I never really got into audio books. I wanted something new every ride.
Q: Any wildlife- or weather-related incidents?
A: Not much wildlife on Routes 93 and 95 coming in and out of Boston, but if there was an accident or a storm – fugghedaboutit. I once left Boston at 6pm during a medium snowstorm, and I pulled into my driveway just after midnight. I was back on the road to Boston six hours later. How stupid, but it’s what you have to do in today’s economy to support a family.
Q: Fastest commute time? Fastest speed?
A: If I worked past 11pm, it would usually take me less than 30 minutes to get home. There were some beautiful, starlit nights in the summer with the top down at 1:30am that I definitely still miss. I hit 90 a number of times to celebrate when there was no traffic.
Q: How much do you figure you spent on gas during your mega-commuting days?
A: I’d say about $400/month.
Q: What tools or tactics did you use to avoid the state police, or what I affectionately refer to as the popo?
A: Thankfully, when there’s that much traffic your whole way to work the popo are a no-show. I never got a ticket in the 20 years of dealing with horrendous commutes. I just got one a few weeks ago in my town driving one of my daughters to a restaurant to meet her friends. I successfully challenged it in court though and got it dismissed.
Q: How did/will you celebrate when it was/is finally over?
A: I remember having a beer on the back deck with my wife the night before my first day starting my new job and toasting to the end of 3 hours/day in my car. I still call my wife most nights when I’m halfway home to let her know that I’ll be home in 10 minutes. I get a kick out of it even more than 3 years later. What’s funny is that I still spend a lot of time in my car driving my kids to club soccer games. One of my daughters had two games in Pennsylvania about a month ago. We got home on Sunday night just before midnight after a 6-hour drive.
Darryl, 50, New Hampshire
Q: So Darryl, what kind of car do you drive?
A: I drive an Infiniti G37X.
Q: How long was your longest commute and where was it?
A: Bedford, NH, to Boston. In the morning, it was two-and-a-half hours. And at night, it was about an hour and 20 minutes.
Q: How long did you do it?
A: 21 years. Yeah, I was a mega-commuter.
Q: What led to it? Was there a job change or other big shift in your life?
A: Well, I worked at a small ad agency in New Hampshire, and then I went down to Boston to work on giant brands.
Q: What kind of car(s) were you driving at the time (make, model, year, mileage)?
A: First it was a Saab turbo, then a Volvo C70, then a Jeep Grand Cherokee, and then a Mercedes 430 ML. A 4X4. Yeah, it was a big one. Eight cylinders. I drove that car to the very end – for, I want to say, eight years. It had over 300,000 miles on it. I drove it into the ground. I literally drove the transmission to nothing and coasted it to the side of the road, then donated it for a tax break and used the tax break to put a down payment on a new car. But the Mercedes was absolutely the safest car I owned. It drove like a truck. It saved me. I had a huge incident with a drunk driver. It just saved my life.
Q: What lessons did you learn during that period? About the road? About yourself? About life in general?
A: I’m probably a way better driver than most people you know, for the sheer fact that I can read traffic. I really can. Really good at reading traffic, really good at driving at high speed, because I’ve done it for so long. There is a flow that traffic has, and you just start to see it. You learn tricks like if you’re stuck in large amounts of traffic, always to look for a commuter bus, because they are taller and higher and you can go right behind it, and also save a lot of gas drafting behind it. I’m totally kidding, of course. You don’t necessarily draft, because it’s dangerous. But you do drive fairly close to large vehicles, because you know that it’s going to break your wind and you’re going to travel faster.
Q: How did you keep going and going and going? Did you have any special coping strategies to survive the long drives?
A: No, I think what happens though is that you…a lot of times I remember getting in the car, and I remember getting out, and I don’t remember a lot in the middle, but it just becomes automatic. You get used to it just like anything else. But you put NPR on or books on tape and you just go. The road is completely different every time you drive it. It’s not the same thing. It’s either weather or crazy-ass drivers or something. I’ve seen just about everything on the road you could possibly imagine from someone getting road head to cars on fire. I saw a giant black dildo, a doubled-end dildo, on the side of the road.
So I’ll tell you a funny story. There’s another guy who lived over on the Nashua border who worked for me at my office, and he and I would sometimes see each other in our commutes. So one day, it’s bumper to bumper and you’re looking around, and you look down at the road and on the side of the road, there’s this giant black double-ended dildo. I was laughing my ass off, and I looked behind me in the rearview mirror at the woman who was directly behind me to see if she saw it, and she was looking at it, too. So then I get to the office and about 20 minutes later, Jimmy shows up, and Jim’s like, “Do you know what I saw on the side of the road?” And I go, “a double-ended black dildo?” And he goes, “Yeah.” I go, “Dude, I saw the same thing.” So for the next two days, we just saw it move down the highway. The wind would blow it down a little bit further. After, like, the third day, we lost track of it, but it was definitely a topic of conversation for a long time.
Q: What was the worst aspect of your commute? The best?
A: Worst? Two things. I feel the damage I did to the environment. That was the biggest guilt thing for me, because I had no other option. And just the time spent commuting, away from my family. The best aspect? Three things. One, I think it’s the sense of adventure. I love to drive. I love getting in a car and driving. I think it makes you a more patient person. I think it makes you a better driver. I think it gives you a lot of time to think about things. I had tons of time to think about concepts and projects before I get to the office. I would get to the office with a million things on my mind versus I just woke up and rolled into the office. And then the other thing was I just learned a lot, like NPR and books on tape and stuff. It was just a really good opportunity to study.
Q: Any wildlife- or weather-related incidents?
A: No wildlife, but I was in the world’s longest commute, crazy long commute. It was this freak snowstorm in December 2007. Everyone else was running out of gas and got stuck, and I just kept plowing through it. So I was in a commute for nine-and-a-half hours from Boston. Nine-and-a-half hours to get home. I had heard it was probably going to snow, so I always kept a full tank of gas anyway. Literally, you were stuck on 93, and people were running out of gas. The snow was too high for cars, they were getting stuck on it. Literally, four lanes turned into 12 lanes, and I was going over people’s front lawns, driving around just four-by-fouring it all the way up to New Hampshire.
Q: Fastest commute time? Fastest speed?
A: 42 minutes. No lie, 42 minutes. Down to Boston. I could do it even shorter coming back up. That was in the Infiniti G37X.
Q: How much do you figure you spent on gas during your mega-commuting days?
A: I’d say about $1,400/month. I was filling up every other day.
Q: What tools or tactics did you use to avoid the state police, or what I affectionately refer to as the popo?
A: After commuting so much you kind of know where they are. But there were three things I used. One: I used the buses, because wherever the buses went you will go. Two: I used a dual radar detector, which detects laser beams and radar. So if you have a laser that goes across the road, and you trip the laser, it tells you how fast it is. With a radar detector, a signal hits your car far away and bounces back and forth and tells you how fast it goes. You have to have a dual one, not a single. And then you just get speeding tickets. I got lots of speeding tickets. I have a good insurance company, a very forgiving insurance company.
Q: How did/will you celebrate when it was/is finally over?
A: No, I actually went through withdrawals. Because I missed my commute. I missed all that time I had. Yeah, it took a year-and-a-half to kind of…because you get into this groove, and you come to expect the time in the car. But then you get out of the habit, and you feel good.
Deb, 33, New Hampshire 
Q: So Deb, what kind of car do you drive?
A: A 2006 Honda Civic Coupe LX. Two doors. Made of plastic. Galaxy Gray. Which is basically the color of pond water. That’s what it looks like. It’s like a brown but a gray.
Q: How long was your longest commute and where was it?
A: I would say, on average, it was an hour and a half, with the average amount of weekly traffic. I calculated it as 53 miles from Nashua, NH, to Framingham, MA.
Q: How long did you do it?
A: From 2010 to 2014. Four long years. However, two years into it I started carpooling. It was every other day, we would switch off, which was amazing. We’d meet at Starbucks in Nashua, and then leave one of our cars there, and just drive down. It was great.
Q: What led to it? Was there a job change or other big shift in your life?
A: In 2010, I decided to leave the newspaper industry for advertising. The state of the industry was so bad at the time that I was willing to exchange a 20-minute commute for over an hour, even though I was getting the same pay and paying way more taxes. It was that bad. I had a coworker at the paper who left work for Staples. She said, “Hey, we have an opening here, it’s for an account executive,” and I was, like, “I don’t know what that is.” But I knew if I showed up, they would give me the job because they adored her. Sure enough, I showed up and they said, “Because we like Carrie, we’re going to give you a job. You’re going to get the same pay, you’re going to pay more taxes, and you’re going to have triple commute. Do you want it?” I said, “Yes. This is the best day of my life.”
Q: What kind of car(s) were you driving at the time (make, model, year, mileage)?
A: Same one. That was my first car ever that I bought when I was 23 and I still have it. So when I started working at Staples, I had 50,000 miles on it, and now, I have, I believe, 196,000. At some point early on, the AC broke, and I went to get my oil changed at Valvoline, and I asked the guy, “Hey, do you mind taking a look at my car? AC doesn’t work.” And he was, like, “Well, you need a whole new part replaced.” It’s not, you know, can you just get your AC charged? He was, like, “No, you need the part. It’s going to cost you hundreds of dollars.” And so I haven’t had AC since the early 2000s. So that means every super-hot day driving to and from Framingham when we got stuck in traffic, we would be just dripping sweat, because I didn’t have AC. So when I started commuting, we would make sure on really hot days to take her car or else, we’d just be dripping sweat. It was terrible.
And then for a period of time – I would say probably nine months – my car was out of alignment. And I couldn’t pay to get it fixed, so my car would shake violently whenever I went over 70. At one point, my coworker decided to bring her daughter to work. So we took my car, and she was in the back seat and threw up because the car shook so badly that it made her sick. And I was, like, “My car makes children sick. That’s awful. I need to fix it.” So I did get it fixed.
Q: What lessons did you learn during that period? About the road? About yourself? About life in general?
A: When I think about it, it was probably about two years into my commute that I started commuting with my friend Andrea. She worked in my department, but she was the design manager and I was an account executive. She managed the designers and so we had a very professional relationship. We started commuting, partly because we realized we lived 15 minutes from each other. But the real reason was because Staples decided to build a parking garage, so they were leveling their huge parking lot, and that meant a lot of our spaces were gone. And so people had to take a shuttle from a business down Route 9. But if you carpooled, you got a front row spot.
We’re both very anti-social and, although she really enjoyed her solo commuting time, she was, like, “Look, I’m too lazy to take a shuttle to work, so do you want to commute?” She was, like, “Let’s force each other to be friends.” So we ended up being really close friends and really enjoying each other’s company. Because she was a manager and she had been in the agency for a long time, she really became my professional mentor. I’d come out from the newspaper industry, which is like the Wild West, and I didn’t really have any professional skills. And also my manager at the time was kind of a bully, and I didn’t really know how to deal with that well. So she really helped me navigate the professional world, and she encouraged me to move from account management to copywriting through her connections and introducing me to people. So she really shaped my trajectory. Sometimes, long commutes do have benefits.
Q: How did you keep going and going and going? Did you have any special coping strategies to survive the long drives?
A: Snacks, lots of snacks. When I was an account executive, I managed the office supplies and cleaning and breakroom divisions for the circular. So the cleaning and break room buyers, office supply buyers, were my clients. And I used to have to coordinate photo shoots of all the new products, so I’d always have all these samples in my cube that they would never collect. So I would have these huge bags of Peanut M&Ms all the time. If I knew that traffic was really backed up, I’d grab a bag, and we’d just sit there and pop candy. So Peanut M&Ms was my coping strategy.
Oh, and 80s hair bands. That was the one music genre. She was a little bit country, I’m a little bit rock ‘n roll and electric dance music. And so 80s hair bands was the one genre we could agree on, so we listened to a lot of Def Leppard, Poison and Motley Crue.
Q: What was the worst aspect of your commute? The best?
A: The worst is definitely the hours spent in the car. That’s when I started developing really bad back problems because of the way I drive. I lean on the side of the car and I drive with one hand. So my back is all out of alignment. That’s when I first started seeing a chiropractor. It was maybe six months into the job. I started getting familiar with the area chiropractors.
What else is terrible? Leaf peepers and skiers, fighting that traffic on Thursdays and Fridays. Yeah, trying to get home with all that traffic. And solar glare, or basically any kind of weather. And then just other drivers. Nobody knows how to drive. Everybody panics if it’s not partly cloudy, 70 degrees. That was the worst.
The best aspect was gaining a really good friend and professional mentor for life. And also before I started carpooling, I really enjoyed, and I still do, listening to the radio. I love station scanning, just putting on scan, just hearing what comes up. Any kind of Hispanic music channel is my favorite. Yeah, I just love it. It’s always so upbeat. I had a favorite radio station, WFNX, that was bought out. It’s an alternative radio station. When I worked at the newspaper, and then for the first year that I worked at Staples, I used to do beer promotions for a beer distributor in Nashua, and they had a partnership with FNX, so they would spin music and then I would hand out beer samples. It was great.
Anyway, FNX left, and then the same station on the dial was replaced by an electric dance music station, which was also awesome because I love that. Then that went out and then I was left with nothing. But I still scan. Whenever I’m on long road trips in the car – and I’m sure it drives people crazy – I scan. I listen to a little bit of everything.
Q: Any favorite pitstops? podcasts? audiobooks?
A: When traffic was really backed up on the way home, and we would have to go through Massachusetts and New Hampshire on back roads, there’s this little farm stand that’s on the border of Pepperell and Hollis. It’s called Kimball’s. They have great snacks and produce and stuff. We’d stop there and pick up things. That was a good little pit stop. Other than that, it was just, like, get home, just drive, whatever you can do. Favorite app was definitely Waze. Facebook recently reminded me of a screenshot I posted in May 2013 of a Waze traffic alert that said, “Man running with dead turkey in hand in Chelmsford during rush hour.”
Q: Any wildlife- or weather-related incidents?
A: Other than that dead turkey, there were no wildlife incidences that I can remember. For weather, obviously, the winter was terrible. And there’s one commute when I first started, I was driving in the car to work for three and a half hours, and I got there and my boss was like, “Oh, when the weather is really bad, you can just work from home.” I was so nervous I was going to get fired because I didn’t show up to work or that people would think it was bad that I was afraid of the snow. So I said, “Great, thanks guys.”
Q: Fastest commute time? Fastest speed?
A: On Monday holidays like Martin Luther King Jr. Day or any day where the kids are not at school, I could make it from my house in Nashua to Framingham in 45 minutes. And I was going 90, because the roads were perfectly clear, and there were no state troopers or anything on my way. So that was like a personal record. Because if I go over 90, my car would just explode. I’ve never gone over 92, I don’t think. I don’t think it can handle it.
Q: How much do you figure you spent on gas during your mega-commuting days?
A: Thousands. And between the time I was commuting from 2010 to 2014, that’s when gas prices were hovering around almost $4. And so I roughly calculated that I probably spent thousands and thousands of dollars in gas, which is why I was literally always broke. You don’t realize it at first either. It kind of creeps up on you.
Q: What tools or tactics did you use to avoid the state police, or what I affectionately refer to as the popo?
A: In four years of commuting, I got pulled over once in New Hampshire by a state trooper for non-inspection. I would get my car inspected in March, I would fail, and then it would take me months in order to afford whatever the repair was. So I got an $80 ticket, but I never got pulled over for speeding.
Q: How did/will you celebrate when it was/is finally over?
A: I didn’t really celebrate when it was over. When I really celebrated was my first inspection that I passed. That year I decided to take my car to a place that was maybe a little shadier, because I thought they’re not really going to care what my car’s like. But then after I dropped it off, I thought, “Shit, I shouldn’t go there. They’re going to tell me I need my tires replaced.” But I had purposefully saved a couple of hundred dollars, knowing that I was going to definitely need something replaced. And then I picked it up and he said, “Yeah, you passed.” So I went to T.J. Maxx and bought three pairs of shoes with the money. That’s how I celebrated.
leadfoot 