Getting2Work

I have been working 4/10 weeks since summer.  But last Friday I had a 4 hours class at work from 8:00am till noon.  So I could have slept in but I really didn’t want to hit any traffic so I went into work at my regular hour.  Ride was easy like most early mornings.  Since I was one of the few that got there early before most people were in and my office was at the end of the ailse, I got time to send out a few emails (work emails not personal stuff) and read up for the class.  It was a virtual class and this was a class taken on my own time.   Our computers (well, most of our computers) were setup that our IM was signed on when we logged in.  Some people at work knew that I would be in on my own time for the class but since I showed up as being there, all is fair game.  I got a few work questions and discussions.  But I really didn’t mind.  I kinda like that virtual class because I could multi-task.

By mid-morning I was feeling pretty crappy.  I think I was just getting too tired.  Class was pretty good … learned a few new things.  But I was ready to head home when the class was over.  I signed off and packed up and got out by 12:30pm.  Since it was a Friday, a lot of people went out for lunch.  Those who went out were already at wherever they were stuffing their faces and most Friday lunches were longer.  So the surface road was pretty empty, which was great!  Freeway was pretty smooth riding too.  Had a few slow downs but no biggie.

I was able to make it all the way pass the LAX, the Sepulveda Pass and onto the 101 in 1 hour.  That was so great!  Unfortunately spoke too soon and the free ride was over.  There they were … those endless lines of cars … AGAIN!  Man … had the same thing just Wednesday.  It was crawling and whatever was causing the traffic jam was too far ahead to see.  Funny how the mind tried to evaluate the situation … : )  Well, I could get off the freeway at the next exit and take the surface road.  But it was still too far away and with the traffic lights, it will still take me 25 minutes to get home.  So I decided to keep going on the freeway till I get closer before getting off the freeway and take surface road the rest of the way.

So it still took me 1.5 hours to get home last Friday.  Hey, I guess for a Friday afternoon commute, that was pretty good time compared to 2+ hour.  Well, I had to think that way to keep myself from going nuts.  I got home and crashed flopped on the courch and was out.

The headline “The 65 mpg Ford the U.S. Can’t Have” at businessweek.com caught my eyes.  Okay, so this was not today’s headline, hot off the press but it’s still warm enough for me to notice.  How could it not?  It’s an American car that gets 65mgp!!!!  Oh but wait … we’re not getting this in the US!!!!

Here’s a few points mentioned in the Business Week article as to why the Ford management feel that they can’t make a business case in the US:

1. Ford’s 2009 Fiesta ECOnetic runs on diesel … diesel as old-tech … whether the U.S. ever will embrace diesel fuel
2. the engines are built in Britain, so labor costs are high
3. price of the Fiesta to around $24,400 … Ford doesn’t believe it could charge enough to make money on an imported ECOnetic

So what’s up with us?!!!  Are we really that narrow minded in the US.  I would like to think not!  I’m a pretty average individual.  If I come across a topic that hit home for me, I would certainly hunt down more information so that when I have to make a decision, it will be a more informed decision.  Fuel price and clean air certainly are hot topics right now.

Yes, Toyota and Honda made and still is making the most noise in hybrid and fuel efficient cars.  But has there been any campaign for the new diesel?  Anyone care to point out …

• the new diesel vehicles are as clean or cleaner than gasoline
• 30% or more fuel-efficient

Here’s one from Honda.  The video/song is a bit child like and cute but you’ll get it.

As for the cost … I can understand that diesel engine is very different and we don’t have any plant here.  Okay, as Business Week’s follow up article’s point #5 pointed out, it’s not that easy.  But I am sure we would love the possibility of more jobs here in the US.

Here’s more points made in the follow up article from Business Week.  Yes, it’s not so simple … state taxes, regulations, prejudice, cost, etc.  But other car companies such as Honda, Nissan and Hyundai have diesel cars for the US in their plans.  Volkswagen and Mercedes both had cars approved by California and will be coming next year.  If we associate diesel as dirty and polluting, then use some other name like what VW (Jetta TDI) and Mercedes (Bluetec) did.  If we don’t think ahead and work together, we’ll be playing catch up again.

Thursday commute ended up on an annoying note!

With a 4/10 schedule, my Thursday is like others’ Friday.  So I was really ready to mentally wind down.  Morning commute was pretty uneventful.  The work day was going along it’s usual pace … trying to get things done … ran into problems … solved problems (myself and/or with others) … and the cycle goes on.  Since I was not planning on going into work today, I stayed a little longer than usual to get things going and send out emails so other team members can continue on tomorrow so we won’t lose as much time.

Since I left late, I expected to run into more traffic.  I reminded myself not to get anxious of the time.  After all it was the end of the work week for me.  Sure enough, there were more spots where traffic slowed, and the LAX dead stop started way before we actually got to LAX.  But no problem, I was mentally prepared and I have my audio books that I subscribe to at Freebooks.com (see it on my list of “Commuters’ Boredom Busters”).  After we reached to persistent slow stretch, I called my daughter to relay the message to rest of the family not to be alarmed that I was getting home late.

It was getting dark half way through the Sepulveda Pass.  I had to join the rest of the commuters and turned my head lights on.  That’s one of the reasons why I might go back to driving 5 days.  I don’t think I want to drive both ways in the dark.  It just has this negative psychological effort on me!

It had been a long day and I was feeling it.  After 2 hours on the freeway, I finally reached my exit and got off the freeway.  It’s either the change of speed or knowing that I was almost home gave me a feeling as if a heavy load was lifted off my shoulders. But I still had a stretch on the surface road before actually reaching home.

Somewhere on one of the surface roads, a big pick up was waiting to turn left onto the road.  This was one of the samll streets and there was one car in front of me close by.  The pick up thought it had time to pull out in front of the car ahead of me.  But instead of going straight,  the car in front of me moved over for a left turn.  The pick up couldn’t make it and stopped in our right lane.  But It did managed to stop in time without hitting the car that was ahead of me.  Unfortunately instead of waiting till I passed, he decided to make the rest of his left turn in front of me.  I can understand that sitting in lane is not a good thing for him.  But there is no one else coming and it’s wasn’t like I had stopped in the middle of my lane either.  I hadn’t expected him to go.  I had to brake hard and pulled right to avoid it.  I swear it was just like in the movie as I watched the side of the pick up zooming up to me.  I just missed the left tail corner of his pick up.  I was very lucky that there were no other cars to my right or close behind.

My heart was pounding.  Good thing I only had a few more blocks to go and the rest of the way traffic was light and uneventful.  Freeway driving can be bad, but I swear surface road can be as bad if not worse.

My driving this week was relatively uneventful.  I am still doing 4/10 week so hubby had arranged to have his car taken in for servicing Friday morning.  He kept his normal routine of dropping the kids off at school before he dropped his car off.  I met him at the car servicing area to give him a ride to work.  Then I was off to some “me” time with my new toy.  I just got a Wacom Intuos3 6×8 pen tablet.  Am I a graphics designer or artist?  No!  So this is yet another expensive toy?  Yes!  But that sucker is so cool and it came with Adobe Photoshop Element 6 (ok mine is just Element 6 and not 7) and Corel Painter Essential 4 (The Corel Painter X is suppose to be the professional version.  Oh, and check out the Corel Painter and Wacom bundle options … the price!!!!!  Ouch!!).  I have not played with the Photoshop program yet but the Corel Painter is absolutely amazing!  And this is just the beginner’s version!!!!  “Time flies when you are having fun” was so true because before I knew it, it was time to pick up the kids.  So I picked up four kids, two of them mine and two classmates.  I dropped them off at home and headed to pick hubby up to get his car.  On the way down on De Soto, we had to slow down and pulled over twice to let some fire trucks and police cars with veiling sirens go by.  Fire trucks and police cars are not unusual sights.  So we didn’t think much about it and went on with our own business.

After I got home, I sat down at my computer to do whatever I do on my computer.  News is always on my home page, and the one of the headlines, Deadly Metrolink Crash (this links is not the first report but the updated report) caught my attention.  I looked at the time of that report and realized that that’s when the fire trucks and police cars crossed us. The reported location was just north of the train station where my husband and I used to take me son every day after his daycare to watch the Metrolink made its stop.  I remembered my husband used to tell my son to watch the lights next to the tracks.  He would explain to him how the change in the lights indicated when the train was coming and when the train could leave the station.  I could hardly believe what I was reading.  This was so awful!

Another headline, Woman killed after being hit by vehicle on the 101 got my attention.  This is not the stretch of 101 that I take.  But the fact that it was on 101 got me.  There is no update to this story but the report said that “she was seen sitting down in one of the lanes before being struck”.  So I am not sure if the woman intend to commit suicide or what.  It must be hard for the woman’s family and friends.  But I can’t help but wonder what the driver that struck the woman must be going through.

Friday was a bad … bad day!

While doing my Saturday morning news surfing on MSN.com, one of the headlines “Stick shift means fuel savings, Consumer Reports says” caught my eyes because I used to drive a stick shift.

Positive things about driving a stick shift that’s mentioned in the articles:

1. Better mpg (= less carbon dioxide emissions)
2. Cheaper
3. Less likely to be stolen (most car thieves can’t drive with a stick shift) LOL!
4. Fun to drive

Definitely agree with it being fun to drive.  I was driving a stick shift Honda CRV when I started my long commute.

I remembered one day while wandering at the Honda show room killing time as I waited for my car to be delivered after a service.  A salesman tried to convince me to trade up to the latest model.  One of the questions I asked him was what were some of the complains owners had with the CRV with my year of CRV.  He said that some owners complained that it wasn’t powerful enough.  I was pretty surprised by the answer because I had always felt that my CRV had plenty of power.  It was more than able to keep up with the rest of the cars and with plenty to spare if you know what I mean.  Maybe the manual transmission had something to do with it feeling like there is enough power.  Beside driving a stick shift made me feel like I was driving a “real” car and not just a go-cart (that has speed).  At first he wasn’t going to give me very good money for the trade off since it was a stick shift becaues he said that he would have a harder time turning it around.  Eventually he gave me a great deal.  I would walk away with a brand new car and no money out of my pocket.  Well, it didn’t matter because I winded up not trading it in.  I was attached to my stick shift and I didn’t like the way the new model looked.

I drove my manual CRV for another 2 years before I finally gave in and traded for a Honda Hybrid.  Obviously the hybrid is an automatic transmission (actually it has a continuously variable transmission (CVT) to be precise), and it has a smaller engine than my old CRV so it does not have the same power.  On the car’s sticky it said, EPA-estimated 40 city/45 hwy mpg.  But I had tried this out and found that if I drove more like a “sane” or conservative driver (however way you like to label it) I could actually get better mpg.  If I stayed around 70mph or just below, I was able to get 47 to 49 mpg.  If I stick with 75 or higher (and I won’t say how high), it definitely dropped down to their estimate of 45 mpg or even a bit less.

But I am okay with all that (driving a go-cart) because it is more green for our planet AND more green in my pocket book!

Four days off … it made going to work that much harder this morning.  But thank goodness traffic was pretty good.   So that made up for it.  As a matter of fact most drivers were driving a bit slower than most early mornings.  I was a bit tired and feeling no rush either.  So I went along with the slower flow and still made it into work right at 6:00am.

Mid-afternoon I remembered to email my daughter to make sure she finished her summer homework today.  First day of school is tomorrow.  It never fails … kids wait till the last minute.  (Don’t even dare ask if I had reminded them!!!)  Good thing I emailed her.  She asked me what time I was coming home and that reminded me that even though Monday was a holiday.  It was only good for 8 hours.  I have to make up the 2 hours since I have been doing 4/10 this summer.  2 hours do seem much.  I figured I’ll work one hour extra today.  Do my usual 10 hours tomorrow and another 11 hours on Thursday.  I know some people work a lot longer hours per day.  Unfortunately the commute gets worse every minute you delay.  I swear the amount of traffic increases exponentially.

Maybe a lot of people took extra day off or just good old Tuesday traffic.  Even though I left at five, it only took me one and a half hour to get home.  Not too bad!  I know some of you think that I am crazy to say that an hour and a half commute time is not bad.  But trust me … it is not bad for an LA commute!