He may ride forever 'neath the streets of Boston

Song That’s Incessantly Playing In My Mind (STIPIMM): “Good Morning, Good Morning,” by the Beatles

Bridget came by the office today and had lunch with me. Such a simple pleasure to have lunch with the person you love, but well worth it. She brought me what amounts to my usual brown-bag lunch: sandwich, bag of chips, and a cup of pudding. She augmented that with a piece of string cheese. Yum!

In order to get out to my office, which is in Cambridge, and since we don’t have a car here in town, she had to subject herself to the same route I have to follow every day. This is not a commute I would wish on anyone; there are several different ways to get here, but the complexity of the route is inversely proportionate to its speed. So unless you know what you’re doing, even if you take the quickest route, you’ll spend so long trying to figure out where to go that you’ll eat up the time you would have saved.

All in all, for the uninitiated traveler, it takes an hour and 20 minutes to get from our apartment to my workplace, a distance (as the crow flies) of less than five miles. Since I know how to do it and what times the buses come, I can usually get that down to between 50 to 65 minutes, but if I have bad luck, waiting for buses can easily stretch it out to the 80 minute mark.

There are basically two options for traveling to and from work, and Bridget tried them both today: 1) by subway (the “T”) or 2) by bus.

The good thing about the subway is that we have a T stop very close to our apartment. And generally, since our stop is toward the beginning of the line, I’m able to find a seat in the morning.

The bad thing about the subway is that it doesn’t run straight to Cambridge. In order to get to the Alewife station, the closest T stop to my workplace, I have to go all the way into the heart of Boston, switch trains and then ride out again. And because the line that runs near our apartment has a lot of stops, it takes quite a long time to get into town.

On the other hand, there’s the bus. The primary advantage of the bus are that it’s more direct; instead of going all the way into town and out, I just cross the river on the 66 line to Harvard Square and then take another bus (the 78) which runs right in front of my workplace. Sounds great, eh?

Well, it has its drawbacks. The main one is the fact that I have to actually get on the T (the subway, stay with me here) to get to the 66 bus line. So that’s three different vehicles I have to get on, which means three chances for waiting for it to come. Then there’s the humanity factor; the buses tend to be pretty crowded during rush hour. I’ve become pretty good at finagling seats though, so that’s not too bad a problem.

Bridget got to try both methods today; she took the subway to get here and took the buses back. Knowing which stop to get off at, however, can be tricky, and she overshot it and had to hop on the T to get home. My poor girl.

After a month of experimentation, I came to the conclusion that I have a better chance of getting to work quicker if I take the bus. The fastest I have ever gotten to work that way: 45 minutes from our apartment door to my desk at the office. However, with bad luck, the longest it’s ever taken: an hour and 25 minutes. It’s a crap shoot twice a day. Good thing I take a book.

So it begins

Bridget and I meant to start this earlier this month, upon our arrival in Boston, but as is wont to happen to young urbanites, we got sidetracked. My intentions were good; I started a new job on Sept. 1, the day we moved into our new apartment, and I figured I could do like Bridget did when she worked in D.C. and write a blog entry during the day when I had a down moment.

Of course, I forgot about new employee jitters. That’s the tendency for an office rookie to be hyper-vigilant in the first weeks of their employment as they try to feel out how much they can get away with in terms of coffee breaks, Internet browsing, and just plain ol’ goofing off. And so, in the first few weeks, there was no way in hell I was going to risk being seen doing non-work-related activities while at my desk.

Now that I’m coming to the end of my first month here, the jitters are slowly wearing off, and I feel comfortable (especially since the boss is working from home today) taking a few moments to get this damn thing started.

Much like Tommy Jefferson started the Declaration of Independence with an explanation as to why they were writing it, I suppose I should explain why Bridget and I felt the need to start this thing. There are three main reasons:

1) It’s a nice way to keep in touch. The blog of my brother and sister-in-law is a regular destination on the World Wide Web for me exactly because it keeps me updated with what’s going on in their lives. Now, I suppose I could pick up the damn phone and call and get the same thing, but us McKenzies have never been one for talking on the phone. We have a lot of friends in D.C., Oklahoma, Texas and elsewhere, and blogging’s part of our strategy to keep those connections alive.

2) It provides Bridget and I with a way to keep track of our history. Now, it’s not going to be a complete history, but I think it’ll be nice to have something like this to look at in 20+ years. Granted, we won’t be writing some of the more intimate things that are going on in our brains, but it will provide some nice guideposts to our memory.

3) I miss writing for an audience. More on this later, but suffice to say, I long for the glory days when I wrote a column for the Pauls Valley Daily Democrat. That’s why you’ll probably not see too many “update” blog entries, i.e., entries that consist of a sentence or two: “Hey y’all. Having a blah day! Wish me luck on the interview! Peace out!” Once I get started, I go on and on.

Bridget will ostensibly be writing in this blog as well, although she already has an excellent blog of her own that she’s still writing in. We’ll see how this develops; I’m sure it will morph into something unique within no time. Enjoy the ride.