The Drive

As I was on the road this morning, pointed towards Monaca PA in the waning darkness, I thought I'd paint a picture of my drive, since it's a big part of my life five out of every seven days.

The first part of the drive, up until the long stretch of Carson Street, is dominated by 2 things: Oppressive freezing cold and trying to balance whatever cups, plates and bowls I have brought along for my breakfast. Oh, and trying to drive, too :-P Oooh, that car is SO cold in those mornings! It soaks in all night long as Pepsi Blue sits in the driveway, burying itself deep down in the steering wheel and seats and windowpanes, chilling the engine to its core. Even when the thermostat gets up to normal temperatures it takes about 10 minutes to get truly hot air out of the vents. This morning it was 16 degrees, so it was particularly noticeable.

The next stretch is between Carson Street and the Fort Pitt Bridge. It consists of lots of city driving, lots of using the clutch, camping out behind people in one-lane stretches and trying to get ahead in two-lane stretches. Oh, and it contains some of my least favorite driving ever: a couple-mile stretch on 2nd Avenue which is *technically* 2 lanes, but almost nobody gets over enough to fit 2 cars, and the right side has these horrible storm drains that wreak bloody havoc on my poor tires and suspension. You can either blow through there in a minute if nobody's around, or you can crawl behind a slowbie for 5 minutes, one foot away from being able to pass them.

The sad thing is those first two sections take half the time of the drive, but cover only about 1/4th the distance. The rest is flying down the parkway. From the Ft. Pitt Tunnel to Robinson Township it's pretty crowded, and you only fly if the left lane is unobstructed by inconsiderate slow passers or oblivious slow drivers. Sometimes people get irritated at me 'cause I leave a lot of room in front of me, but I always keep up the speed of the left lane, and if I can't I get right. A couple of the hills show up the limits of my 2-liter engine at highway speeds. *sigh*

The final section is the wide-open freeway from Robinson to the "Monaca Shippingport" exit. It gets very dark, and there is almost no traffic to require my attention, so this is where my eyelids start forcing themselves shut and the world starts to haze a bit if I haven't gotten enough sleep. Hateful feeling. If it weren't for this section I would probably arrive at work raring to go. As it is, I often get there really draggy and drowsy, which makes it hard to start poring over circle charts and entering data into Excel. Oh well.

The last thing in every morning's drive is the entrance into Nova. As I get close to the light where I turn in to the plant I sightlessly pop open the console and retrieve my badge. Slow for the light, turn in, coast up to the gate, scan the badge, and I'm in. Then I try to time my acceleration so I can catch the official time is on the big light-up display. Always 3 minutes less than my car clock, but I always wait to see it flash up. Then crawl at 15mph to the parking lot at the Engineering & Maintenance Building, pull into a spot, and wish I could tilt the seat back and sleep for 5 hours.

The drive home is . . . . another post for another day :-)

--Clear Ambassador