The Commuting Life

California Bob reports:

I am now using mass transit to get to work.  Using transit kind of imposes a whole framework on your day, because it greatly reduces your flexibility, and puts you into a helpless hurry-up-and-wait mode.  But I've used transit heavily in the past so the adjustment hasn't been too shocking.

It's one of those liberating things, in the way that jail can be liberating, because once you accept the constraints, it allows (forces) you to abandon all sorts of other options and activities.

One neat advantage to my commute is that my office is right on the F streetcar line.  The F line runs up and down the Embarcadero, an historic and touristy strip, and they run all these old-timey, vintage, antique and exotic streetcars (not to be confused with the famous cable cars).  Today I rode a 1928 Peter Witt, designed/built in Cleveland, though this one came from Italy.  It still has the Italian signs inside -- "no fumare," "uscito..."  Note the functioning windows, wooden doors, glass globes on the interior lights, etc.

The most bizarre car I've seen is the Blackpool, an open-top boat shaped thing -- I hope to ride it.

Here's a roster of what runs on the F line.