Driving to work is a bit of a conundrum. I live in Studio City and I commute to Beverly Hills, which means the shortest distance between those two points is a straight line through the treacherous, one-lane, traffic-jammed Coldwater Canyon.
Google Maps claims my commute is a 7.2-mile drive that should take roughly 21 minutes to complete. Because I have to be at work by 10:30 AM, I typically leave my apartment around 9:30 AM. Giving myself an hour to drive 7 miles might seem like overkill to some. Those people have probably never faced the dreaded canyon in the morning…and then tried to find a parking spot in Beverly Hills.
This morning, my body refused to turn on so I got a late start. I left my apartment at 9:45 AM today (instead of my usual 9:30 AM) and the very same drive that usually takes me 40-50 minutes took only 18 minutes. It’s so freaking weird. It feels like the more time you give yourself, the longer it takes you. The later I leave home, the quicker I get to work.
I am driven crazy by the math of it all.
This data I have collected has me extrapolating algorithms on my drive to work about how early or late I should leave in order to make sure I am there early enough to look like a brown-nosing do-gooder who is never late. It appears that oversleeping and running late all morning helps me get to work earlier.
People generally complain about traffic, but I sometimes like it. Any commute over 35 minutes allows me to listen to The Cool Kids’ “Bake Sale” album in its entirety, which is always a treat.
Coldwater Canyon is a strange place. Sometimes, I feel like it’s some sort of black hole in the universe where scientific certainties such as gravity and the space-time continuum fail to exist. The scariest part is I might be right.
_TBG
