Having a company car is one of those double-edged perks that a decent job delivers. I mean, it’s great, don’t get me wrong: the gas prices are at most an indifferent topic for you, ditto for insurance, and you don’t get too mad if someone puts a dent in your door. Ok, I lied. Pick two out of those three.
But it’s not car ownership that got me thinking today. It’s that personal hell, that home-away-from-home (at least, if you were born in a caravan, that is), that quality time you get to spend with your fellow nine-to-fivers, namely, the daily commute.
Thinking about it in pure practical terms, it’s an absolute waste. You get to drive daily for an unspecified amount of time (x2), burning fuel and wasting away those minutes with nothing more intelligent to do than holding a wheel and dodging fellow commuters. An occasional trucker may liven up things a little by overtaking on a two-lane road, but all in all it’s a pretty dull experience. Oh, it WAS fun, at least for the first couple of months, while you learned the best time to leave home or work in order to miss some of the worse jams, or, say, those little-known shortcuts that you just had to share with half the office. Yes, they do seem more crowded nowadays, wonder why… But I digress.
After a while you even get tired of the little games. Like calculating in your head the statistic probability that the driver that’s tailgating you is actually a woman. 12.57%. Of which there’s more than 86.12% chance that she’s a lesbian, or a man trapped in a woman’s body as a dire consequence of weird transcorporalization exercises. Unproven, of course. You even get tired of playing around with the cruise control (did you know that you can actually engage cruise in 1st gear? Eat this, creeping traffic!). Reading books or gaming are both out of the question, being either to dull or too dangerous for early morning traffic. So… what to do?
Fortunately I compiled a list of things that may liven up your commute, and help you survive those dreaded, creeping minutes (that feel like hours, really) when you’re stuck in a jam and doing a stepping workout with the clutch and gas pedal. Here it is:
- Rock-paper-scissors. The easiest is to play with the fellow motorist driving alongside you. Especially great when negotiating right-of-way. Only applicable for traffic jams.
- Random radio. Listen to every station you have on your presets for exactly one minute. You can use the car’s digital clock to time it. If you don’t have one, use the car’s odometer, and listen to every station for exactly one kilometer. For extra points, try it on the hour (DJ News).
- Legal road warrior. Most drivers mentally add 5 to 8 km/h to the legally allowed speed limit on a given road, because they know they can get away with it. Don’t be corrupted by these speed demons! Drive legally! (And watch them boil in frustration in your rear view mirror.)
- Math-fu! Calculate the highest power of 2 that you possibly can IN YOUR OWN HEAD! For bonus points, recite the value to your coworkers once back in the office, and ask them to check its accuracy. This one I stole from Orson Scott Card – he uses it in Ender’s Game.
- The driver’s salute. During my years as commuter I noticed an intriguing phenomenon: it seems that certain people do notice that they’re being watched (when overtaken, for instance), and they actually turn their heads to look at you in turn. Honor these people with an Army salute. If you don’t feel confident enough to perform the salute, start with a courtly nod and work your way up. Don’t do this in a mocking manner though; people are easily ticked off and serious consequences may ensue from the subsequent road-rage attack on their part.
There are undoubtfully other, more interesting ways of livening up your daily commute. They may or may not involve water pistols, cue cards or masks of dead presidents. All I’m asking is that you check if whatever you decide to use is legal in your place of residence. I hear math may soon be outlawed in certain states, along with the theory of evolution.
Drive safely!